Page 70 of Shadebound
My fingers curled tighter against the blanket. The fabric creased and thin from overuse. Pressure built behind my eyes. My body screamed for release, but there wasn’t any to give.
Sleep was a myth now, a cruel joke.
Zayden’s presence was no longer comforting. It was just there.
The screams pulsed through the walls in endless repetition, a carousel of agony with no off switch. They tore into us in layers: the shriek of metal, the guttural cries, the weeping. Not random. Not chaotic. Patterned just enough to keep me expecting the next burst. I hated how it settled into something almost rhythmic. Almost bearable. That trick was the worst part.
Zayden kept drawing shapes on my arm. When I turned my head, he was watching the ceiling, his lips moving faintly, silently. Repeating something over and over. Maybe a mantra. Maybe a prayer.
I hoped it was bringing him comfort. Even when his eyes shut, and I worried he would fall asleep.
At least I did, until my hand slid into my pocket, seeking a thorn from the flowers I’d carried all day. And found the note I’d completely forgotten about.
Careful not to disturb Zayden, I pulled it out. Hurrying to open and glance at the slanted words.
Pretty things don’t last long here.
So I couldn’t let you wander too far from my sight.
You’re safer by my side and I like how you look there.
I also like this necklace around your throat almost as much as you enjoy my hand around it.
My muscles had locked in place, like shifting even a fraction would invite everything crashing down. As much as my lips wanted to curl into a smile at the words, I could not. I barely had the energy to slide the note into my side table before returning to my corpse playing.
Before doing anything but wonder who the killer was. Where they were.
What they were up to and how I could possibly begin to hunt them down.
For hours after that, I stayed still, spine rigid against the mattress, eyes wide and unblinking. There was heat behind them, but it didn’t spill over. The weight inside my chest pressed harder with every second that passed, but I didn’t make a sound. My jaw was clenched so tightly it ached. Speech felt a thousand miles away—just the thought of opening my mouth made my throat tighten further. I stayed silent. Frozen. Waiting. Enduring.
I just lay there and survived it.
Barely.
Field Journal — Entry #401 - Classified
I wonder what it’s like to love a shadebound.
It can’t be easy.
To offer your heart to something carved from shadow—something quiet and cold, stitched together with old wounds and the echoes of lives they no longer speak of. They feel things deeply, but rarely show it. And when they do, it comes out wrong—sharp instead of soft. Silence instead of comfort. Fear where warmth should be.
Loving a shadebound must feel like waiting for a door that never opens. Like pressing your hand to glass and pretending it’s the same as being held.
They don’t mean to hurt the ones who love them. But their grief sits too close. Their memories run too deep. And the more you reach for them, the further they seem to drift into the dark.
Perhaps love was never meant to reach that far.
Or if it was—perhaps it was never meant to come back whole.
Chapter Twenty One, Silence
The floor had stopped vibrating beneath my bed, but the others were still twitching like it hadn’t. I couldn’t hear the sound, but I could feel the tension of it left behind in the bones of the room, the way air buzzed after a thunderclap. Sweat-slickedskin. Twitching limbs. Shoulders pulled too tight. Every time someone so much as shifted under a blanket, their cuffs sparked again. I couldn’t hear them scream, but I could see the way their mouths opened wide and stayed that way. Could see the tears standing in the corners of their eyes.
Across the room, I noticed the silver-haired dragon—Veyr, I thought his name was—pull his blanket over his head again. His arms were curled around his legs, stiff with fear, and the trembling in his bones had got worse over the last hour. I didn’t know him well, but being a dragon, I presumed he didn’t scare easily. If he was trying to disappear under a blanket, it wasn’t out of weakness. It was because whatever this initiation was supposed to do—it was working. And from what I could tell, it was breaking most of the people in the room.
I had spent most of the night drawing.
