Page 48 of Enchanted Shadows (The Enchanted Kingdom #6)

K essara led us to her room, and I was struck with how different things looked in Agria.

Her room did not feel like one, instead it felt built into the forest itself.

Long glass windows graced the walls with black framing between them, and curtains sat along the long sides of the room, but still overlooking the forest. She had a huge bed, a couch, a bookshelf, and fireplace, but all within the glass walls.

She had a little balcony overlooking the trees too, but not as big as the ones in Dra Skor, which were of course designed for shifters flying in and out.

We’d passed a few houses on the way to the castle that were all the same way: either built onto the forest floor around the trees like fancy huts, or built a level into the trees like this room, like fancy treehouse outlooks.

“We like to be able to call on the shadows,” Kessara explained. “Be close to nightfall.”

“Aren’t you nervous someone will watch you?”

She moved to her nightstand and hit a button on a small remote, the heavy curtains starting to close. She stopped them about halfway. “No. ”

Miles and Allen were outside our door, as well as a few others while they formed a gameplan for protection duty. It was going to prove more difficult in the castle made of shadows and glass.

I’d had enough of feeling sticky and hot, so I slipped my shirt off over my head.

“You could warn a girl,” Kessara muttered.

“You were right. I’m hot.” I tossed my shirt to a nearby chair.

“You always feel warm, even on days not spent in the forests of Agria.”

I eyeballed the floor. It looked so much cooler than the rest of me felt. I needed a cold shower. But first Kessara and I needed to get a plan for tomorrow so I could relay it to the team.

“So, tomorrow?” I asked, in a hurry to get to the shower.

“I should have expected this,” Kessara responded, heading to a small fridge in the corner of her room and pulling two ice cold waters from it, handing one of the glass bottles to me.

“They are playing nice. This is what they do. Get you to remember that they care about you, that you want to impress them, want their approval, and then they begin giving you tasks, making you earn their love.”

“Do you think they’ll give me a test?”

“Absolutely.” She took a drink of her water. “They’ll want to make sure you were worthy of marrying me. And our very public make out fest will likely be in the morning.”

“I’ll brush my teeth,” I promised.

She snorted a laugh and dropped her eyes to her water, still clearly bothered.

Realizing this was not going to be a quick discussion, I gave in to human urge and sprawled out on the floor.

“What are you doing?”

“I. Am. Hot.” The stone flooring beneath my back felt like I was laying on a sheet of ice. A sigh of relief may have escaped out of my lips .

She again laughed. “Come on then.”

I leaned up on my elbows from the floor. I had to admit, even from floor level, my wife was stunning. Her legs were toned from all the days spent training. She’d done her hair and makeup this morning, and while I looked like a sweaty dog, she still looked perfect. “What?”

She moved to the double doors, also framed in black, sliding one open. “It’s going to rain.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do. Let’s go get you cooled off.” She gestured with her head for me to follow.

I’d follow this woman into a damn monsoon if she kept looking at me the way she was. Like I was hers to mischief away with.

One moment I made it to her side, the next, I was doused in her cool shadows, moving, but unable to see where.

My magic flared, lighting up the darkness around me, and though I wasn’t touching Kessara, I could feel a phantom hand in mine, one made purely of shadow.

I looked at it twice. Nothing was there. And yet she was there all the same.

Just as soon as the shadows had wrapped around me, they fell away, and we were standing on the floor of the forest, a trail ahead of us.

“Where are we going?” I asked. “I probably should’ve grabbed Miles.”

“Where we are going will be safe,” she assured me. “Just trust me.”

So, I let her take my actual hand and lead me into the forest. A smarter man maybe would have worried, but I saw that glint in her eye which only promised fun.

She soon wrapped us in shadows again but kept her hand in mine.

It was alarming to keep alternating from being able to see, to pure darkness.

I tried to be a good sport about it. Things were going to get more tense tomorrow, all the way around.

So I needed to give her this. This moment to show me her land.

“Artem, Damek, and I used to play hide and seek where we are going. There were lots of... pockets to hide.”

I heard a rumble of thunder off in the distance, the petrichor easing in. She hadn’t been wrong about the rain.

She continued to move us there fast within her shadows.

I heard water and when we finally stopped moving, when she sent the shadows back to where they came from, my breath caught.

There were waterfalls. Plural. A few shorter ones, as well as a large one.

This area was a small clearing in the trees, so the moonlight shining down and the reflections from the water made it so we could see.

The tallest waterfall had to be seventy-five feet or more.

The others about twenty feet. The water fell and crashed into a small creek at the bottom, which thinned out and carried the water away.

