Page 121 of Stolen By Shadow Beasts

Calm down. Focus. This is the only plan you have.

“You can do this. You have to do this. For your men.” I repeat the words over and over to myself until I feel calmer.

Then, before I can spiral again, I grab the sheet and take a deep breath. Part of me wants to look down again, but I don’t. I just sit on the window ledge, my heart racing, and turn and start to lower myself down. It’s strange, falling back into nothing. No, not strange,terrifying. It’s terrifying to trust that I won’t just fall and fall until I die, but I do it. I force myself into action.

My hands clench the sheet, and my feet scramble for purchase against the castle wall. Luckily, the big stones allow for a foothold between blocks, and then I feel a little less at the mercy of the sheets.

Which is exactly the moment the world seems to drop around me.

I’m falling. The sheet is falling. And it’s by pure luck that my hands claw at the wall of the stone and catch. Then, I’m just clinging onto the wall, barely holding on. I feel the sheets and blankets strike my back as they fall all the way down, and I look to see them hit the moat and disappear into the dark waters.

This was a mistake. A terrible fucking mistake.

I’m sweaty, breathing hard, feeling terrified out of my mind. But the terror slowly clears enough for me to think, to realize that I can’t stay like this forever. Already I’m tiring. I look down again and realize the window below me is far too far down from where I am. The crevices between the stones aren’t trustworthy enough to work as a safe ladder. Above me, I just have to make it a short distance… a distance I’m not even sure I can manage, so there’s no way in hell I can make it down.

It’s a terrible feeling. That I might die right here, leaving my men to a terrible fate. That I made the wrong choice and it’s going to end this way.

But even though I feel tears sliding down my cheeks, I slowly release one hand and reach up, running my fingers along the next crevice until I find a place that I think I can hold onto. I do that with my feet and with my other hand, lifting myself up higher and higher. Not able to focus on anything but that next secure spot.

When I reach the window, I barely notice until I’ve pushed myself up into that room and rolled myself onto the floor. There, I lie for the longest time, tears sliding down my face. My body is so tense and painful from being so scared, from climbing like that on the side of a building, that I feel like I just had another big battle.

What the fuck am I doing?

If I’d been faster earlier, I could’ve escaped out the door before Phantom had even had time to realize what had happened. But I’d been a fool. Too consumed with what I wanted to accept what was clearly right in front of my face.

I should’ve known when I woke up with Phantom that something was wrong. I should’ve remembered how I came to be here from the woods. If I didn’t know things weren’t right then, certainly I should’ve known when he used his body like a battering ram into mine.

He isn’t the man who’d been taken from us. He looks like him, sounds like him, even felt like him when I laid in his arms, but this version of Phantom is lacking the kindness, the care, the civility of the one I know.

And because I wanted him to be that man, I’m locked in a tower, useless to everyone I love.

It’s a mistake I can’t repeat.

If he enters my room again, I need to treat him like an enemy. I need to use whatever I can to escape, even if it means hurting him. Because if I hurt him to escape, he’ll survive, and I can help the others come up with a way to free him. But, trapped here, I’m useless to everyone.

Damn it.I curl my hands into fists.How can I possibly see Phantom as the enemy?

A small voice whispers in my mind,You don’t have any other choice.

TEN

Dusk

Today is a fucking nightmare.Without Ann, there’s just no goodness. It’s like without our mate, we’re already dead, and I hate the feeling. I hate it because it’spathetic. All I can do is stare at the fire and the soup cooking, gritting my teeth against the pain and wishing I had the ability to tear the world apart and find my mate.

But I can’t.

The night before, we’d thought the battle was over. We’d thought we’d taken down all of our enemies. Ann’s light disappeared, and then we were attacked by four grave trolls and dozens of rot monkeys. It was a lot given how worn down we were, and we didn’t do our best. In fact, Onyx and I barely survived.

Only to discover from Rayne that Ann was gone, leaving behind nothing except the pouch of moon shards she held onto for us and her dagger. Still, we searched the area, hoping she got into trouble and hid. Or that whoever took her hadn’t made it into the Void yet.

Even though the thread of hope we were clinging to was foolish.

We’d searched through the night and into the morning, when we should’ve been asleep and hiding from the roaming rot monkeys, but it was of no use. There was only one place she could be now. And it was the most dangerous place for us. A place completely controlled by our father and Phantom. A place teeming with dangerous creatures and with very little cover to conceal us should we try to infiltrate it.

But that’s where she is.

So that’s where we need to go.

---