Page 98 of Shadebound
I said I don’t want to talk about it,he cut me off, harder now. His eyes didn’t meet mine again. He brushed past like I was furniture, climbed into his bed, and turned his back.
I stood there, fists curling so tightly my nails bit into my palms. The air in the dorm seemed to congeal. My shadows pressed in at the edges of my vision, sensing the sour, pounding thrum of my anger.
And then I heard them.
Korrax. Beelzebub. Silk. All of them. All my creatures.
They crowded into my head in a suffocating press, their voices crawling under my skin like cold insects—whispering, snarling, urging me to unleash them. To hunt. To tear into whatever had dared to touch him. The hunger in them was palpable, almost sweet in its promise of violence. I could feel the phantom weight of their claws at my shoulders, the breath of them hot against my neck, the near-ecstatic edge of release just waiting for me to give the word.
Warm fingers closed around mine as Death whispered in my mind,Welcome back.
“You don’t have to wait until Sunday to hang out,” Zayden spoke to me before I could internally respond. “Come have asleepover with me. I need a cuddle and a reason not to cut Fiore’s face off when he comes in.”
The shadows hushed, retreating under the pull of his hand, though I knew it wasn’t just touch—it was distraction, pulling my focus from them long enough that they slid away like smoke. I was too weak to figure out how to call them back, even with the cuff.
I let him draw me to his bed anyway. We sank down together, his arm heavy across me, his shirtless warmth pressed to my skin. His breath steady against the back of my neck, sending goosebumps down my spine. It didn’t erase the gnaw of hunger or the raw sting of sleeplessness. But it kept me tethered, kept me from slipping into the kind of rage that left bodies in my wake.
I lay still. Listening. Thinking.
Feeling. And not the sadness. Decay or despair. Not the buzz of nonsense that had been filling me without permission since entering this cursed place.
But the feelings that I enjoyed. That kept me going.
The feelings that made me whisper to the voice in the back of my mind,I’m done with being powerless. I don’t enjoy it. I need you to tell me how to get my creatures back.
The door groaned open, spilling a thin blade of dim light into the cell. Or dorm room as it was sometimes called. It carried with it a chorus of laughter that wasn’t joy at all—it was thick, fetid, rotting with malice. Heavy boots dragged and scraped against the rough stone floor.
The dragons.
Tyler’s voice sliced through the dark, continuing his prior conversation. “And those little silent screams were fucking hilarious.”
My eyes snapped open in a sharp, jarring instant, breath catching in my throat as every muscle locked hard enough toache. It was like my body had been wrenched from the depths of stillness into a frozen readiness, sinew pulled taut, heart pounding in my ears, skin prickling beneath the weight of their presence.
I sat up as Death replied to me.
You do not need your creatures to act. You know how to be violent. But I will do what I can to help.
I went to say thanks, but he carried on.
You creatures react to darkness more than anything. So be dark, Jinx. Show that dragon why you are not powerless, without your powers.
Alessandro shrugged off his jacket with a sluggish roll of his shoulders, the fabric whispering against itself before it fell from his arms. His hands looked wrecked—knuckles split wide, the skin around them swollen and discoloured, blood caked in thick, blackened crusts that clung stubbornly to each jagged tear.
“Did you touch my brother?” The words came cold, honed to a lethal point. Sharp enough to make Zayden almost flinch beside me.
“Fuck off, Draconis.” Fiore didn’t even glance at me, just flung himself onto his mattress. “Too tired for your shit. Don’t make me have to get up to cut out your tongue.”
My body stayed rigid, every muscle taut, my breathing slow and controlled even as rage pressed hard in my chest. The silence stretched, each second heavier than the last. I let it build until the air was too thick to swallow, forcing them to feel it, to choke on it. They needed to believe I’d let it slide, that I was nothing more than a statue in the dark, even as every thought in my head was bent on payback.
What was I doing, feeling sorry for myself? For giving up on trying when things had only just begun?
I could survive darkness. Pain. Suffering.
I could survive anything this place threw at me. I just needed to remember who the fuck I was, and what kind of things I did to those who tested me.
I needed to remember that I was the monster that ruled the darkness. I did not fall prey to its masochism or witchy tricks.
When the dragons breathing evened into the slow rhythm of sleep, I eased myself from Zayden’s arms.
