Page 54 of Bartered by the Shadow Prince (Bargain with the Shadow Prince #3)
A Shade So Crimson
ELOISE
M y new heart beats wildly in my throat.
Why would anyone try to kill Romulus? The gentle and loving rabble beast has a thick cut across its flank, but at least the bleeding has stopped.
Thank the goddess Damien intercepted the man before he succeeded in hurting him further.
I silently cheer when the attacker’s head rolls across the field.
I doused the fire the second Damien left the shelter of my cloaking spell, and my eyes are still adjusting to total darkness when the first golden arrow flies.
That’s pure sunlight. Elves. Shit! My stomach clenches at how close the arrow comes to hitting Damien, but he takes out the archer effortlessly, as well as his companion.
The third elf puts up a fight, but Damien prevails.
More arrive, seeming to come from every direction. My hands come to rest on the daggers strapped to my thighs. Damien would likely tell me to stay put. He’s no doubt mentally sending me orders right now. But as elves jump off the mesa that I’m concealed beneath, I decide it’s not enough.
My skin tingles with the need to help. Tingles everywhere like I might come apart. My heart pounds in my ears. Sunlight arrows fly from every direction, and by their light, I watch Damien raise Dawnbreaker. But he can’t dodge all of them.
And I can’t watch him die.
I fly from the cover of my spell, traveling through the night as if I am made of the darkness.
I come upon them from behind, and they never hear me coming.
Lub-dub, lub-dub. My heartbeat drums in my ears as the arrows land.
Damien deflects an unbelievable number of them, but two land in his back. He goes down, and my daggers fly.
I sink one straight down into the top of an elf’s head while I draw my opposite blade across a pale throat, deep enough I hit bone.
My movements are quick. Deadly. Silent. My palms sweat around the hilts as I plunge my dagger into a heart from behind, then another into an ear, the next severing everything at the base of a skull.
No bone is hard enough to deflect my blows.
No elf is alive long enough to fight back.
I am rage and instinct and heart. I am the night and the stars and the wind. I have been blessed by the goddess, born of dragon blood, and tested on the road to the Darklands. I will not fail.
As soon as the elves know I’m there, I’m gone again.
I count my kills, six, seven, eight, nine.
A head rolls toward my mate. Six more to go.
A sunlit sword swings toward my head, and I swoop down to sever the elf’s Achilles’, then stab upward, puncturing heart and lung.
I’m gone again. My knife drives straight up through the soft underbelly of a jaw and into a brain.
Gone again, I note the remaining elves. Their arrows rise, but they are wild-eyed, unable to find me in the darkness.
My mate laughs. Still bleeding and clearly mortal, he stumbles to his feet and drives Dawnbreaker through the nearest elf’s chest. I take out the one beside him before he can slice through Damien’s throat.
The last two run for the trees. Somehow, I’m faster. It feels as if I’m surfing the night itself as I slide up behind them, raise both daggers high, and land them in their spines. They go down like dying birds. I end them with a second blow to the head.
Panting hard, I scan the field, the trees.
I sniff the wind. Only when I’m sure I’ve ended them all do I return to Damien.
In the time it took me to finish off our attackers, he’s worked the arrows from his back.
He’s lost so much blood. When I reach him, he’s flat on the ground, like he’s trying to stay as still as possible.
“Are you okay?” I ask him, feeling frantic.
He laughs. “More than okay.”
I fall to my knees beside him, suddenly too exhausted to move. “Good, because I don’t think I can take another step. My entire body hurts.”
“It always does the first time, although for most of us, we learn as babies.”
I flop onto my back beside him and stare up at the stars. “Learn what as babies?” I ask sleepily.
“To shadoweave. The goddess didn’t just give you a beating heart, Eloise. She made you one of us. She made you a shade.”
I break through the haze of fatigue long enough for surprise to lift my brow. “Is that how I moved so fast?”
“You didn’t just move fast, Eloise. You became the darkness like an umbrae warrior. They never knew what hit them.”
“All I cared about was stopping them from hurting you. I think I pulled every muscle in my body.”
“That’s why my blood tasted bad to you. Shades don’t feed on each other. We’ll hunt tomorrow, if we live to see tomorrow.”
We’re lying in the middle of the field. It isn’t as poor of a hiding place as one might think, considering the tall grasses mostly conceal us. I feel for his hand beside me and thread my fingers into his. And then I close my eyes and let sleep carry me under.