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B oth our heads snapped up when the shadows returned. Shifting agitatedly in front of us with sudden urgency.

“Remnant?” I growled warily, wrapping my arms around her protectively.

“Emon.” She whispered, a tinge of fear in her voice. “I don’t have control of them again. They are not listening to me.”

Their stormy darkness deepened and swirled faster around us.

Then I heard it.

A soft whisper…then multiple. Each one repeating and interrupting the other. So soft that I strained to hear it appropriately.

“Do you hear that?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she breathed. “The shadows are speaking.”

Subtly, I moved to place myself in front of her and the whispering shadows. “They fucking speak?”

She rubbed at her temples and shook her head. “They have only done it once before…in Morta.”

A chill ran down my spine and my claws unleashed. Cocking my head to the side, I listened. “Mistake. They are saying… mistake ?”

The darkness swirled faster and their whispers grew louder, then multiple voices all at once, hurried, rushed, urgent.

Recognition and fear bled into my soulmate's emerald green eyes as if she were frozen in time. “Mistake. Take. She will take more.” She breathed.

“Deirdre.” I snarled harshly.

“Riella.” Remnant whispered.

Together we dove off the bed of clouds, landing on the floor that lit up brilliantly in rainbow hues over our naked bodies.

“Dress us!” Remnant commanded and the cave obliged.

Instantly we were both clothed and equipped with weapons. A blade at Remnant’s back with knives on her hips, and sheathed at the side of my fitted pants, twin curved blades rested.

I pointed at her. “I am amending our agreement. No more using power of any kind to dress me.”

Her smile did not reach her eyes, still watching the swirling agitated shadows with weariness. “Noted.”

Tilting her chin to look up at me I stared into her beautiful emerald eyes. So many nights, I had dreamed about the way they would look when I first saw them, but with Remnant every time was a first. Every time I drowned in them.

“This is a trap.” I growled low.

A slight nod of agreement. “Yes.”

Unable to resist, I swept back the dark strands of her hair to cup her face, running my thumb over her cheek. “Together. We do this together, little umbra.”

Her hands shook as they reached up and covered my own. “Together.” She said resolutely before looking up at the hovering shadows. “Take us to where we need to go.”

The shadows descended, spiraling in a black funnel while their whispers grew to pulsating hisses, repeating one word over and over again.

Take…take…take…take…take.

I shivered at the feel of their infinite darkness, there was no end with the shadows, to be taken by them fully was to live a life as an empty shell .

Then it all stopped.

The shadows fell away like a slow falling curtain and I blinked rapidly against the sunlight that highlighted my newest horror.

Jarquinn, the master healer and the fae that was like a second father to me, hung suspended in the middle of the room, his normal ancient blue eyes were saturated red, his mouth gaped open in a silent scream, and his limbs were contorted unnaturally around him.

Possessed. He was being possessed by the Sanguine.

And in front of the healer, barely able to contain my shock, my father stood defensively guarding the other half of my heart—our daughter, our very awake daughter.

When her small cherub face looked up at me with gorgeous swirling eyes of gold and emerald, I almost collapsed to my knees.

Nothing prepared me for this. This moment. Time stopped as we stared at one another despite the chaos in the room. Father and daughter…

“Riella.” Remnant breathed behind me, stepping cautiously towards her.

“Remnant!” She cried out, her arms reaching out to my soulmate with terror in her eyes, before she collapsed with a sob into Remnant’s arms.

Our eyes met over our child's dark hair and Remnant nodded with what she saw in mine.

Stepping cautiously forward, I stood next to my father who had not bothered to turn around, having sensed our bond the moment I stepped through the shadows.

“Father. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Son.” My father rumbled without taking his focus off the horrific figure of the master healer in front of us. “I didn’t expect to be here. The shadows called to me, the next thing I knew, I was here.”

I grunted and palmed my swords, my claws tapping against the metal, watching the healer. My heart was sinking into the pit of my stomach. “What do we know?”

My father snarled, his eyes never leaving the possessed healer. “It’s the Sanguine possessing him. There has been no movement, no words but I’ve seen the likes of it during the blood wars many times. There may not be a way for him to come back from this.”

His suspicion was verified when a fierce series of roars and vicious clawing of a leopard slamming at the door broke the morbid silence. Quinn had succumbed to bloodlust, already sensing his father was losing his fight and dying through their bond.

“Fuck.” I sighed, swallowing down my own grief and closing my eyes against the keening cries of the shifter on the other side of the door. Yet Jarquinn’s wards, the ones I demanded to keep everyone out, still held strong.

Opening my eyes again, I glanced back towards Remnant, staring at the way Riella was wrapped in shadows of black armor. Her swirling gold emerald gaze studied me curiously in her fear and I knew then she had heard every word I spoke to her while she slept.

Dragging my gaze back up to Remnant, I saw her slowly backing both of them up to the open window. Pain constricted in my chest and I gritted my teeth, staring at Remnant’s eyes full of tears.

I nodded my understanding.

Remnant would save Riella above all else. Our daughter’s safety was what mattered the most right now, but that didn’t stop the complete devastation I now felt at being separated from the two things I loved most in this world.

“I love you. Both of you.” I threaded the words deep into my soulmate bond and the connection I felt to my little cub.

“If this is your sorry excuse for a goodbye, don’t bother shifter, I’ll tell you I love you when we walk out of this goddess damn mess together just like you said we would. Together.” Remnant’s voice blasted in my head.

