Page 2 of Battle for the Shadow Prince (A Bargain with the Shadow Prince #2)

2

Nuclear Winter

ELOISE

D amien slips through my fingers and I scream.

“No. No. No!” My love, my mate, disappears through the dark portal. With no hesitation, I leap, throwing myself toward the closing maw of darkness. It’s a stupid thing to do. I have no idea what’s on the other side of that portal. But I don’t care. I just want him back.

But it’s no use. Like a fish only drawn to one bait, the spell is selective. I pass right through it, ending up splayed on the floor of the attic, the wind knocked out of me. Pressure builds in my chest, clogs my throat like a fist, until it finally bursts out in an agonizing wail. He’s gone. He’s really gone. And the worst part is, my best friend or her family took him.

I will kill the witch responsible for this. I don’t care who it is. I won’t stop until their blood coats my skin. The only reason I know my heart hasn’t been torn from my chest is it’s hammering against my sternum like a prisoner trying to break through their cell wall. A fiery whirlwind of fury is building within me. I plant one foot and then the other under me.

Only then do I hear the low rumble in the room, like stomping feet on the bleachers in high school. All the books in my parents’ magical library are vibrating on their shelves, snapping their covers like rabid dogs. Pages rustle. Paper shreds rain to the chalkboard floor like confetti.

Something deep within me quiets at the sound. My skin buzzes with arcane energy. Each book tingles along my skin, as if invisible whiskers grow from my flesh and attach to their spines. I sense each of them. One lifts from its shelf and flies across the room, circles my head like a bird.

Another person might watch this display with wonder or awe. Maybe fear. All I feel is frustration. There is power here. There is power in me. But I haven’t the slightest clue how to use it to get Damien back.

Experiencing magic isn’t exactly new to me, but experiencing it alone, in the attic of Harcourt Manor, still is. Memories of the night I killed my abusive ex Tony rush to mind. Technically, he killed me first, choked me to death in my mother’s art studio downstairs. I descended into the underworld, where I saw the souls of my parents and grandparents living in an alternate version of Harcourt. They told me the tattoo on my back was a keyspell. Within me lives the power to open portals between worlds. With my parents’ help, I mustered the strength to stab Tony with my palette knife. At that moment, my mother’s sculpture came to life and killed him. Well, we both killed him. I knocked him off-balance with a well-positioned kick, and her tower of blades sliced through his torso and ended him.

Since then I’ve suspected that my house, Harcourt Manor, is some kind of conduit for spiritual energy. I hesitate to use the word haunted . It’s a loaded word with a negative connotation, and whatever is here with me is benevolent. Considering my great-grandfather was a spiritualist and claimed to speak to the dead during the séance parties he threw here in the twenties, it isn’t actually surprising that the place would be home to a few spirits.

Oddly though, I never believed in the supernatural until I met Damien and found out that my best friend Maeve is a witch. Turns out my parents were witches too, when they were alive. Before I was born, they practiced with a coven that used dragon’s blood to imbue its members with magical powers—the same dragon’s blood that still flows through my veins.

Fisting my hands, I shuffle across the attic, madly searching for my phone. I dig in the pockets of my clothing, still strewn across the floor from when I made love to Damien. Above my head, the flapping books return to their shelves like trained birds landing on their perches.

Maeve was supposed to help me navigate my parents’ magic. As a witch, she’s the only one I know who can help me distill the overwhelming amount of information in this attic. Now… if she’s responsible in any way… Dark thoughts fill my head as I pull the phone from the pocket of my leggings and dial her number with trembling fingers.

She answers on the second ring. “What’s up?”

“Bring him back. Bring him back now!” I shout. I’m shaking with rage. My eyes burn with it. My tears evaporate in the heat of my fury. And that’s not all. Red haze has moved in around me, and ash falls like spindrift. I smell smoke and sulfur.

“Bring who back?” Maeve asks.

Her confusion multiplies my fury. How can she not know? The entire world should know. The world should stop.

“El, what’s going on?”

The genuine concern in her voice sinks in a fraction, turning my skin cold. “You must know. You have to know.”

