Page 1 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Before

Riva

W hen we said our goodbyes for the last time, the guys each held my gaze for a little longer than usual, as if they thought they could send some of their strength into me with their eyes.

The urge to hug all of them twined through my body, sharp as barbed wire when I resisted it. But I couldn’t give in to the longing.

We never made a big production of parting ways at the end of the day, and we couldn’t risk giving away that anything was unusual about this farewell. Not with the guardians watching: several in the gymnasium with us and others through the cameras mounted by the ceiling.

If we wanted to ensure that after tonight they could never separate us again, we had to be so careful. They had to believe that we believed we’d see each other in here tomorrow morning like always.

Who knew what they’d do to us if they realized what we were planning.

So far, the six of us had managed to act like everything was normal throughout today’s training and socializing session. It helped that it’d been one of the easy days, basic testing rather than torment.

I’d raced Zian around the track twice as fast as any of the others could have run until our breaths came ragged.

Debated with Jacob about which of the knives would make the most effective long-distance projectile.

Plotted a hypothetical course across mapped terrain with Dominic’s hesitant but thoughtful input.

Laughed at Andreas’s banter while he decided to teach himself how to juggle, with only partial success.

Dropped onto the sofa next to Griffin during a break, when he put on the TV show only he knew was my secret favorite.

The other guys said the soap opera was corny with all the relationships that kept rearranging themselves after the characters’ melodramatic outbursts, but Griffin pretended it was his favorite so that they’d heckle him instead of me. Because that was just how he was.

“You’ve got your tough-girl reputation to maintain, Riva,” he’d told me once with one of his soft but brilliant smiles when I’d tried to say he didn’t have to take the heat. “I’m allowed to be the sappy one.”

But despite all our efforts, on the inside today’s session didn’t feel normal to me at all. The knowledge of what we were planning to do tonight weighed on my shoulders like a backpack full of bricks. Heavier bricks than any I’d actually carried before.

Our escape depended on me—on that toughness Griffin had talked about.

The weight became almost suffocating when I waved to the guys as the guardians escorted me and Griffin out first.

Andreas winked at me. “See you tomorrow, Tink.” The silly nickname—born after we’d first watched Peter Pan as little kids and Drey had declared me as tiny as Tinkerbell—didn’t do much to reassure me.

But then Zian mouthed the words that had become our mantra over the years as we’d prepared for this moment: We are blood .

With that phrase resonating through my body alongside my pulse, I walked out with my chin up.

Everything depended on me, but we were in it together. We were entwined by the strange powers that were ours alone and the eerie substance that ran through our veins.

The guardians always took Griffin and me first because our rooms were on the highest floor of the underground complex. In hushed conversations, the six of us had determined that Andreas and Dominic were one level below, and Jacob and Zian the level below that.

Beneath them were the training rooms we were leaving now. We had no idea how much farther down the facility might reach beyond that.

Sometimes I pictured it as a vast pit in the earth sinking down, down, down, all the way to the molten core some people called Hell. The image seemed fitting.

Hell seemed like exactly the word for the throbbing strain that would ripple through my body on the days they prodded my unearthly strength with their strange machines. For the sickening sight of the prop animals—and sometimes people—they tortured in front of me to gauge my reactions.

For the things they did to the guys in their own solo sessions that left them with anguish etched on their faces.

They probably thought they’d been kind to us today instead of just not totally horrific.

Even for a simple trip back to our rooms, the guardians always made sure to outnumber us. Four of them strode along in a ring around Griffin and me, the harsh artificial light glancing off their weird metal helmets and vests.

I sucked a little air in through my mouth, tasting and smelling it at the same time. The four today gave off pheromones with a faint tang of nervousness, but nothing extreme.

They weren’t anywhere near as worried about what we could do as they probably should have been.

They didn’t know I could now run even faster than I had in my race with Zian today. Or that the guy walking alongside me could not only pick up on other people’s emotions but throw his own at them.

We’d learned to hide new talents as they emerged as much as we could during their brutal evaluations. And as long as our jailers didn’t discover those talents in their tests, they wouldn’t be guarding against them.

