Page 38 of Shadow Caster
Harmon nodded. “Okay. I’m going to dump my stuff in the new digs then come back to check on Lottie. She didn’t make it to the ceremony. Probably getting into some shit somewhere.” His gaze roved over my face, probing. “If you’re still about when I get back, I’ll walk back with you.”
Harmon Black was offering an escort. I can’t say I wasn’t tempted. I wasn’t worried about Oberon showing up and trying to get a look at the mark on my boob, him I could have handled if Harmon had given me a chance. It was more that stepping into the shadow wing alone didn’t appeal. Also, Thomas and Harmon being nice to me was too much change too quickly. This empathy, this understanding. It was alien, and it made me want to scream.
I grit my teeth. “I’m good. Thanks.”
Harmon’s jaw tensed. “Fine. See you later.”
They strode off, and guilt stabbed at me. Maybe I should have accepted Harmon’s offer. It was too late now, though. Best to just get this exit over with.
Minnie leapt off her bed as I entered. “What the heck happened?”
Harper perched on the edge of the bed, curiosity painted across her neatly made-up face. Even though I knew she cared about Minnie, and yeah, I felt bad about possibly coming in between them, right now, I needed to be alone with my friend.
I kept my attention on Minnie as I spoke. “Harper, can you please give us a minute?”
Harper had the grace not to argue. “Come knock for me later,” she said to Minnie. There was a confidence in her tone that had been absent the last time we’d spoken.
She knew she’d won. She knew that I was being forced out of Minnie’s orbit.
The door closed softly behind her.
“Indie?” Minnie nudged.
I stood hands on hips. “I don’t even know where to start.” It was too much, too quick. Too many revelations. “I have to pack. They’re moving me to the shadow cadet wing.”
“What?” She took a breath to steady herself. “No. Of course. You have the mark.” Her eyes were filled with questions. “How? How can you have the mark?”
“Because I killed my brother in the womb.” The words came out in a rush.
“You what?”
I pressed my lips together and grabbed my suitcase from under the bed. “I absorbed him.” I flung open my wardrobe. “And that’s why my parents hate me. I’m not a son, and I’m the killer of their son.” I piled clothes into the case. “This mark belonged to him.”
Minnie gasped. “His genes … You have his genes.”
“Yep.”
“Do you feel … different? I mean more shadow knighty?”
Shadow knighty? I stopped with my favorite jeggings clutched in my hand.DidI feel different?
Amidst all the commotion and disclosures, I’d blocked out the changes in my body. But now that Minnie mentioned it, there was a new energy thrumming through my veins. No … Not new. It was familiar—the surge I got when I was running, the golden adrenaline rush of a fight. This energy was an old friend, but one who’d been cloaked until now. Now it filled me. It completed me.
“Indie?”
“I feel … stronger. Better.” God that sounded weak. “I can’t explain it.”
“No. Neither could Lloyd.” She smiled softly. Sadly. “You’re one of them now.”
She walked over to my wardrobe and grabbed a pile of clothes. “You have to fold them, or they’ll crease.”
Yeah, I was not a folder.
I hadn’t brought a lot, and it took minutes to pack up, and then we stood facing each other and the enormity of what was happening hit me hard in the solar plexus. This, us, was over. I was being confined to the shadow camp, to a life of servitude to the shadow knights. No option to leave. No option to decline. I might have escaped execution, but I’d been thrust into a life sentence that, more often than not, ended prematurely in a painful death.
And Minnie, my friend, my lifeline here, was being taken from me.
She scanned my face as if reading my thoughts. “No. Na-uh. We’re friends, and just because you have to live in the shadow wing and do shadow shit doesn’t mean we can’t still hang out.”