My accusations dissolve into silence.

I check the connection, about to ask if she’s still there, when she speaks again. “It’s almost two in the morning, El. I have no idea what you’re talking about. Take a deep breath and tell me what happened.”

“Damien is gone,” The words scrape up my throat, which is already raw from screaming. “He was taken in a cage of light. He told me… He said only a witch with his blood could do that. Who could wield a spell like that, huh?” My words fall heavy with accusation. Tears sting my eyes again as I add, “Your family just couldn’t let him remain free, could they?”

“When did this happen?” Now she sounds positively baffled.

“About five minutes ago.”

“Eloise, it wasn’t me. I’ve been in a bathtub with a glass of wine and a book. I was about to go to bed when you called.” My phone dings and it’s a selfie of her in her pj’s.

My thoughts scramble. “Someone in your family then.”

“It’s possible,” she says softly. “If it’s true, I’ll free him, I promise. Everyone agreed to leave him alone, El. I haven’t heard a peep about any plans to get him back.”

“You honestly weren’t aware of this?” Tears finally start to fall, fueled by the relief that my best friend didn’t betray me. But that relief is short-lived. If the Gowdies didn’t abduct Damien, who did?

“I swear on the Earth and the goddess who created it,” Maeve says. “I don’t even think it’s possible. His blood is no longer in our possession. No one kept it because no one believed he’d ever be free of the candle.”

“Shit. But if it’s not you, then who? Fuck, I have to find him, Maeve. I have to.” My knees give out, and I slump to the floor, rubbing a growing ache in my chest. “It feels like my heart is ripping in two. It’s racing and, oh God, everything hurts. I’m dying. I’m dying .”

“Take a deep breath.” I hear Maeve draw air in and out. Eventually I follow along. In two, three, four. Out two, three, four. We do it together again and again. Somehow it helps.

Maeve is the first to speak again. “I have no personal experience with this, but I think what you’re feeling is the mating bond. Mates aren’t supposed to be separated. It’s a good sign you can feel that in your chest. As long as you can sense the bond, you know he’s still alive.”

I blow out another breath, cling to that. He’s still alive. He’s still alive.

Maeve speaks up again. “I’m going to help. I’ll go now and ask my family. I’ll come see you first thing tomorrow with what I find out. We will get to the bottom of this, okay?”

“Okay.” My voice cracks.

“I love you, Eloise. We’ll find him.”

A lump forms in my throat, and I remain silent as she ends the call.

What now? I bury my face in my hands, a new wave of hopelessness blowing through me like an arctic wind. If it’s not the Gowdies, who could it be? If it’s not them, where can we even start to look for him?

I turn toward my mother’s grimoire, the one where I found the spell to send Damien home. I still don’t understand my family’s magic. I came up here for the first time yesterday. I didn’t even know this room existed until my parents told me about it during the vision I had when Tony almost killed me. The message they passed on during my near-death experience was a simple one: find their journals. Everything I needed to know would be in them. In the end, this book had found me—literally dropped onto the end table next to the reading chair in the corner of my attic. The book opened itself for me, its pages flipping to my family’s keyspell, one meant to open a portal between worlds. I intended to use it to send Damien home to Tenebris.

But Damien refused to go without me.

He loves me too much to leave me.

He promised to wait for me.

A sick feeling swirls in my stomach. We deserve better than this. We deserve more time.

I snatch my sweatshirt off the floor and pull it over my head. My eyes sweep the room in all directions. Maybe there’s something in my parents’ grimoire to help find Damien. I grab the book and start thumbing through the pages, but all the words run together.

I’m no witch. Even the spell to send Damien home was risky, and I only tried it because the book seemed to be encouraging me in that direction. I didn’t actually know what I was doing. I followed the instructions like a recipe. All of this, it’s like it’s written in a different language. Some of these spells have ingredients I’ve never even heard of. What the hell is elecampane? Even finding the right spell seems impossible. It’s not like the spells are cross-indexed. I’ll have to go through each one.

