Page 39 of Beasts of Shadows #1

“What?”

I turn, and there he is—kneeling.

On one knee. In the frostbitten grass. Like it means something.

His voice is quieter this time. Deadlier.

“Marry me.”

My pulse trips over itself. My grip tightens on the sword hilt.

“No,” I say automatically. “Absolutely not.”

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t rise. Just looks up at me with that infuriating calm, like he’s asking me what I want for dinner instead of proposing something impossible.

“You won,” he says simply. “A deal’s a deal.”

“That deal didn’t include vows and rings and—and whatever this is.”

“Rings don’t need to be involved. But our deal included obedience,” he reminds me. “Loyalty. Alliance.”

“Not a marriage.”

He shrugs one shoulder, like the distinction bores him. “Functionally, it’s the same.”

I laugh, but it’s too sharp. “You’re joking.”

“I’m not.”

I step back, because I need space. Air. Logic.

But he rises in a single fluid motion, closing that distance again.

“My mother is Roz,” he says, confirming what I already suspected.

“Goddess of fate. Weaver of war and bloodlines and ends. I’m the first blood-born god in over two-thousand years.

Split from my father’s head like Athena from Zeus’.

Although, my father didn’t survive the injury.

” He gives a passive shrug. “I’m told it’s no big loss. He was a dick.”

I finally release my sword to the forest floor, peering around. This must be some kind of joke. Ta?sse and Kilronan are going to pop out of nowhere, ready to mock me.

“I wasn’t supposed to exist,” he continues. “Not as I am. A full god, born in secret. Raised in shadow. If Calea knew—really knew—she’d come for me.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you’ve bested me.”

“That was a spar,” I snap.

“That was fate.” His voice lowers. “And, as my mother has often assured me, fate doesn’t care what you meant. You proved yourself worthy.”

“ You wanted her to fight for it. Admit it. Makes things more fun. Makes her worthy,” Kilronan had said. Did he know about whatever…this is?

The silence between us is cold and iron-wrought.

“I’ve been told all my life: the one who defeats me is the one who defines me.” A pause. “The one I stand beside. In Calea’s final hours.”

“How convenient,” I mutter.

“How terrifying,” he corrects. “For both of us.”

I stare at him, searching for the catch.

There has to be one.

But he just waits, like a blade sheathed in calm.

“Look, if it makes you feel better, this isn’t about love. Or romance. Or even lust. It’s politics. Protection. A power play in a war neither of us started.”

“And if I say no?”

“You stay vulnerable. Alone. Hunted. You become a pawn instead of a player.”

“And if I say yes?”

His lips twitch. Almost a smile. “Then we rewrite the board. There are people out there who believe you’re Thantos’ bride.

” My eyes narrow on his face. “That you’re the one who can kill Calea.

End her tyrannical reign. I know you don’t want him.

Not as a husband, nor as the new leader of the Shadow Realm.

At least, in that respect, we’agree. Marry me, and then you can never become Thantos’ ticket to the Mortal Realm. ”

“What do you mean? I thought killing Calea set him free.”

Nikolai gives a light shake.

“Sets him free, yes, but he needs his wife, the one who was promised to him, to cross between worlds. Think of it this way—we can kill Calea, and that breaks the seal. But Thantos still needs his bride to leave the Shadow Realm. If you’re already bound—to me, to another god—he can’t claim you.”

He pauses, letting it sink in.

“Calea dies. The prison opens. But without his bride, Thantos stays trapped. The Shadow Realm stays locked. Mortals stay safe.”

I shake my head.

“Some other deity will step into Calea’s place.”

“Then help me be that deity,” he says.

I stare at him.

But he doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t smirk. He’s deadly serious.

“You and I—we can rule together. Not just survive. Replace. Mortal. Shade. An alliance that hasn’t been seen in over two-thousand years.”

The words should sound ridiculous. But they don’t. They sound inevitable.

I scoff. “You really think if I wear your name like armor, the other gods will leave us alone?”

