Page 27

The light burst from my palm in a concentrated beam, catching him in the chest. He staggered back, cursing, his armor smoking where my power had connected. But the effort cost me what little strength remained. My vision tunneled, darkness creeping in from the edges.

I didn’t see him recover. Didn’t see the moment he drove forward. I felt only the sudden, terrible pressure as the blade sank into my abdomen, sliding between my ribs with precision.

Cold. So cold it burned. Shadow magic coursing into me through the wound, corrupting my light from within. The pain came a heartbeat later, so intense I couldn’t even scream, my mouth opening in a silent cry.

He twisted the blade before withdrawing it, ensuring maximum damage.

"Some bridges must be burned before others can be built," he whispered, leaning close. "You'll understand soon enough."

Then he was gone, moving to help his companions with Melo. Her howls of fury and pain echoed through the garden while I lay there, blood pooling beneath me, soaking into the dark soil.

Move , I commanded myself. Get up. FIGHT .

But my body refused to obey. The shadow magic from the blade spread through me as poison would, leaving numbness in its wake. I could only watch while Melo’s struggles weakened, her fox-fire dimming against the shadow bindings.

When my vision blurred, I reached desperately for the one connection that might save me. The bond Hakan had forged between us during our marriage ritual—the link I’d been trying to ignore since my arrival. I’d felt it resembling a silver thread in my mind, tying me to him no matter how I resisted.

The minutes crawled by with the pace of hours as I fought to stay conscious. My vision tunneled, night closing in around me, but I clung to that silver thread connecting us. How long would it take him to reach me? How long did I have left?

Now, I grasped that thread with desperate mental fingers.

Hakan , I projected, not knowing if it would work, if he would hear. Garden. Assassins.

For a terrible moment, nothing. Then?—

Fuck, Ada! His response slammed into my mind with the force of a tidal wave, a mixture of shock and rage so potent it momentarily cleared the fog of pain . I’m coming. Just fucking hold on.

His presence lingered in my mind, fierce and determined.

I could feel him moving, shadows gathering around him with the intensity of storm clouds.

Could feel his fury building with each step, but he should have sensed the danger unless something was deliberately blocking his awareness of the shadows here.

Stay conscious and don’t you dare fucking die , he commanded through our bond. Keep breathing.

With titanic effort, I rolled onto my stomach. The movement sent fresh agony lancing through me, but I breathed through it, sending light through my core. Pain meant I was still alive. Still fighting.

Crawl. Just crawl.

I dug my fingers into the soil, pulling myself forward inch by agonizing inch. Blood trailed behind me, marking my path as breadcrumbs would. Ahead, a small alcove formed by ornamental bushes offered the barest hint of shelter. If I could reach it, hide myself, maybe…

Maybe what? What did I hope to accomplish? I was dying, my blood seeping into the garden of my enemies, my guardian subdued, my powers fading.

And yet I crawled. Because that’s what I had always done. Survived. Endured. Refused to give my enemies the satisfaction of an easy victory.

The pain became a distant thing, observed rather than experienced. Bad sign. I knew enough about battlefield wounds to recognize what that meant. My fingers clawed at roots and soil, dragging my increasingly unresponsive body toward the alcove.

Behind me, Melo’s struggles had gone silent. Panic flared, giving me a moment’s strength. My guardian couldn’t die. Wouldn’t. Not while I lived. Our forces were bound too tightly.

Which meant either they’d subdued her completely…or they’d taken her.

I reached the alcove, dragging myself into its meager shelter. The spreading numbness had reached my shoulders now, and I knew I had minutes at most before unconsciousness claimed me. Blood soaked the front of my dress, black in the dim light, warm against my rapidly cooling skin.

Footsteps approached. Heavy. Purposeful. The leader, coming to finish what he’d started. I turned my face toward the sound, determined to look my killer in the eye.

But the figure who appeared at the entrance to my tiny shelter wasn’t one of the assassins.

The world around Hakan had gone wrong. The air itself seemed to recoil from him, shadows not flowing but writhing around his form as if they were living things in pain.

Dark power radiated from every line of his body—pupils elongated to slits, features sharp with inhuman rage.

The temperature plummeted until my breath fogged before me. Hakan had arrived. And he was furious.