I watched the water drop over the top, fearlessly rushing down to the bottom as if it were chasing its one great love.

“This is beautiful,” I told her. In the daylight with the sun, likely even more so.

“It’s my favorite place in Agria,” Kessara admitted.

“Not the castle?”

She shrugged. “I’ve always thought that place is a paradox to the saying that people who throw stones shouldn’t live in glass houses. Granted the palace glass is reinforced and not normal glass, but still.”

I let out a laugh.

“Now, let’s see how good you are at finding me, Commander.”

I grinned, up for the challenge. Though I was still sans shirt, the temperature out here had already dropped considerably, the cooler water from the falls helping even more.

It took me a full minute the first time. I was too distracted by the beauty of the scenery. She’d moved the pocket of shadows she hid in slightly, and that was when I saw the difference between her shadows and the darkness. True darkness still reflected some light, Kessara’s shadows ate all light.

I sent a tendril of my magic to wrap around her shadow haven and light it up where she hid around a tree. “Found you, Princess.”

She dropped the shadows. “Close your eyes and give me ten seconds to go again.”

“Really?” But before I could say a thing more, there were shadows over only my eyes. She’d shadowfolded me.

Humoring her, I counted to ten out loud. Once she allowed me to see again, this time I sent traces of my magic out all around me, seeking out the darkness. Where they struggled, there she’d be. I couldn’t penetrate her shadows, only light them up.

Sure enough, around a big boulder, I found a mass of darkness so brutal, the brightness of my small strand of green magic disappeared into it.

We went again; this time it had been a little harder, as she’d hidden up in a tree.

The thunder by this point was much louder. “Don’t you think we should head back?”

“One more,” she said on a sigh. Like she was disappointed to leave.

“One more,” I agreed.

She shadowfolded me again, and I was off to find her.

Except none of my earlier tricks worked.

She wasn’t in a tree. She wasn’t hiding around rocks.

She wasn’t back down the path. Everywhere I sent my magic out was perfectly seen.

Rolling lightning in sheet form was helping to light up the area, and even then, I could not find her.

I was about to try to talk to her, say something which would make her respond and give away her location, when I realized the only place I hadn’t checked was the falls themselves.

I sent out my magic to find out what was behind those falls. As it moved, my magic struggled behind one of the smaller falls, like it had to go around something, and had cut off again before becoming visible.

I quickly moved up a five-foot rock pile and onto a foot-wide ledge which ran behind the waterfalls.

Unafraid to get wet, I needed a shower anyway, I stepped up next to the shadows. I whispered, “Found you.”

She dropped the shadows so I could see her. “I let you. I could’ve moved when I sensed you heading this way, but I play fair.”

Another loud clap of thunder hit the sky. As if that was commanding the storm, the rain unleashed in a torrent around us. Other than being splashed by the spray from the waterfall, we were safe tucked into this little cavern behind the waterfalls.

She gave me a smile and then took off, running directly for the waterfall.

“Are you mad, Princess?” I called, even as I chased after her.

“Wrong Zavatari sibling,” she called back over her shoulder.

I wasn’t about to be shown up by my wife like that, princess or not, so I jumped through the waterfall after her.

The force of the water falling was brisk and far stronger than it looked as it stole my breath momentarily.

A weightlessness hit me, right before the freezing water at the bottom of the falls slapped me back into reality.

It was deep enough my feet only brushed the bottom, which I trusted Kessara to know, her having lived here her whole life.

But the rush of cold water instantly chilled my bones. It was heaven.

Rain ricocheted off the water while we swam until we could touch better. Laughing, hair plastered to her face by the water and rain, my wife had never looked so damn beautiful.

“Race you back up?” she called out, having to yell over the rain, and then the shadows were there, taking her back up.

I used my magic and formed stairs, charging straight up the waterfall and back to where we had been .

Just before I arrived, some shadows reached through the waterfall, grabbed me, and pulled me through. As water dripped and ran down my back, I used my magic to wrap around her and pull her right back, crashing her into me as my back hit a damp earthy wall of the cavern.

And as we collided, we did so for no one other than ourselves. This was not practice. This was not duty. Not a single excuse or logical reason could be found. There was no one but us out here, no castle spies, no witnesses other than the water falling around us.

Tucked into the cover behind that waterfall, we crossed that fine line we’d been riding.

The one between what was a ruse, and what was real.

Our lips met, our hands wandered, unable to ignore the pull we had to one another.

I wouldn’t allow it to go too far given all the following day promised, but I could hide away from life’s storms with her for at least a little while longer.