Page 33 of Above (Darkness Reigns #1)

Nova

“Celeste told me today after the hangings that if she could, she’d slit the throat of every core man, woman, and child. I’ve never heard her sound so angry. So murderous. I hope the stars weren’t listening.”

S haring a bed with someone other than Celeste was awful. Talon, suave as he was when awake, snored like a beast. Even worse, the gigantic man moved. Tomorrow I would need to find a way to get my old bed into his room. There was more than enough space.

Tonight, though, I was utterly fucked.

Better than dying, I guessed.

When he turned and pressed his face near my ear, mouth open and heavy arm falling onto my waist, I lost it.

Growling, I shuffled out of his grasp and did my best to roll away from him, my elbow slipping and causing me to plummet to the ground.

A rattling thud sounded as my shoulder slammed into the wooden floor.

Biting my lip, I forced myself to be still, not wanting to wake the overbearing core boy.

Moments came and went, a clock ticking somewhere to signal each passing second, but Talon didn’t wake.

In fact, I could have sworn his snores grew impossibly louder.

Heaving a breath, I ordered my shadows to take me to my lab, eager to achieve something productive if sleep was out of the question. Within seconds I was outside of my home, the chilly air causing bumps to rise on my skin where it was exposed from my short sleeved shirt and bare feet.

Hoping to preserve my toes, I made my way to the door, willing the latch to unlock and then shoving it open. What a blessing that shaytan and eadi were separated by borders, seeing as the former were forced to rely on fallible locks.

Doing my best to be quiet, I darted through the kitchen and to my lab, snatching Death up on my way.

She was growing bigger, but I had a feeling she would always be rather small and unassuming.

Maybe I could teach her to eat core family flesh and then sic her on them so she could live up to her name.

Just as I was about to summon the door to my lab, the wooden floorboard that creaked outside of mine and Celeste’s room alerted me to someone’s presence.

It was all I could do to dart back through the kitchen and into the shadows of the entryway.

Hoping that my mind wasn’t too loud to affect my magic, I willed my body to blend into the shadows.

Moments later, Celeste turned around the corner, snatching her favorite creme cloak I had gotten her for her last birthday off her hook and slipping on her only pair of boots.

Not necessarily proper clothing for the chill.

So she wouldn’t be venturing far then. And by the look of her flitting gaze and worried lip, she didn’t want to be seen.

Quietly, almost silently, Celeste closed the front door, my chance of following her growing slimmer by the second.

“Dammit, Heavens,” I hissed, scaring Death.

“What? I was practically speaking your language.” As always, the kitten looked unamused.

Huffing, I gently set her on the ground and snagged my old hooded cloak off my hook.

Mama’s shoes were too small, so I was forced to slide into Dad’s unused pair of leather ones.

They were too large, but at least my feet fit into them. “Stay here, Death.”

Her half-lidded gaze seemed to say as if I would go anywhere else.

With no time to think up a better plan, I quickly darted out the door, my eyes just catching Celeste’s burst of chocolate curls rounding the corner of a nearby house. Huffing an aggravated breath, I began stalking her, weaving between homes rather than taking the dedicated paths.

Not long and we were at the shops, the cold seeping into my bones. My cloak was thinner than hers, but only marginally. I could use a heating charm, but I felt guilty at the thought of being warm when she wasn’t.

Magic always seemed to come with guilt.

My feet were aching much sooner than I thought they would as I continued to trail her, watching as she seemed to second guess every turn.

She didn’t know exactly where she was headed then.

Or, perhaps, hadn’t taken this odd path before.

Meeting someone, obviously, but in a place she wasn’t familiar with.

Maybe a person she didn’t know well then?

At last, about thirty feet ahead of me, Celeste stilled, her head leaning back to read the sign above the entryway of a modest sweets shop.

Interesting. Celeste loved taffy, but we rarely splurged on it.

Plus, everything was already closed for the night.

Officials could be seen paroling the area, but they were tired and lazy, uninterested in hunting the shadows. Imbeciles.

In the time it took me to scan the area, Celeste had walked up to the door, rapping on it four times in an odd pattern. While no light shone through the windows of the shop, the door still opened, a cloaked figure motioning her inside.

“What in the stars is she doing?” I whispered, though no one was there to hear me. I continued cursing her as I made my way to the sweets shop, hoping that I could get an idea of what was inside before attempting to shadow walk in.

Through the dark window, I could see that no one appeared to be inside, which meant there must have been a lower floor.

Maybe some sort of secret entrance? Stars, I wished I would’ve been faster.

But I wasn’t, which meant going in and figuring it out as I went.

Just as I was about to summon my shadows, a loud shout came from behind me.

“Hey, you! What are you doing out here after curfew?” It was a guttural voice, a slight slur to the words that made me think perhaps this official had been drinking on the job.

