Page 138 of The Shadows Beyond
“Like you need me like air. Like you’ll never let me go. Like I’m everything.”
“You are,mon amour, you are.”
Cinn blinked at him, wide-eyed and fawn-like, a tiny smile blossoming on his lips. Julien ran his thumb over it. He swallowed before pressing a kiss to Cinn’s forehead. “Let’s get out of here.”Let’s get out of here so I can make you smile like that every day.
“I can’t just choose to leave. I’ve never been able to.”
“That umbraphage seemed to think you were Mr. Almighty Powerful.”
At that moment, a tiny humming noise popped into existence. A shadowmote landed on Cinn’s nose.
“It’s you!” Cinn declared, going cross-eyed.
“There’s no way in hell you recognise one specific mote, Cinn.”
Cinn slid off the rock, landing with a soft thud. He held his palm upright, and soon there was a writhing ball of shadowmotes floating above it. With his other hand, he reached out and tugged Julien towards him. A soft blow of air later, Cinn had scattered his shadowmotes, who quickly multiplied and started circling them, enclosing them in the eye of a tornado.
“Are you… channelling them?”
Cinn shrugged. “They kinda do their own thing. I’m cool with it.”
As the shadowmotes picked up their pace, Julien reached for his own motes, if only to feel their power one more time. Instantly at his fingertips ready to be commanded, their bright white light illuminated the cavern.
“Woah!” Cinn almost stumbled back in shock, but Julien steadied him. “That’s new.”
With a flick of his wrist, Julien sent the motes spinning into Cinn’s shadow vortex. Merging together, the dark and light motes danced between each other, humming. Cinn slid his arm around Julien’s waist, and Julien tugged him closer and closer, pressing Cinn’s warm body against his until his head rested on his shoulder. The volume of the noise surged to a near deafening cacophony as the motes formed an increasingly tight whirlwind.
They clutched each other like they never wanted to let go. Like they were holding a piece of themselves. Flickering flames in a hearth, merging as one. Two puzzle pieces, slotting seamlessly together. Two wings of a bird. Two hands, bound in prayer. Two halves of a whole.
One shadow, and one light.
thirty-eight
Cinn
Bright lights.So bright.
Cinn brought one aching arm up, draping it across his eyes. Sadly, he was defenceless against the irritating loud beeping of the machinery that promised he was alive.
His first act was to tear out the numerous wires and tubes that were burrowed into him while Elliot tried to restrain his arms and Darcy shouted for a doctor. Julien, lying bare chested on the bed next to him, had simply stared at him, frozen still aside from his slow blinks.
As soon as Cinn was functional, the multiple rounds of him demanding his discharge began—from Cinn only, as Julien, Elliot and Darcy traitorously seemed to want to keep him there for as long as possible—and he was signed off to be discharged after one more night of observation. His sudden, rapid recovery astounded the doctors, and Noir, who’d dropped in to see him later that day.
And so, Cinn was released into the cool, quiet evening, the hospital doors a more than welcome sight.
After a single step, he stumbled to a halt, frozen stone still, processing what he could see.
Almost every inch of tarmac, pavement, and brick wall was plastered in a layer of…trash? No, the paper turning Auri into a red sea, was too uniform. Cinn bent his aching body down to snatch one from the ground.
The Arcane Purifiers’s mark, printed in a stark crimson, took up most of the space. The colour choice accentuated the impression of violence that the sharp slashing lines through the central circle alluded to. Underneath the symbol, a lone sentence in a harsh scrawl:Ignorance will lead to certain peril.
Someone scoffed. Cinn dragged his eyes away from the ominous warning to find Elliot scowling.
“If the gendarmerie get ordered to clean up this mess, I’m rioting.”
Darcy slowly turned her head, slack-jawed. “There must be thousands.”
Julien kicked the ground with his boot, uplifting several pieces of paper, sending them flying off in the breeze. “All they’ve achieved is to piss everyone off even more. Pathetic.”
