Page 46 of Shadows so Cruel

Heat stained my cheeks and my heart pounded an inconvenient rhythm against my ribs. Wasn’t it already bad enough that this void kept bothering me? Now he had to notice how his presence alone flared it up?

I flicked a loose strand of hair over my shoulder with as much aloofness as I could muster, then stared him dead in the eyes. “Rejecting shadows.”

And you… Words I didn’t say, but I made certain he saw it, there in the slight lift of my chin. His stare didn’t even waver, my proud declaration landing with seemingly no impact at all.

“Ah…” His posture remained regal, elegantly so, which, somehow, only caused that twinge in my chest to wring taut a couple more turns. “Your void is still starved, given how it pulls on my shadows.” His attention shifted from me, to the small salt crystals that littered the ground, and finally to Sebian. “She has to be sucking you dry.”

My stomach sank. Was I?

Sebian shifted beside me, and his jaws right along with him. “We’re managing.”

“If barely,” Malyr mocked. “You didn’t hear me walk up on you just now, did you? I haven’t seen you shoot a single arrow in days, either. I wonder why.”

I looked at Sebian. “What does he mean?”

Exhaling deeply, Sebian crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Whatexactlyis it you’re trying to say, Malyr? She’s improving, isn’t she?”

“She might improve faster if she practiced with me.”

“Well, you weren’t exactly around, were you?” Sebian pointed out. “You’ve been busy doing… I don’t know, princely stuff.”

“If you are referring to how I made certain that the fallen Ravens received a proper funeral on individual pyres,” Malyr said, “two hundred and sixty-seven of them,and started organizing adrifso we may celebrate our victory here, then yes…” His ears twitched as if it took his facial muscles great effort to pull the corners of his mouth into something that barely resembled a smile. “I have been doingprincelystuff, but I have time on my hands now because the remaining ships will take us exactly nowhere until spring.”

“So… no rush, then,” Sebian said.

“As long as her void is starved,” Malyr said, his eyes briefly setting on the bracelet on my wrist, “it will be hard for her to focus on mastering it. Other things will go neglected, such as her unkindness.”

“I’m trying to shift,” I said.

“Yes, yes, I spotted you two holding hands quite a lot, though none of it causing a single one,” Malyr said, sending another flare of heat into my cheeks that made my jaws clench. “You are aware that there are only so many tall buildings between here and Ammarett to shove you off, I take it? Besides, an uncontrolled void is useless at best, and a liability at worst.”

“Useless?” That heat in my cheeks spread to my lips, making them purse around a huff of annoyance. “Icancontrol my void!”

Malyr’s brow lifted at my shout, as did his arm. “So you say, yet you have shown me nothing.” The prince once more gave me a come-hither motion with two fingers. “Come and prove it.”

His shadows expanded sideways, slowly creeping to his left and right in writhing tendrils. They morphed and thickened, gradually forming towering walls of black around him, undulating with a life of their own, leaving merely a gap—an eerie pathway—leading straight to him.

“She’s been at this since daybreak,” Sebian said beside me, as if he, too, doubted my progress. “It’s probably better if she gets some rest now.”

Yes, yes, it would be.

I walked up to Malyr anyway, my feet propelled forward by pride, or maybe it was stupidity. The two weren’t always easy to tell apart, but I refused to let Malyr’s challenge go unanswered. Might I lose? Sure. But if I refused, then I’d already lost.

I stepped into his shadows.

A cage of pure blackness weaved shut around me, isolating us within its confines, the only source of light trickling down from a small opening overhead, barely enough to cut through the all-consuming darkness.

“What are you doing?” I looked around, disoriented, and with my pulse racing, the outside world abruptly muffled as if we stood submerged under a deep, dark ocean. “Let me out.”

Malyr grabbed me by the neck and yanked me against him, the impact letting all air whoosh from my lungs, his voice a menacing growl against my ear. “Why don’t you just sit on his cock out here in the open so the entire court may snicker behind my back!?”

I flinched at the violence in his voice, those shadows that dripped over his eyes. His grip was iron around my neck, his body hard and unyielding as he held me close. I could feel the thunderous rhythm of his heartbeat, his labored breaths burning my temple, the tremble of his hand against my spine. Whatever he’d been hiding under the shadows, the noble decorum, and the fine consonance of words now poured out of him as pure malice and rage.

“Like they snickered behind mine when you shoved me to my knees during the feast?” I barked back, for he had no claim on me. “Announce another one for the sake of a better audience, Malyr, and I might just consider your suggestion.”

Not even the shadows could hide how his eyes flicked across my face as though determining if I would truly go through with that threat. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” I confessed with no small regret over the fact that my heart would never allow such vengefulness. “Because I’m not cruel like you.”

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