Page 49 of Safe in Shadow
Nyx rolled over onto his back, a look of defeat and exhaustion on his face. “I stayed to guard him—and to exact revenge upon her.”
Grace found his hand and laced her fingers through his. The idea of death was scary, but the idea of murder was so much worse. It was not just the loss of life; it was that someonetookit from you. The loss of control, the helplessness... And in Nyx’s case, he had to linger, facing a slow death by inches, a little sicker with each dose until...
“Well. James was all right. He lived a long, happy life,” Grace tried to offer a little crumb of relief.
“I saw him for a while. I tried to warn him, to tell him what Cynthia was truly like. But he could never hear me, and after Cynthia died, his visits were always so short. This place was a tomb to him. He lost me here. He lost his wife—there.” Nyx’s lips suddenly parted in a snarl, and some spark came back tohis heavy eyes as he pointed to the woods. “When I see her face or hear her name, I’m riddled with loathing. You don’t know what it’s like to suddenly become something not of this world, to understand everything differently than mortals do. When I felt my soul pulling away from my body, I fought as hard as I could, eventually ending up somewhere—in between. There are places where the Netherworld opens to take a soul—and sometimes that soul will not go through.”
His face closed over, and Grace knew there was something he was leaving out, but she didn’t care. She was still wondering what more there was to understand.
Nyx continued, his voice growing stronger and faster, but even more miserable. “She let me lie with her, even though I would have waited, as a man was supposed to do. She made me feel that our love and passion were too great to follow the usual rules—and she could have claimed to be pregnant at any time had I threatened to break things off. She knew how desperately I wanted a family of my own, how sorely I missed my parents and James, and all my friends in the city. I would have been loyal regardless, but she had me tethered to her just so—and for money! Money, which comes and goes in an instant! Not for love.”
“Nyx. Please... You’re torturing yourself.”
“No!Shetortured me! A few times a week, I would fall ill, and then it became every day, and then it was constant. The doctors suggested every course of action known, most of which weakened me further. But Cynthia knew enough not to do something simple like put a bit of string across the stairs, or bash me on the head. No, that would have shown up as a murder, and it would have been irreversible. With poison, she kept me on the brink, keeping me alive until James had been home for a week and she’d begun to sow the seeds that would evoke James’ protectiveness and pity!” Nyx slammed his fist on the floor. “Shewas evil despite her beauty. Every action was the pull of a string, a puppetmaster waiting to be paid after a grand performance.”
Grace wasn’t great at silence, but she didn’t know if Nyx needed a friendly word or someone to rage on his behalf. She kept her hand on his arm, stroking slowly.
His voice changed. Came out slow and bruising, as if every syllable was meant to cut. “My brother was a good man. I wouldn’t say he was always a clever one. He could be easily led, and she led him quickly, especially in his grief and loneliness. For months, I had to watch in silence—stuck in shadow, confined to the spot where I had passed—until I saw her from the windows—planting something in the garden, shouting at the cook that she was to keep away from that plot of land. Bound in the room that’s now yours, that was first mine, I could only watch and listen. I could hear their first seeds of discord, of James truly becoming a man, a leader. Cynthia thought there was ready money to play with, James informed her the money was all tied up in investments and the land—and there were things we needed if we were to— Ifhewas to make a go of it as a ‘gentleman farmer.’”
“Oh, no...”
“Oh, yes.” Nyx sat up suddenly, his exhaustion gone, the pain radiating from him in dark, spectral waves. Grace was caught in them, and she felt the sickening rage coursing through her as if it were her own brother under threat.
“It was then that I learned to tear myself from a single form and become many. I learned to move as a shadow, and oh, how useful shadows can be! Shadows that mimicked her perfectly, then moved, dancing along the wall while she blinked and tried to run from them. Smudges of black that followed her. Whispers that only she could hear. Believe me, I tried shouting for James until I was hoarse, and he could not hear a word. Butshebegan to. Begged James to leave the house. Sell up. Move abroad.When he did not—it became a game of cat and mouse. Cynthia hastened her plans to widowhood, and I foiled every attempt she made. I learned to slam kitchen doors in the faces of the servants as they carried soup that she had poisoned. I churned the earth where her poisoned patch grew. But,” Nyx let out a sad chuckle, “she told me that would not stop her. That they would soon leave for a little trip to visit my mother’s people, or perhaps just to the seaside. How would I protect him then? She believed I was bound just to the house and our lands—and she was right. If Cynthia intended to kill my brother, all she would have had to do was to take him just past the boundary of our land.”
