Page 21 of Shadebound
Death’s fated will break and
The silent will crack.
Mortavia will burn with shadow flame,
Until two bound by shade mourn the silver beast.
Then the blood of daughters cruelly slain,
Shall bring forth the dusk’s dark rise.
Eventually, when I was sure I wouldn’t forget something important, I took a slow step back. Then another. Back into the curve of the corridor, into the dark where the candlelight couldn’t follow. The cold closed in around me again. The stone walls swallowed any trace of sound, even my racing heart.
The words clung to me as I hurried. Prophecies were not something I had an experience with, but I wasn’t foolish enough to think they held no merit. Especially if Hightower thought that there were already signs in motion. Like there was some grand mechanism ticking beneath the surface of this place, and she—Jinx—had just tripped the lever. And they were content to wait.
They had time. Thousands of years, what with how long most magical folk lived. There was no rush for them to fix Mortavia, or to corrupt my dark delight until she was a broken husk of nothingness. Or evil.
But I didn’t. Time was not my friend, and I had no patience when it came to Jinx’s safety. So it was with a renewed purposethat I slid her necklace into the pocket of my denim jacket, and silently hurried along the crypt.
Toher. To warn her. Save her.
To help her if she had no choice but to fall prey to the shadebound curse. And if she didn’t want saving, well... I’d save her anyway.
That was my job, after all.
Field Journal, Entry #052 — Classified
Shadebounds don’t have lives. Not really. We have fragments. Shattered images. Names spoken like incantations, then forgotten in the dark. I used to think I could outrun the past—that if I buried it deep enough, it would die like everything else. But it doesn’t. It waits. It changes its shape. Sometimes it knocks on your door wearing a familiar face. Sometimes it whispers through someone else’s grief. And sometimes, when you least expect it, it walks in and says your name like it still means something.
Chapter Eight, Two Strangers And A Memory
As we headed back up in the lift, the cuffs dug into my flesh. Each steel prong embedded like a miniature stake. The magic in them hadn’t fully settled since the fight. My skin had begun to adapt around the cuff, the searing pain receding to a steady buzz. I figured within minutes the burn would fade entirely unless I tugged at the prongs again. Still, I hated the numbness in my veins. Hated how I was more human than I ever had been. And that the bastard thing had left me adrift without my creatures at full capacity.
I really was going to kill Hightower one day. Softly, gently—just to hear her pretty screams ring through these stone halls like a twisted lullaby.
I’d show the bitch what it was like to losehermagic.
“Alpha!” A chirpy voice pulled me out of my murder thoughts and into the start of a headache. “Are you coming to celebrate our victory in my dorm? Tyler managed to steal a bottle of rum from one of the younger students.”
I looked up, finding the dark-haired girl from before. She was taller than me by a few inches and looked lethally graceful with her posture. Not wanting to be a stereotypical bitch just because she was pretty and clearly familiar with Zayden, I offered my best version of a friendly wave.
She did not respond. Perhaps it was because she was too busy staringatZayden.
“Jinx,” he smiled at me instead of responding to her, “This is Saphira. She’s an unofficial member of the pack. She’s a panther shifter, but she’s not so bad.”
“Hello.” I deadpanned. Forgoing the pointless formalities that people normally wanted, to the girl who could turn into a panther at will.
She looked me up and down, golden eyes narrowing. Her sharp stare lingered on my curves, and the places of my body that were soft where she was toned and slender. My throat got tighter at the way she smirked when she finished sizing me up.
A broad smile lit up her face a second later, but all I could hear was my sister’s warning in my head when she talked about the girls at our old school who’d pretended not to be rotten on the inside.
“Hi. Your shirt is so... interesting. I wish I had the confidence to wear something like that.” Saphira forced the barbed words out before she placed her hand on Zayden’s arm, black pointy nails slightly digging in. “So the party—are youcoming? I really hope you do. I alwaysloveit when you come to my parties. We have thebestfun.”
He shook his head, shrugging out of her touch as the lift arrived, and he waved me and Draven into it before stepping in himself.
“I’m busy. But I’m sure we can come to the next one.” Her smile dropped as Zayden replied. “Have a nice night though!”
The doors shut in her face as my brother turned to me, signing a very inappropriate word about the shifter girl that I pretended not to want to laugh at.