I smiled sadly back at her. I wasn’t even shocked that our bond had strengthened enough for her to communicate with me. There was no fae more powerful than my soulmate.

“That makes two of us, fairy boy.” My panther growled, coming out of his self hibernation.

“This doesn't fucking look good, cat.”

“As you always love to say, Daemon Ash Strider…we’ve been through worse.”

Before I could make a complete fool of myself by saying something truly sentimental to the being that drove me half mad my entire life, a deep ominous cackle came from the suspended twisted form of the master healer, the undertone of the voice I knew well enough.

Deirdre had come and she was playing her sick games again .

“Well, well, well. How very quaint, father and son kings together again, and my former lover—all trembling before me as it should have always been.”

I narrowed my eyes on the way Jar’s red gaze searched the room, landing on everything and nothing at the same time.

“Where oh where could my golden one be…I’ve so missed you growling for me, shifter king.”

I held my hand up to prevent the others from speaking and shot through the soulmate bond. “Say nothing, little umbra. No matter what. I suspect she can only hear us, not see us.”

I stepped forward loudly and red eyes latched on the sound of my steps, just as I had anticipated. “Alas, there was nothing I missed about you, Deirdre, or shall I call you the Blood Witch now?”

Jarquinn-Deirdre cackled again and I braced against the diseased feel of the Sanguine power pulsing through the room.

“I prefer Blood Goddess now.” The sickening sound of the healer’s body breaking filled the hushed space followed by the anguished roaring of the leopard on the other side of the door.

“The power of blood, the Sanguine, allows me to control anything and everything. You were clever to trap me here shifter, but it only allowed me to grow more powerful. Look how I make your powerful ancient dance for me!”

“Your pathetic paltry tricks don't make you a goddess, Deirdre. It just confirms you’re still a psychotic bitch.”

“Careful, my golden king.” The former Queen of Faerie warned from Jarquinn’s lips. “I can still make your healer suffer so much more than just this pain…perhaps using him to slice open his own son’s throat beyond that door will be needed. His incessant mewling is grating on my nerves.”

The roars beyond the doors suddenly changed to squealing shrieks as Deirdre flexed her powers beyond the doorway for demonstration. I had no fucking idea how she was doing it, but it ended now.

“Stop this at once!” I stepped forward again, my entire body shaking with rage. “Why have you come here? What do you want?”

“What I want!” The twisted creature hissed, the Sanguine power pulsed within the room. “What I want is what was stolen from me! What I want is what should have been mine! And I will take it back!”

“Emon! ”

I spun with a growl when Remnant cried out, reaching out to her shadows with concentration, attempting to wield them back to her as they were being dragged across the floor, no longer protecting our child.

They sputtered and churned at the wooden floor, attempting to crawl back towards us, even gripping onto my booted feet.

I reached for them but my hands just fell through their smokey darkness before they snapped up around Jarquinn’s body.

Take… the shadows whispered one last time.

“I don’t have control of them.” Remnant cried softly.

“That’s because I control them, Remi darling. They are mine now and soon this city will be too! I will use them to destroy it, just like you did to mine.” Screeched Jarquinn-Deirdre.

“No.” Remnant whispered wide eyed as her shadows slowly bled from black to a deep burgundy red.

“Blood will run on the darkened moons.” Ethereal hissed and my own blood went cold.

If Deirdre gained the power of the shadows…then there would be nothing left of Finlandia, just like the City of Light.

Nothing could match that kind of power…nothing but mine but it was too violent, too unstable.

“Release it!” Roared the panther, but it was already too late.

The shadows had succumbed to the Sanguine.

Before we could react, the burgundy tendrils slammed into both my father and I, sending us across the room like annoying insects instead of the full bodied shifters we were.

Grunting, I hit the wall hard, white plaster raining down around me.

My father yanked me upright from the wreckage before more of the wall came tumbling down.

I blinked, peering through the dusty sunlight to see my soulmate at the window and I could hear the faint sound of Penina’s voice calling to her.

Lifting Riella into her arms, Remnant gave our daughter a soft kiss on her forehead, dropping a necklace with an indigo scale over her neck before tossing her into the street below.

Slowly, with devastation in her eyes, my soulmate turned back into the room, the ringing sound of her sword being drawn sending a pit of dread deep into my stomach.

“Remnant, no!”

Roaring, I sprung forward out of my dazed stupor to stop her and to send her stubborn ass through that window myself, but again my father and I were slammed back into the wall, this time fully restrained by the red shadows.

I roared when my fathers eyes rolled in the back of his head and he slumped in their hold, losing consciousness.

“Release me! Release me you fool!” Ethereal clawed outward and I struggled to hold the walls, the power inside of me churning.

Not enough. Never enough . This was not happening again. Red shadows sprung forward and a small gasp escaped my soulmate's lips when they penetrated through her body, extending out of her back and lifting her to eye level with the possessed master healer.

“Stop this!” I roared and the walls rattled with my anguish.

“I will take everything from you Daemon Ash Strider—!” Another burgundy shadow sprung forth, this time impaling Remnant through the chest. So fucking close to her heart. I stared, horrified when my soulmate’s sword slipped from her fingers and clattered harshly to the floor.

My cries of agony rattled the entire fucking city.

Emerald green eyes met mine.

“No!” I screamed as pure unfiltered power, so gold it was white, released from deep inside me and blinded me from the outside in.

This world was going to fucking burn.