“No,” he says. “But they’ll hesitate.”

He steps forward, voice lower now. Measured.

“And if they don’t, you’ll have something else. Something they won’t expect.”

I narrow my eyes. “Which is?”

“My power,” he says. “Not just as a god. But as a god-maker.”

The forest stills around us.

I blink. “That’s a myth.”

“It’s not.” He says it without flourish or pride. Just fact. “It’s why Roz kept me hidden. I wasn’t just a threat to Calea—I was a threat to the order of things.”

He lets that settle before continuing.

“I can shift the shape of a soul and forge it into something new. For you, it would be easy. You already have Bea’s divine energy. As pathetic as it is.”

“You can make gods,” I say, barely above a whisper.

He nods.

The mirror. I can have what I want, if I agree.

“You want to do that to me?”

He takes another step.

“I can’t. Not now. My mother promises the ability will come. I just can’t control it yet.”

I glance toward the trees. I could walk away. Keep my pride. Stay mortal. Alone. Constantly in danger.

Or I could choose power. Something ancient. Irreversible.

“Why me?” I ask. “Why risk everything?”

“You beat me,” he says simply. “No one else ever has.”

I stare at him. At the god who could unmake me or raise me to something terrifying.

“I’m not a hero.”

“Neither am I.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“Good.”

I hold out my hand. But before he can take it…

“One condition.”

He stops.

My voice is steady, even if the rest of me is shaking. “This alliance—this marriage—whatever it is. There will be no touching. No affection. No intimacy. None.”

A pause.

Then, his expression smooths into something unreadable.

“Of course,” he says. “Nothing real. A marriage in name, only.”

His fingers curl around mine, cool and deliberate.

A pact. A chain. A fuse lit.

But when he lifts my hand to his lips, just barely brushing the back with his mouth, something sharp flares under my skin.

Power.

Promise.

Danger.

I yank my hand back before I can feel too much.

And I wonder if I’ve made a deal to protect myself, or given him the only weapon that could truly destroy me.

#

I wake up to sunlight creeping through the cracks in the blinds like it doesn’t know any better.

My body feels the same.

No divine power humming beneath my skin. No sense of ancient knowledge unlocked or some second heartbeat beneath the first. Just the usual dull ache behind my eyes, the knot of tension in my lower back, and the growing certainty that I made a mistake.

Not a fatal one.

Just one I can’t take back.

I sit up slowly, blinking the haze from my vision.

The room’s still empty. Quiet. The world didn’t end while I slept.

Which is almost disappointing, considering what I agreed to last night.

“ Marry me,” he said.

And I did.

Not with rings. Not with kisses or witnesses or anything romantic.

But we made vows. Quiet, blood-bound promises beneath the trees. He offered protection. Power. A path forward.

I offered him the only thing that matters at Van Ritten: a bond that can’t be broken.

I glance at my left wrist.

There, in fine black ink twined with shimmering green, a thin tattoo coils just above the skin. It’s not a name. Not a symbol I recognize. More like a vine—thorned, delicate, and laced with runes I don’t speak but somehow feel.

He drew it slowly, with the tip of his thumb, using blood and breath and something older.

And I did the same to him.

Equal terms. Equal chains. The kind that bind you together whether you like it or not.

No one else saw. No one else can know.

Not yet.

The marks might as well scream “Claimed” to anyone who knows how to look.

And I can’t afford that.

I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand. I avoid the mirror. If I see myself, I’ll have to admit something’s changed.

Even if I don’t know what yet.

Then I grab my jacket, shove my arm through the sleeve, and head down the hall.

I know exactly who to ask.

#

“Concealment?” Reema echoes, her perfectly arched brow lifting like a challenge. She leans back against the worn arm of the common room sofa, coffee balanced precariously on her knee. “What’d you do, join a cult?”

I bote back a retort about this whole place already being a cult, and mutter, “Not…exactly.”

She narrows her eyes and sets the mug down with the sort of dramatic care that means she’s already judging me.