Turning, I watched as he ran toward me, his face a pinched mix of rage and excitement.

No one good ever wanted to be an official.

It was a position for the power hungry that were too lazy to earn such a thing.

The ones who wished not to make Dajahim better, but to somehow make their own lives worth something—to prove that being a shaytan would always mean more than being an eadi.

Easily, I could simply show him I was a shaytan and send him on his way. There were no curfews for magic-wielders. But I found that I was willing to lose some time.

“Hello, officer,” I hummed, tugging my hood off.

I was no incomparable enchantress that would send men and women to their graves, but I was beautiful, and he seemed more than desperate for anything.

Every assumption I had made about the man proved true as he pulled off his own hood, revealing eager blue eyes and a twisted thin mouth.

His skin was sallow, his hair stringy, as if he had been drinking and sweating to the point of irreversible filth.

He smelled like the bottom of a wine barrel that someone had taken a piss in.

“Well, aren’t you a pretty thing?” he crooned, reveling in his victory.

It wasn’t uncommon for eadi to offer sexual favors in exchange for their freedom.

Many who didn’t were submitted to beatings and imprisonment, or hangings if the crime was great enough.

Even punishments such as those were for the stars’ entertainment.

If we dared bore them, they just might do even worse.

“Yes, I am,” I offered back, grabbing the hem of my night shirt and pulling it down to reveal the swell of my breasts, catching the beast’s attention.

“You’re in luck, I happen to have a cock in need of a good sucking from a pretty little eadi whore like you.

” His hand grabbed my cheeks, thumb and pointer finger digging in until my lips puckered.

His drooling mouth neared mine, and I took the opportunity to unclip the bottle of stars knew what at his waist and smash it against his head.

His eyes rolled back in his head, large body going stiff as he crashed to the ground.

As I stared at him, watching blood seep from his head and hearing his strained breaths, I wondered when I had stopped caring about hurting people. When I had become the type of person to revel in spilling the blood of others.

Maybe I had always been heading that direction. Perhaps it was the magic of the stars that willed us to be such a way. Or, possibly, it was the system that Celeste and so many eadi hated that seeped into my bones.

Bending down, I placed my hand on his head and did my best to heal it slightly, hoping that it would make the incident look more like an accident so that no eadi were blamed.

And it was that action—my gut instinct to help—that allowed me to take a deep breath.

I did care. At least, I did when it counted.

When the people deserved my hesitation and empathy.

Regardless, I didn’t have the time to think, because the door had long ago closed, and I was missing whatever was happening inside.

I bent down and wiped my hands clean on his black uniform, my shadows wrapping around me after, lighting a dark fire within my bones as they took me into the shop.

As I had thought, there was no one in the room, silence and stale sweets my only companions.

Had they snuck through a back door? Was there another room somewhere?

We had a back room in our apothecary, so this shop should too, right?

Extra stock and cooking tools needed to be stored somewhere.

I took the chance of summoning a tiny light burst, only able to see a couple of feet in front of me as I explored the area.

There was a small kitchen behind the center glass counter, but no one was in there.

The door that led to the back of the building was locked from the inside with a chain, which must have meant they hadn’t escaped that way. Somewhere inside then.

Sliding my hand across the walls, I tried to find some sort of secret entrance.

A mechanism that would open a wall or reveal a door.

Something that could be made rather than conjured.

When that proved futile, I bent low, inspecting the floorboards.

This was where luck found me. One corner of a small, oddly placed rug was bent over, the area unfit for walking but still upturned.

“Gotcha,” I gloated, my voice so soft it was barely a whisper. Kicking the thickly woven rug to the side, I found a brass handle, the smallest sliver of light seeping through the four edges of what had to be a secret door.

Too risky to enter. The room wouldn’t be bigger than the building, and this one was quaint.

I doubted the areas would be sectioned off, so whoever was in there would see me immediately.

I could attempt to cloak myself, but that was finicky magic that required more focus and talent than I possessed under so much stress.

Groaning softly, I pressed my ear to the small slit and focused.

“Yes, the end will be good. Maybe even that night. We are running on borrowed time,” someone said.

“But what if—“ the voice grew somehow quieter, the rest of their sentence gone.

They continued to talk at that quieter volume, aggravating me to no end.

My mind wandered, thinking of Celeste’s words in her last letter.

Would she do something dangerous like protest?

Maybe this was where those people met, the eadi preparing to fight the shaytan regime.

Not that they could win. Elites had been conquering worlds for millennia, they wouldn’t lose to a group of eadi.

We. We wouldn’t lose.

If Celeste took part in some sort of rebellion, it would be me she’d face.

Suddenly sick, I shadow walked back to the academy, vomiting in the bushes as I pictured Celeste’s smoky eyes staring off into the sky, forever unblinking, as I stood above her in triumph.