Page 117 of Shadows so Cruel

My void gaped open.

A dark torrent rushed into my core. My breath caught as the pressure in my chest grew to an unbearable ache, the shadows like a living beast inside me that paced my ribcage.

Scratching. Scraping.

Something sharp nipped at my finger, making me hiss and yank my hand from the jailor’s grip. “No!”

A surge of shadows burst forth from my palm, an eruption of dark energy fueled by the anguish, the wrath, the heartbreak. The force of it sent the jailor flying backward, his knife clattering uselessly to the floor.

He hit the wall and slid down, but there was no pain in his eyes, only widening horror as fingerlings of shadows slithered over his body. His scream was nothing short of blood-curdling as the tendrils wound tighter around him. His skin turned ashen, then gray, then black, desiccating and tightening over his bones like a mummified corpse.

How easy it was.

Killing.

The sight tingled at my insides—creeping, crawling—shadows convoluting my chest with the same force they blurred my mind. Pitch-black darkness settled onto my thoughts.

I will fucking kill them. I will kill them all!

I stepped out of the cage and rolled my shoulders, following the narrow pathway toward the clanking of armor and bellow of shouts. They must have heard the commotion.

When those first guards appeared ahead of me, I smiled. Marla once told me that only I could know who I truly was. I was Galantia, the only living thief, the strongest recorded deathweaver. I could bring light.

But right now… I very much wanted to bring darkness.

I lifted my palm at them.

ChapterForty-Six

Malyr

Present Day, a forest

Istood on the slope at the edge of the forest, my gaze locked on the keep embedded into the mountain like that tumor it was.Where are you, anoaley? I need a sign from you. Now.

Sebian shifted beside me, his arms folded in front of his chest, one boot nervously tapping at the squelching ground. “What if she can’t steal your gift? What if she stole it, but she can’t wield it?”

My fingers tightened around the pommel of my sword, my pupils going from the keep, to the setting sun, and back to the keep, searching for the faintest swathe of shadows. Something all the harder to spot once night settled. Time was slipping through my fingers like water, every thud of my heart a drumbeat of growing unease.

She could, I was certain.

But what if she was not?

Asker braved another step forward, up from the low-lying forest we’d retreated to. “We could send pathfinders to scout the area of the keep. Maybe they will see something?”

Behind me, at the bottom of the slope, tents of shadowcloth billowed softly between trees, shrouding the wounded who groaned with the occasional grind of a bone saw. The stench of cauterized wounds clung to the air, mingling with the scent of blood, sweat, and ash from the healers. Earlier, we’d launched a diversion so myanoacould slip into the dungeon undetected before hiding ourselves away in this forest.

It had cost us.

“None of those pathfinders will make it back while the sun is still up, not until they call their troops to the keep.” I tightened the straps on myaerymelgauntlets, my thoughts clear, my body lithe. How strange to be without them, my shadows, my curse. “Maybe she needs more time.”

Or maybe myanoawas dead, lying somewhere in the gutters for some child to poke with a stick. My options had been limited to begin with, but what if I’d chosen the wrong one? No, they would do anything to keep Galantia alive. Fuck, the only thing that had kept me from flying in there and bury Ammarett in a grave of shadows alongside me was the fact that, as long as I stayed out, she would remain alive. But what good was staying alive if one’s soul rotted away on the inside?

I couldn’t let that happen to her.

I would not!

Sebian’s hand slammed into my leather cuirass, jarring me from my spiraling thoughts. “There!”

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