“Let me see it.”

I hesitate—because I know what she’s going to say—but extend my wrist anyway.

The moment she sees the mark, her whole demeanor shifts.

Her mouth opens. Then closes. Then opens again.

“You made a blood vow?”

“It was a mutual decision,” I say.

“A mutual—?” Reema sputters. “That’s not mortal ink. That’s binding magic. Old. Like, pre-Triad, pre-Covenant old. There are literal cautionary scrolls about this kind of thing. Do you even know what kind of energy you’ve just tethered yourself to?”

“Yes,” I say, even though I’m not sure that I do.

She mutters something in what I think is Enochian, then waves me down like I’m a particularly slow-moving curse.

“I can hide it. That’s the easy part. But if you want me to get rid of it—.”

“No, that’s fine. I don’t want to undo it. I just don’t want people…asking questions I’m not ready to answer.”

“Aha.” Predictably, Reema doesn’t ask for clarification. It’s one of the reasons I went to her, instead of say, Cat or Cody. Or even Picca. They’d all want to know who I bound myself to.

And there’s no way in the end world that I’d ask Ravi .

“Give me a second.”

She traces a finger just above the tattoo—careful not to touch it—and begins murmuring under her breath. The air tightens. The floorboards creak, and the windows fog with condensation.

Then the magic lifts. The vine-like mark vanishes beneath my skin.

“It’s hidden,” she says. “For now.”

I exhale. “Thank you.”

“But,” Reema adds, leveling her coffee cup on the arm of the sofa, “not for free.”

Of course not.

I fold my arms. “What do you want?”

Her fingers drum lightly on the ceramic mug—calculated. Almost hesitant. Which is rare for her.

“Something simple,” she vows. “I want you to talk to Cody.”

“You can’t do that yourself?”

She shrugs, and it’s the kind that means everything but nothing. “We were rivals. You know that.”

“Everyone knows that.”

“Right,” she says, still too casual. “Only—our last year at Horton, something changed. He stopped fighting me. Stopped caring about class rankings. Valedictorian. Any of it. It’s like he quit the game before I won. And I’ve never understood why.”

I watch her, but she doesn’t look up. Just keeps tracing a lazy circle along the rim of her mug.

“I used to think I just got better. That he cracked under pressure or got bored. But now…” She lifts her gaze, and there’s a flicker there—something brittle, something buried.

“I think he let me win. On purpose.”

I hesitate.

Because I already know the truth. At least a little.

He’s in love with her.

Maybe he always was.

And Reema has no clue. She thinks she did something to break him. But she’s just the truth he’s been running from.

“I’ve been…having dreams. That don’t make sense, because they never happened. But they feel real.”

She studies me, as if she expects me to have the answers to whatever she’s forgotten.

“You think he’s hiding something.”

“I think,” Reema says slowly, “there’s something I did—maybe something I don’t remember right—that made him back off. And whatever it is, he’s hiding it. From me. From himself. I don’t know.”

That lands heavier than it should. Because what if she’s right? I just assumed Cody was so hard on Reema because he didn’t want anyone to know how he felt. Especially with Reema and Geneir dating.

But maybe there’s more to it than just that.

“Why haven’t you asked him?”

She huffs a laugh, but it’s hollow. “Because I’m not sure I want the answer. And because Cody—when he’s hiding something—he doubles down. Pushes harder. Closes off.”

It’s interesting that she would know that about him. Interesting, and telling.

Because you don’t learn about someone’s defense mechanisms by accident. You learn them from the inside. From standing too close when they flinch. From trying to stay when they tell you to leave.

And suddenly, I’m not sure if I’m more sorry for her—or for him. Maybe both.

She sets her mug aside and meets my gaze fully now.

“You, though. He trusts you. Even when he doesn’t want to.”

The silence hangs between us. No manipulation. No flattery. Just the honest truth of it.

I nod once.

“I’ll find out what happened.”

Reema exhales, as if she didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath.

“Thank you,” she says, voice low.