My vision starts to blur, and I wipe my eyes again.

Everything I know about myself, everything that makes me me , started in this house. The Harcourt name is a crucial part of my identity, a linchpin into who I am. Finding out that my parents and grandmother kept this room from me my entire life, kept this power from me, makes me feel like a hermit crab in search of a new shell. Everything that was my security, my safety, is gone, and in its place is this mystery, this living library of magical information that seems hopelessly beyond my full understanding.

I slam the grimoire closed and start to sob again, Damien’s loss crashing back into me like a returning wave. Deep, wrenching sobs come from a place within me so dark I never knew it existed until now. I’m exhausted. Grief over my grandmother’s recent death springs up within me like a sleeping wolf whose tail I’ve stepped on. It compounds with memories of losing my parents. My grief is a growing thing, the memory of one rattling free memories of them all, layer by interlocking layer. Suddenly I’m achingly lonely. So lonely I’d call Maeve back if I didn’t think she needed her phone to investigate Damien’s disappearance.

A tingle brushes the back of my neck like someone straightening my collar. I whirl, but there’s no one there. The room, however, is now drenched in the creeping red haze. I rub my eyes, wondering if it’s from crying, but it doesn’t go away. It’s like the entire attic is awash in smoky red light. The scent of rosewater fills my nose. My grandmother’s soap. I blink again, and she’s standing there, a worried expression on her face.

“Grams?” It’s like she’s a newsprint version of herself. Grayscale with silver eyes and dark, pinprick pupils. Unlike the last time I saw her, when cancer had left her bald and frail, she’s round cheeked and her sleek curls frame her face. She smiles warmly at me, and all the air vacates my lungs. I reach for her. “I miss you so much.”

She reaches back. Her lips move but there’s no sound. Hand on her heart, she shakes her head and mouths something again.

“I-I don’t understand!” I want to touch her, hug her, but when I try to approach, the space between us seems to widen. The red flickers. And then she’s gone. So is the snowing ash. The scent of burning. The crimson haze.

“Grams!” I raise my hand and reach for the place she just was, but my fingers pass through nothing but air. The attic is quiet as freshly fallen snow. I can’t even feel the buzz of the books anymore.

For a moment I just breathe, and then I can’t move fast enough. I pull on my leggings and race down the stairs, barely stopping for my jacket and boots. Pushing out the back door, I ignore the cold night air and sprint straight back to the family cemetery, stopping only when I reach my grandmother’s grave. My tears are streaming again.

“Grams?”

I wait, praying her ghost will show herself again, that maybe, if I’m closer to her remains, I’ll be able to hear what she has to say. But the only sound is my breath. The only scent is that of fallen leaves and pine, not rosewater. And the world is awash in silvery-blue moonlight. Not a hint of red.

I fall to my knees. Last time I was here, Damien arrived to gather me into his arms and carry me inside. I wait and wait, but no one comes to save me. I’m ice-cold. Shivering. Still, I wait until I can’t feel my fingers or toes.

A rustle to my right catches my attention and I search the woods, still hoping that somehow it could be Damien or Gram’s spirit. But as I focus on the sound, the outline of a narrow nose and long ears comes into view and then the body of a fox. It takes a few steps toward me, the white of its chest showing in the darkness, the moon painting it in silver tones like a phantom. Our eyes meet. It looks thin. Too thin.

“Are you hungry?” I ask softly. “Do you want something to eat?”

It waits, ears twitching. I rise, suddenly consumed with the need to feed this poor creature, my grief temporarily shoved aside. I hurry into the house, pull a bowl from the cupboard, and load it with some leftover rotisserie chicken and a cut-up apple. I fill another bowl with water and leave them both on my back stoop.

I don’t see the fox when I set the bowls down, but after I’m back inside, it’s only a minute before I catch the little phantom creeping from the woods again and feasting on my offering. “My little phantom out of nowhere,” I mutter, wiping tears that feel hot against my cool skin.

The sky lightens above the feeding fox, and I wave of fatigue makes my head throb. Feeling defeated, I climb the stairs and collapse into bed.