Page 34 of Beasts of Shadows #1

The blood hasn’t stopped.

It drips down my upper lip in slow, hot rivulets. I swipe at it with the sleeve of my jacket, but it just smears. It doesn’t matter. Nothing feels real.

Cat crouches beside me, wide-eyed. “Nari. What the fuck did it show you?”

I don’t answer.

Because how do I explain the feeling of a crown settling on my head—and fitting?

How do I explain that for one terrible, beautiful second, I felt like the world would finally bend to me?

Not to the gods.

Not to the shades.

Not to the Institute.

Not to the bloodlines and power rankings and pantheons that decided everything before I even took my first breath.

But me.

Because most days, I feel like a stray thought in someone else’s prophecy. Like a mistake that slipped through the cracks of the divine. I’m not the smartest. Not the strongest. Not even the most dangerous—that title belongs to people like Nikolai, like Ravi, like Reema on a bad day.

I’m the girl who tries and just barely makes it.

And that’s never been enough.

Not here. Not with the gods watching.

But in that vision—in that moment—I wasn’t surviving. I wasn’t begging. I wasn’t bracing for the next cruel twist of fate or the next rule I’d have to pretend doesn’t apply to me.

I was chosen.

Calea’s blood at my feet. Power rising like a tide. Nikolai and Ravi at my side, not in judgment, not in conflict—but devotion.

And I was calm.

Not drunk on it. Not unhinged.

Just… right.

Like the world had finally rearranged itself into something I could hold in my hands.

And now?

Now I can still feel it under my skin. That hum. That possibility.

Like it’s waiting to be called back.

“Nari?” Cat probes.

Before I can reply, footsteps echo down the corridor.

Boots over stone. Heavy.

My spine goes stiff.

Cat rises, hand already on the hilt of her dagger. I move slower, knees shaky.

The light shifts at the archway.

Kilronan appears first, all smugness and swagger. “Well, well. Looks like we found the bookworms.”

Behind him, Nikolai. His eyes sweep the chamber in a glance—quick, precise—and then land on me.

I feel it like a wire pulled tight.

His gaze flicks to the mirror still clutched in my hand. The blood on my face.

Then back to my eyes.

If he wants to ask what I saw, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he steps further into the room, silently passing me a handkerchief.

I press it to my face, unwilling to let them see me unravel.

“Where’s the mirror?” Kilronan asks, scanning the room.

I lift it in my hand.

He stops short. “You actually found it.”

Nikolai’s voice cuts through the air. “Perhaps, but who gets to leave with it?”

Cat stiffens. “We found it.”

“Game’s not about finding it’s about keeping it,” Kilronan counters. “But we all know this place doesn’t reward scavenger points. It rewards dominance.”

“Enough,” Nikolai says quietly.

The word lands like a hammer.

He walks toward me.

Slowly.

Not reaching for the mirror. Not yet.

Just looking.

The silence stretches.

His eyes drop to the mirror.

Then to my hand.

Then back to my face.

“Whatever it showed you,” he says softly, “you’re still shaking.”

“What do you think it will show you?” I wonder.

And, to my surprise, I’m genuinely curious.

He steps closer. Close enough to see the blood dried at my collarbone, the tremor I can’t fully suppress.

I brace for something—another question. A challenge. A cruel, quiet truth.

Instead, he reaches for the mirror.

My body reacts before my brain does. I yank it back—but not fast enough.

Kilronan slams into Cat with a shoulder, knocking her off balance. She curses, grabbing for her blade.

Too late.

Nikolai rips the mirror from my hand with surgical precision.

“Sorry,” he says, gaze still on me. “But I’ve got a lot more riding on this than you do.”

And then he’s gone—turning, coat flaring, boots hammering against stone as he disappears into the dark corridor with Kilronan behind him.

Cat lunges after them.

“What the actual fuck?” she hisses. “Where were your fancy fencing skills when you handed him the damn mirror ? Bri is going to kill me if I have to blow a behemoth. She hates sharing.”

“Nobody’s sucking anybody,” I snap, pushing to my feet. My knees are still shaky.

My palms are empty.

The weight of the mirror is gone, but I swear I still feel it. The echo of it. Like my skin hasn’t caught up to the loss.

Cat kicks a broken tile across the floor. “They stole it.”

“They claimed it,” I correct, bitterly. “Like everything else in this place.”

She rounds on me. “And you just let them?”

I don’t answer right away.

Because it wasn’t that I couldn’t stop him.

It’s that I didn’t.

My fingers still hum with the mirror’s pulse, even though it’s no longer in my hand. I can feel where it used to be—like phantom weight, like a promise.

And now it’s with him.

Exactly where I needed it to be.

“Let them keep it,” I murmur, brushing dirt from my jacket. “They can keep it safe for us… up until just before midnight.”

