Page 26 of Monster Bride (Shadow Pact 2)

Chapter 9

The confidence in Mrak’s expression as he and Karn led me toward the Shadow Sanctum betrayed the worry also twisting his brow. At first, I was happy to have Mrak’s blessing. To have his reassurance thathethought I could do this.

But as Karn made way for us, our path toward this Shadow Sanctum had drawn a large audience. Shadow demons, all refugees from the first of the outposts Sylas had attacked, stared in awe as we passed. Several joined the procession as their curiosity led them to follow us. This had the equal effect of making me want to prove myself that much more, because having this audience and succeeding would help Mrak, and making me much more nervous.

I’d survived hell for a decade in Lazarus’s feeder community. I’d been his personal blood bag day in and day out for ten years. I’d been passed around, forced to learn how to forge nightsteel, and ogled and harassed daily by vampires.

Turning into a shadow demon? That couldn’t possibly be any more difficult. Right?

Before long, the walls of this palace grew older, more ancient, in their brickwork and decor, until the walls had turned to obsidian and all decorations were gone. We climbed a set of spiraling stairs inside a twisting dark tower that rose higher than the rest of the palace. Every step added another lump in my throat and sent my stomach churning.

Mrak must have noticed my discomfort, because he took my hand in his. My fingers were so small and fragile next to his claws. It made me wonder how careful he’d been a few nights ago, when we’d had sex for the first time with both of us physically present. Had he had to hold back?

Not for much longer.

I’d be one of them soon. As much as a mortal human could be.

Finally, our large party stopped outside a set of dark black doors covered in a fine layer of red dust. The Shadow Sanctum.

Karn gestured toward the point of no return for me. “We have not used the Shadow Sanctum in some time. Long ago, shadow demons weren’t the only species to walk Kithonia’s lands. Times were different, as they are now. The process has been all but lost save for a few scholars who studied and remembered.”

“Lucky me.” I glanced at the ancient doors, my mind whirring with thoughts and ideas of what stood beyond them. Images of an altar with some bubbling concoction came to mind. Or simply utter and complete darkness that would enter my soul and leave my human body out to dry like a pair of wet clothes.

But I had seen before that Mrak could take human form before he was fully here as a shadow demon. Maybe after all of this, I could still bethisversion of myself.

If I survived this transformation. That had to come first.

Mrak wrapped an arm around me and bent down to capture my lips in a fierce, possessive kiss seriously inappropriate for the audience of shadow demons we had behind us. Mrak didn’t seem to care, and so I tried not to, even as my cheeks flushed with embarrassment and from the heat of the kiss. From the warmth pooling below my belly at his touch alone. “You can do this, Aisling. I cannot wait to present your victory to everyone here.”

I swallowed hard, but Karn spared me from having to respond but by delivering some shattering news.

“Once the process begins, you cannot stop it,” Karn cautioned. “You either succeed or you don’t. So I’d advise you that no matter what you see inside the Shadow Sanctum, you fight through it until the end. You must shirk wholly what you are and become one of us. You must accept the things that power you. Let go the mortal conscious within you.”

So failing meant death. Mrak had warned me as much. I’d feared it.

I’d cheated death before. Twice now.

I nodded and made way for the double doors. “See you on the other side, then. Better get my crown ready.” I shot Karn a sarcastic look to hide the very real fear creeping through me.

Karn must have pitied me because he even smiled back at me, although the look didn’t reach his eyes.

Worry did that to a person.

I nodded to the audience we’d gathered who had done nothing but murmur between themselves for the last several minutes while we’d stood here. The murmuring stopped as I embraced Mrak for hopefully not the last time before opening the doors. The last face I saw before shutting the Shadow Sanctum doors behind me was Mrak’s.

I wasn’t sure what I expected to find behind these doors, but what greeted me was a not totally encompassing darkness. Far, far above, at the top of the spiraling tower, was a window that shone red sun through the space. But, given the tower’s height, the light did not fully disperse. A red glowing hue permeated the air instead. A light just bright enough to illuminate large leathery wings on dozens of creatures flying about the room. Creatures I saw before their chittering noises reached my ears.

Shadow demon bats. That was the best way to describe them. They fluttered around the Shadow Sanctum, perching on and taking off from a winding staircase attached to the outer walls of the tower. The bottom of the tower, where I stood now, was empty save for the start of that winding staircase.

I swallowed hard again and steeled myself. All staircases went somewhere, which meant the path for this trial, this transformation process, must have been upward.

Poetic, in a way.

A flash of the stairs in Lazarus’s library shot through my mind, so vividly I thought for the briefest of moments that I might’ve still been there—like I’d never left at all. I’d climbed those steps and found the book that’d summoned Mrak.

I blinked and shook the vision. But even as I headed for therealset of winding obsidian stairs, Lazarus’s voice flitted through my mind. Curling around every thought and observation.

“Easy, love,” Lazarus said to me. His words twisted my stomach. “You’ll break it if you’re not careful. We wouldn’t want that, would be?”

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