We marched up the blank white stairwell into a blank white hall to the blank white doors of what might as well have been prison cells. The guardians opened our doors across the hall from each other with a blue keycard.

Griffin raised his hand to my cheek and gave one of the silvery strands that’d slipped free from my braid a gentle tug. When we were little, he’d told me the pale streaks of hair falling over the slate-gray underneath looked like moonlight streaming through the night.

He smiled at me, a soft glint lighting in his sky-blue eyes. “Sleep well, Moonbeam.”

“You too, Emo Boy,” I retorted, and treasured the peal of his laugh as the door shut between us.

On the small table across from my bed, I found my dinner waiting: roast chicken leg, mashed potatoes, boiled carrots. I shoveled it down my throat without processing the flavor. It wasn’t like there was a whole lot to miss anyway.

To pass the time afterward, I tapped the controls on the panel over the table to turn on the music channel I liked best. Lush melodies and thumping beats swept through the room.

Normally I’d have swayed along with them, maybe even gotten to my feet and let my whole body move with the music the way I never did when the guys could see me. I probably looked ridiculous when I danced, but I didn’t care if I was on my own. It felt good.

It was one of the few specks of goodness I could cling on to in this place when I was alone.

But tonight I was too wound up to sink into the music. And if the guardians were watching from their cameras, my tension would become obvious the more I moved.

I couldn’t let anything raise their suspicions.

Instead, I flopped down on my bed to simply listen. My hand rose to the pendant that rested against my sternum.

Griffin had brought pewter necklaces back for all of us one of the first times he’d gone on a solo mission in the wider world, using the cash the guardians had given him. I couldn’t imagine they’d intended it for that purpose, but for whatever reason, they’d let us keep the gifts.

Maybe that tiny act of generosity made them feel better about everything else they inflicted on us.

My fingers clicked apart the metal cat from the sculpted ball of yarn it was curled around and then snapped them back into place on their rolling joint.

Click. Snap. Click. Snap.

The rhythm settled my nerves just a little bit. I closed my eyes as if I were tired from today’s workout, though I hadn’t pushed myself anywhere close to my real limits.

One song bled into the next until the lights went out. In the darkness, I kept my eyes closed and pretended to sleep. But my thoughts only got louder.

What would it be like, out in the wider world without the guardians controlling our every movement, jabbing and zapping us if we resisted—or just because they felt like it?

I’d gotten a taste of freedom on my own missions, but those had always been alone. Alone, and knowing that if I disobeyed my orders, the guys I’d left behind here at the facility would pay for my defiance.

Once we were out there and free… could I let them all know how I felt about them? All the longings and hungers that were so much more secret than what TV shows I liked or how I danced?

Griffin knew, because Griffin could absorb emotions like I inhaled stress chemicals. We’d never talked about it openly, but sometimes when a flash of desire or a pang of affection hit me around the other guys, he’d catch my eye and give me a subtle nod, as if to tell me it was all right.

“We’re blood, remember?” he’d assured me once, without ever saying exactly what he was talking about. “We’re going to be here for each other in every way. It’s better if no one’s left out. The other guys will see it that way too.”

Could he really be so sure about that? There were definitely times when I got into a friendly bickering match with Jacob and thought there was more than just passion for the debate flaring in his eyes.

Or when I wrestled with Zian and his breath seemed to hitch at the exact same time mine did as our bodies collided.

When Dominic scooted just a little closer to me while we sat together in companionable silence. When Andreas’s gaze lingered on my lips while he paid me a compliment I’d otherwise have taken as teasing.

But that didn’t mean they’d be okay with me wanting all of them. If soap operas had taught me anything, it was how pissed off people could get when someone wanted to kiss more than one dude at the same time.

I shoved away the images my mind had conjured. We could figure out the rest once we had the space to do it, without guardians monitoring and dictating our every move.

After a while, the music shut off too. That meant it was really late. I willed myself not to tense up, to keep lying there in fake slumber.