Sarp was at his side, face grim, his shadows dancing around him more subtly but no less dangerous. Where Hakan was a storm, Sarp was the quiet that followed—methodical, taking in everything with practiced precision.

“Check the perimeter,” Hakan commanded, his voice layered with harmonics that weren’t entirely human. “Find the guardian.”

“Already done,” Sarp replied, his usual sarcasm replaced with cold efficiency. “Two of them fled west, through a shadow-gate. The others won’t be running anywhere again.” His eyes shifted to me, assessing the damage with a glance. “She needs healers. Now.”

I’d seen Hakan angry before. Had watched him demolish rooms in fits of rage, had felt the deadly precision of his power. But this…this was something else entirely. This wasn’t anger. This was wrath in its purest form, elemental and unstoppable.

“Ada.” My name in his mouth was both prayer and curse. His movements were unnaturally fluid as he knelt before me, as though the laws of physics bent around him. “Who did this to you?”

Frost radiated from him in visible waves, his voice distorted by barely contained rage. Shadow and frost crept along the ground where he knelt, plants withering to black husks in his proximity.

I tried to focus on his face through the haze of pain. “Does it…matter?” Blood bubbled past my lips with the words.

The garden seemed to darken further, shadows responding to his fury. Hakan’s expression transformed into something terrible, something ancient and predatory. He leaned closer, bringing himself to my eye level, his burning gaze boring into mine.

“Answer my fucking question.” Each word was carved from ice, deliberate and sharp. “Who. Did. This. To. You.”

I flinched involuntarily, a prey animal’s reaction to a predator. His hands shot out, gripping my shoulders to keep me from moving farther, though his touch was impossibly gentle despite the fury radiating from him.

“You’re…too emotional,” I whispered, the absurdity of lecturing the Shadow Prince while dying in his garden not lost on me.

"Shut up," he snarled, his face a cold mask of indifference that was betrayed by the desperate, frantic dance of his shadows. They whipped around us as living things in agony, responding to the emotions he refused to display.

"Your opinions on my emotional state are irrelevant." His fingers shifted to the tattered fabric of my dress, pushing it aside to examine the wound. The sound he made upon seeing it wasn't human—a guttural snarl that echoed with power.

Frost spread farther, crackling across the ground, up the trunks of surrounding trees. A stone bench shattered, frozen so quickly that it exploded.

"Shadow blade," he muttered, his burning gaze traveling from the wound to my face. His expression remained deliberately cold, but his eyes—gods, his eyes—they burned with something beyond rage, beyond fear. "Tell me now, or I swear I will let you bleed."

The lie was so transparent I would have laughed if I could. His shadows were already working to contain my blood loss, his body positioned to shield me from further harm.

I could feel myself slipping, darkness encroaching farther on my vision. If I lost consciousness now, I might never wake up. With tremendous effort, I forced words past blood-flecked lips.

“Masked. Five of them.” I coughed, pain flaring anew. “Took…Melo.”

For just an instant, his mask slipped, raw anguish bleeding through before he forced it away.

This was not the cruel man who had bound me against my will—this was glimpses of the Hakan I'd known before, bleeding through the monster he'd become.

But that made it worse, not better. I could handle hating a complete villain.

What I couldn't handle was this constant shifting between the man I'd loved and the shadow lord who'd destroyed me, never knowing which version would surface next.

“The fox lives,” he said, voice flat but hands gentle as they worked to slow my bleeding. “I can still feel her presence in the gardens. They’ve bound her, but she lives.”

Relief weakened me further, and I felt myself sliding toward darkness.

“No.” Hakan’s command cut through my fading consciousness, no longer distant but openly desperate. “You will not die here, Ada. Not like this. Not by their hand.”

His palm hovered over my wound, shadows gathering around his fingers. I wanted to pull away, to escape whatever dark magic he intended, but I felt paralyzed. Could only watch as his shadows descended toward the place where my blood pulsed out with each weakening heartbeat.

Instead of the cold I expected, heat bloomed where his power touched me. Burning, cleansing heat that chased back the numbness, the creeping corruption of the assassin’s blade.

“This will hurt,” Hakan said, his tone once again deliberately detached, though his hands shook slightly. “Try not to scream. It’s annoying.”

Hold on to me , he commanded in my mind, belying his cruel words. Focus on my energy. Let it guide you.