Page 24 of A Realm of Shattered Lies

Pain.

So much pain.

It’s utter agony, the way my body knits itself back together frantically. Bones spur new growths in order to reform the structure of my ribcage. Skin stretches to knit itself together.

And then there’s the fire, so close overhead that it burns, slowing my healing.

Arms wrap around me, dragging me across the cavern floor and out of Kiran’s way as he spews flame into the swarm of shadows.

“I’ve got you,” whispers Evander. He picks me up, tucking me into his chest like he used to do when I was a child. In the safety of his arms, away from the flames, my muscles and bones seem to knit together more quickly.

She’ll die, the creature screams as it writhes. Your wife will die. I was trying to help, you fool. If you’d let me, I could have saved her.

Ice coats my stomach as the creature’s words ring in my head.

I watch in dread as Kiran extinguishes the only being who seems to understand what I plan to do to his wife.

“Blaise, I’m so sorry,” says Kiran for what must be the seventh time.

“You don’t have to apologize,” I say. “You weren’t you. That creature, whatever she was—she was manipulating your mind.”

Kiran swallows, his molten eyes doused with sorrow.

We’ve moved caves since the incident with the shadow creature, for obvious reasons. Part of me wonders if we should have stayed in the old one. At least we knew we had killed the monster in that one.

“Does anyone have any idea what that creature was?” asks Evander, his copper hair still disheveled from the altercation.

Kiran pinches his brow. “She called herself Marthala.”

I frown. “Marthala? Like one of the three shadow sirens from the legends?”

Kiran nods.

Evander whistles. “Well, that explains why she wanted your heart, Blaise. Guess she didn’t eat a nutritious enough breakfast and needed a snack.”

Kiran gives Evander a strange look, like he’s not quite ready to joke about the creature that almost bent him to murder.

“The legends we’re told in Naenden say the shadow sirens tempt passersby with their darkest desire.” Kiran watches the flames he created for us with an intentness that causes me to wrap my blanket further around me.

“Yeah, they feed off murder or wickedness, or something like that,” says Evander, but then he frowns. “But I don’t think it’s true about the darkest desire part.”

Kiran raises a brow.

“Well,” Evander explains, “I don’t see how it’s a dark desire for you to want Asha to live forever with you. That seems pretty natural. And me…well, I don’t know that it’s so awful for me to wish I had my brother back.”

Kiran examines him. “Perhaps not. But perhaps it targets the desires we would flirt with the darkness to obtain.”

Evander blows out a puff of air, and he doesn’t seem to have anything to counter to that.

“How did you know?” I ask Evander. “How did you know Marthala was trying to trick you?”

Evander becomes focused on a loose button wobbling off the sleeve of his coat. “She just stretched the illusion a bit too far to be believable, that’s all.” He lets out a laugh that doesn’t sound a bit amused, but then he frowns and looks at me. “I wonder why she targeted both of us and not you.”

The muscles in my throat freeze as Marthala’s voice rings in my ear. I could bring him back, you know.

Kiran answers for me. “She seemed like she wanted Blaise’s heart. Something about you being a night stalker. I guess she valued you dead more than any wickedness you could commit.”

“Yeah, that’s probably it,” I lie.

---