“Bitch.” Grace felt as though she herself were going mad. How could anyone watch, imprisoned, forced to sit by and know their little brother’s life was dangling by a thread? How could anyone stay sane, knowing an innocent was being taken in by a killer and about to be slaughtered?
“Bitch, indeed. When my brother bought her a sweet-tempered mare, in addition to the plow horses he purchased for farming, she would ride along the bridle path we’d cleared through the woods. I could not go past the woods on the far edge of our land, because the neighbor’s land began just there. But I couldenterthe woods. For years, I have only had dim fragments of Cynthia’s face. But now... I can recall her screams as I chased her on the bridle path, forcing her horse faster and faster, forcing the mare to swerve, to jump the logs that had rotted just beside the path. I herded Cynthia. Manipulated her, just as she had manipulated James and me. For the first time in over a century, I can hear her desperate pleas for me to just ‘leave her in peace.’ As if I had ever been given the chance to rest in peace, murdered by the woman I loved! Knowing she would do the same to my brother if I did not stop her!” Nyx ended with a hoarse shout, and the dying notes rang out and echoed in the empty house.
Thunder pounded outside.
“You had to stop her,” Grace whispered. “There was no other way you could get help. You had to save James, Nyx.”
Nyx looked at her. “Did I? Did I have to chase her to the edge of the ravine, then appear before the horse, looming as large as I could make myself? Did I have to watch her fly through the air and hit the rocks and branches below? I remember... She was wearing a red cloak with a large satin hood. Her face went white and still, and the hood was soaked through. It spread all down the side of her face, the only color left on it. When she did not return, James and the servants searched for her. Found her lying in a cold, bloody heap.”
Grace licked her lips and stood as Nyx began to pace the edge of the room. Before, she had seen him as mere outlines, then in a black and gray form that was part mist and part solid. Now, he prowled in agitation as the black tendrils of shadows shimmered and shivered their way onto his body in the form of tight-fitting black breeches, cut off below the knee, and a loose black shirt that hung open. “When I go into the woods—something feels off. Nyx? Nyx, is she still out there? Haunting the woods?”
He rounded on her, eyes practically aflame. “Oh, no. No, she is the reason I dare not leave this plane. I saw what happened to her soul, Grace. The bleeding slowed. Her moans fell silent. Her breast ceased to rise and fall with breath—and then she emerged, airy and white, and just as beautiful as the first day I laid eyes upon her.”
“Dude. No way she got into Heaven after murdering you and plotting to murder your brother, too!”
“No, I don’t believe she did. So pristine in white—and I, so steeped in black. Had I been wrong to keep her from killing again? I did not know what to think until the flames appeared all around the ground under her feet, and she vanished in the flames. Condemned to the Pit, while I wait here, trapped inbetween. I dare not try to find my way to Heaven with her blood on my hands, and Hell has no comforts. I’m not foolish enough to believe that it’s better than this prison. It doesn’t have you, either.”
“Nyx, you were already dead at that point. You already chose to stay, didn’t you?”
He didn’t answer, just stared out the window at the storm. “No one else knew what she had done—what she would do next. James was too soaked in grief, and too rash in love.”
Grace’s voice was soft. “If you have to kill a murderer to stop them from murdering again, that’s not even murder. It’s... Self-defense. Defense of someone else.”
Nyx’s head moved slowly, and rivulets of black trickled toward her, friendly smoke that stroked her ankle as he asked, “You do not think I’m evil?”
“No.”
“You think... You think I was right to take a life?”
“Honey, if someone threatened Casey, my brother, who can be pretty moronic sometimes, they would be a grease stain. No one messes with my family.”
The friendly smoke rushed to her, and this time it dragged her, like a wave going out, leading her to Nyx’s arms.