Cat frowns. “What are you talking about?”

But I’m already turning toward the exit. Blood drying on my lip. Power coiled like wire beneath my skin.

He thinks he took it.

He doesn’t know I gave it to him.

Let him run with it.

Let him open it.

Let him look.

Then we’ll see what he really wants.

And whether or not I can use it.

#

We track them by firelight.

Not bright—just the faintest, flickering pulse between the trees, like the forest is holding its breath. The ruins of the library are long behind us now. Whatever comfort those crumbling stones offered, Nikolai and Kilronan clearly wanted distance.

Cat crouches beside me, her lips twisted. “If they’re dancing around it naked, I’m walking into the nearest lake and never coming out.”

“Please. They’re probably just arguing over who gets to mount us first.”

But the moment we reach the edge of the trees and peer through the ash-dusted leaves, I realize I was wrong.

Kilronan’s crouched beside a fire, coaxing it with the casual expertise of someone who’s done it a hundred times—because of course he has. A small pot hangs low over the flames, its steam tinged with the smell of smoked herbs and dried meat.

Nikolai sits opposite him, back braced against a root, the mirror resting in his lap like a threat he hasn’t figured out how to neutralize. His field coat is slung over a branch. Sleeves pushed up. He looks wrecked. Not physically. But like someone carved him out too deep and left the shell behind.

Something about the sight twists inside me. I expected gloating. Arrogance. The usual post-victory swagger. Not… this. Not the tension in his shoulders, the hollow behind his eyes.

“You’re sulking,” Kilronan says, not looking up.

Nikolai doesn’t reply.

“Which is fine. The mirror’s a bitch.”

“I’m not sulking.”

Kilronan tosses a twig into the fire. “Mm. Just brooding then. Much more dignified.”

A pause. Kilronan pokes the fire with a stick, embers leaping. “You usually only get this broody after losing a duel—or a girl.”

That gets a reaction. Nikolai’s jaw flexes.

“She didn’t even try,” he mutters, more to himself than to Kilronan. “Just handed it over. No fight. No tricks. No teeth.”

My breath catches. So he noticed. The way I didn’t resist. The way I let it happen.

Kilronan snorts. “Disappointed our little mortal didn’t claw your eyes out?”

“I expected…something,” Nikolai says tightly. “A bluff. A trap. At least a clever insult. But she just stood there and let it happen. Like it didn’t matter.”

He looks down at the mirror again, fingers tightening around the handle.

“Maybe it didn’t,” Kilronan offers with a shrug.

Nikolai’s voice darkens. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what? Point out the obvious?” Kilronan leans back on his elbows. “You wanted her to fight for it. Admit it. Makes things more fun. Makes her worthy .”

Worthy of what? Him ? The ego.

Nikolai doesn’t answer. But the muscle in his cheek tics.

Then—after a long beat, voice flat as dead embers—he says, “Sumner told me to stay away from her.”

I go still.

Kilronan does too.

“What, like, ‘she’s mine’ stay away, or ‘danger to national security’ stay away?”

Nikolai lets out a bitter laugh. “Does it matter? The man practically bleeds sanctimony. And he loathes everything about my family. Said if I didn’t back off, he’d have me reassigned to the Fjords.”

Kilronan winces. “Brutal.”

“He didn’t even bother pretending it was a suggestion,” Nikolai says, dragging a hand through his hair. “Apparently I’m ‘a destabilizing influence.’”

He says it mockingly, but the words land hard.

I clamp a hand over my mouth.

So it’s true. Ravi warned him off me. Used his connections to tighten the leash.

And Nikolai didn’t argue.

Didn’t fight.

“He called me a liability,” Nikolai goes on, gaze flicking to the fire. “Said I was going to hurt her. Like I’d even waste my time playing white knight to some wide-eyed mortal.”

“Well, you are a very loud, very pretty shade. And don’t they have something before? Maybe he’s threatened by you,” Kilronan says easily, grinning.

Nikolai doesn’t smile.

And I don’t know what makes my stomach twist more—the fact that Ravi thinks I need protection, especially after I killed him , or the fact that Nikolai seems to believe it.

His fingers twitch against the mirror’s handle. He doesn’t lift it, but the firelight catches in the silver like it’s waiting.

Kilronan tilts his head. “Have you looked yet?”

Nikolai doesn’t answer right away. His thumb traces a slow, agitated circle around the edge of the mirror.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter because you’ve already seen it,” Kilronan says, voice teasing. “Or because you’re scared of what it’ll show?”

Nikolai snorts, but it’s thin. “I already know what it’ll show.”

“Oh, do ya, now?”

“Yeah.” He finally lifts the mirror, angling it toward himself—but his gaze cuts sideways, like he’s daring it to prove him wrong.

From my perch above, I can see it. Not clearly, not fully—but enough.