Page 59 of Beasts of Shadows #1

“The mermaid was a distraction.” My fingers curl.

“Not an intentional one, but I suppose we can’t rule out that someone took advantage of the opening she gave them.”

“Come on,” I say, pushing back into the tall grass. “Maybe they’re still—.”

A sharp, high giggle slices through the air like broken glass.

It’s not Cat.

Nikolai is already moving, faster than I can react. I scramble after him, feet skidding across gravel and frost, the cliff path narrowing as branches claw at my jacket.

We crest the final rise—and the cold hits like a wall.

Not the kind that brushes skin. The kind that seeps through bone. That drains. The air smells of mildew and old breath.

Cat and Kilronan are backed against a rocky outcropping near the edge—blades drawn, postures braced, but clearly outmatched. Bogeys circle them.

There are three—maybe four—it’s hard to tell, because their shapes keep shifting. Mist one moment. Limbs the next. Stretchy silhouettes with vaguely human outlines and too-long fingers, their bodies rising from the snow like smoke taking on form.

They’re thinner than they were in autumn. Hungrier. Sharper at the edges.

One of them—the tallest—tilts its head like a curious animal. Her face isn’t a face at all. Just the suggestion of cheeks, lips, long lashes inked in static.

“Far from your burrow, kitty cat,” she croons.

Cat spits at the ground. “Fuck off, cryptid.”

The bogey doesn’t blink. Doesn’t move. But somehow, she’s closer to me. Nikolai moves before me, but I push around him.

“Calea sent you?”

“The mother goddess?” Kilronan scoffs. “I haven’t done anything to piss her off. Have you?”

“Not this week,” Cat retorts.

“Dead girls don’t need friends, lovie,” the girl answers me.

“Or mothers,” another snickers.

I curl my fists. No. They can’t mean…

“And you’ll be dead soon enough. She’s seen to it. Dead and buried.”

The creature makes a sniffing gesture, then frowns. Her humanoid head whips back my way. Something seems to quiver in her mist.

“Oh, no wonder mother wants you to suffer.”

“Fuck. You.”

Her smile flickers wide.

Nikolai steps between us with a speed that fractures the air.

“She’s under my protection,” he says coldly.

“Oh, we know, ” the tallest bogey whispers, circling. “We know what happened on the Cold Moon. The duel. The vow. The mark.”

“We know everything.”

“Shadows see all.”

I freeze.

Kilronan straightens. “ Vow ?”

Cat narrows her eyes. “What mark?”

“Ahh,” the bogey croons, spinning like a dancer. “Your friends don’t know? Keeping secrets? How very godly of you.”

They all chuckle.

“Okay, yeah, sure, terrifying death smoke aside— did you bind yourself to Nikolai ? Because I feel like that’s something someone might loop the friend group in on.”

The bogey doesn’t wait for me to answer. “Since the Cold Moon. So sweet.”

Another bogey makes a vomiting sound.

Kilronan’s eyes swing to Nikolai. “Is that true?”

Cat makes a face. “I told you to sleep with him. Not marry him !”

“It’s not…it’s not real,” I manage. But even as the words leave my lips, I hear how false they sound. I strengthen my tone. “Not really important right now.”

Kilronan stares at me like I just grew another head. “Nicky, you passed up Ta?sse for a mortal ? ”

“It wasn’t like that,” I grind out.

“Blink twice if he cursed you into it,” Cat deadpans.

“You know,” the tall bogey says, shifting about with the wind, “we were told to rough your friends up a bit. Remind you that all plants die if they’re ripped from the root before they can bloom. But this? This is much more entertaining.”

“They can’t smell it, can they?” Another bogey wonders, sniffing me closer. “It’s got me salivating .”

“Nari, I swear, if you’re pregnant—.”

“ Cat! Priorities!”

A bogey drifts closer, hunger curling off her in waves of chill mist. Her mouth stretches in a crescent of static.

“We could start with the big one,” she muses, eyeing Kilronan. “Break a few bones. Snap him like winter snaps pine.”

“Poetic. Calea would approve.”

“Or the loud one,” another adds, circling Cat. “See how sharp her tongue stays with her lungs full of frost.”

Cat flips her the finger. “Try it, shadow Barbie.”

I force myself to stand straighter. “Leave them out of this.”

The lead bogey turns back to me, delighted. “Oh, but they’re yours, aren’t they? Little mortals who orbit your warmth. Let’s see what happens when we dim the sun.”

She lunges.

I don’t hesitate, freeing the dagger from my hip and sliding it across the thing’s throat.

“ Sever the right muscle and you’ll drop them fast,” Reema told me during in-processing. And damn, if I haven’t been waiting for just the right moment to get back at them.

The bogey bursts into mist, her scream scattering like crows.

Another lashes out. A cold arc of smoke—solid for only a heartbeat—knocks me backward.

“I got you!”

He reaches to steady me, but, of course, he cannot.

He can’t lay a finger on me without my permission.

He can’t help me.

Does he feel my panic? His seafoam eyes are blown wide—so white. Terrified. Devastated.

Is that ine, or his?

Why’s he so scared? I’m the one going down.

My heel hits nothing.

Air.

The edge of the cliff.

Cold wind rushes up my back like a hand pushing me faster. The sky opens. The ground vanishes. I’m weightless. Then I’m not.

Gods, not again.

Over I go.

The last thing I see is Nikolai reaching, anyway. Reaching, even though it’ll break the vow. Even though it will never work.

“ No !”