Page 12

CHAPTER 12

VOW

MALPHAS

N o matter how many years I live in Nuit, I will never get used to the skulls that line the edge of Sombra’s shadows just outside of our village.

A near-impenetrable wall of darkness, not even the hunters walk too far inside of them. To hunt the prey beasts that feed our village, they don’t have to. Only the predators—like the arkoda or the cambroga—live further inside. Same as those in Sombra who have gone fully demonic, turning to the dark before they end their own existence.

The horned skulls are all that remains of those who did. Over the centuries, Duke Haures has even sentenced those that betrayed him to the lost shadows. Some of these remains belong to the demons he executed. Others are demons who didn’t just fade away, but sought out a quicker and more brutal end.

Sometimes, immortality isn’t a promise. Forever can be a threat. Over my first millennium, I existed with the hope that I would someday find my one true mate. How long would I have simply endured for the idea of the female who might be mine? Ten centuries? Twenty? The doppelseers passed thirty before they claimed Tandy… would I have grown tired of the monotony and ended up just another skull on the edge of the ash fields?

I don’t know. I can’t say. But as I ignore the skulls, focusing instead on what Dagon has found, I realize it doesn’t matter. Forever has become something that I will cling to with my claws.

But how can I when it seems that it’s slipping through my fingers like ash? Some unknown male snuck into our home . He took our child. My mate’s anguished cry broke my heart; her tears scald me more than the heated rain falling from the sky.

In all my years, I’ve only seen a true rain fall in Nuit three times: once while I was a young demon; two days ago when Alana cried; and now. Only this time it isn’t a fluke. What started as a drizzle—a human word I’m familiar with from my time on Earth—has become more insistent, closer to the threatening downpour from the other day. It hisses and spits and splashes as it finds a patch of lava beneath the ash. Minutes pass—horrible, terrible minutes where my child is missing, and I’m helpless to do anything right now other than chase after her—and the rain doesn’t stop.

Just like the prophecy foretold, the fires of Sombra are being dampened by the unusual water, the rain continuing to fall even as anger has seemingly dried my mate’s eyes.

She is glaring at the print Dagon found in the muddy ash. Because of the drizzle, the ground has left evidence of the male who snuck out through the back of our house with our hopefully slumbering babe; though the rain tells us it was most likely otherwise. Dagon followed them here, to the edge of the shadows, and is quiet as he waits for her to come to the same conclusion that he already has about the owner of these footsteps.

A male. A human male.

This unknown human male is the only one who could have made these footprints. First of all, they are from shoes, something more Sombra demons don’t bother with. Large, flat boots that dug deep into the dirt as though the male was heavy enough to sink into the ground. A Sombra demon would shift to their shadows if attempting to be stealthy; we wouldn’t leave prints at all.

More than that, I can smell him.

The scent is distinctly human, and I agree that he must be a male. There’s a darkness to his scent, though, and he stinks of despair and terror and, at the same time, hope .

What does that mean? I don’t know, and neither does Dagon.

As for Shannon?—

“You’re sure?” my mate asks at last, her voice shaky, her emotions raw. She may have my essence, but her human nose is nowhere near as powerful as a Sombra demon’s so I’m not surprised she doubts Dagon. “A guy? A human guy? Not a woman?” She shudders out a breath. “It can’t be a chick. What the hell am I saying? That Kennedy took Alana? Or Billie? No.”

“I can promise you that it wasn’t Sierra, either, as the red moon kept my mate and I too busy to even leave Glaine’s home,” Dagon confirms. “Sammael and his mate went to stay with the mage. Even if these prints didn’t suggest a human male, all of the human females in Sombra are bonded. The red moon would’ve left them too distracted to do this.”

Distracted…

“ Fuck being distracted. I should’ve known.” Shannon slaps her hand down on the wet ash angrily, spraying it over our feet. “My daughter was in danger. I should’ve known .”

I wish I had. To protect Alana, to save Shannon from suffering, knowing that someone has stolen our spawn…

Dagon steps out of the way of her justified anger. “If you had ever experienced mate sickness, you would know that sometimes the gods make these choices for us.”

“Your gods, maybe,” retorts Shannon. “Not mine. Not Mal’s. The gods who are looking out for us would never want us to get laid so badly that they’d risk our baby.” She rubs the wet ash on the shadow coverings I wove for her before rising up from her couch. The way her ridge-free brow furrows… my strong mate has forced back the worst of her fear in favor of planning her next move. “This is the last print, right? And you found the first one outside the back of our house?”

That’s what Dagon explained to us as he led Shannon and me to the outskirts of Nuit. Just in case, Apollyon and Glaine were going house to house, seeing if any other villagers could tell us where Alana was, while Loki and Sammael—the only two mages in our clan—were using their magic to locate our spawn.

As a hunter, Dagon used his skill to track the male responsible for taking Alana. I had hoped that, when he brought us to the edge of shadows, lined by the skulls… I had hoped that he left Nuit, heading for a neighboring village.

But as Shannon peers at the dark shadows with a clever eye, I suddenly understand that it won’t be as easy as chasing after him before he can join another demon clan.

Whether or not Dagon’s human mate is as crafty as mine, he doesn’t understand the harm in telling Shannon, “Yes. And every indication is that he brought your spawn into the shadows with him.”

Dagon’s Sierra is with spawn now. If anyone ever threatened their child, the hunter would do whatever it took to get her back—just like I shall.

I am an artist, yes. But I’ve also learned from Nox, trained with some of the other hunters in Nuit, and am filled with Shannon’s essence. That’s why, when Dagon admits that the male brought Alana with him into the inky black shadows, I expect Shannon to march right toward them.

She does. Without the sneaks she instructed Loki to conjure for her, without any other covering than my shadows, my wee human mate is careful to avoid the skulls even as she heads for the wall of shadows at the end of Nuit.

My mate is connected to me, through our essence exchange, our bond, and the shadows I gave her so that she wasn’t walking around the village square completely bare. Even then, she seems surprised when I dash in front of her, holding up my hands, blocking her from marching straight into the darkest shadows in our realm.

Shannon recovers quickly. Fisting her hands on her hips, she glares up at me. “Every minute we’re dicking around out here is another minute some whack job has Alana. I can’t let that happen, Mal. I’m going to get her. If you guys don’t want to come, that’s fine. I’ll go by myself.”

“You know I will follow you anywhere?—”

“Then what are you waiting for? Chop chop. Let’s fucking go.”

I glance at Dagon.

He shakes his head, red eyes blazing back at me.

He doesn’t think Shannon should go into the shadows. Of course not. When this is the place where Sombra demons come to die… it scares the essence out of me to think of my Shannon getting lost in the dark.

But we can’t abandon Alana, either?—

Taking my quiet as my agreement, she darts around me. My heart leaps as I close my arms around her. I’m in my solid form. I nearly swallow her whole in my embrace, but I can’t just let her go. If I do, I’ll never see her again.

I know it down to my bones. At the very least, we go together. But if we can go prepared… whoever stole our spawn won’t stand a chance.

I want to explain that to my mate. However, before I can, she wiggles in my hold. “Mal. What are you… no. I have to get her!”

“We will,” I promise.

“Then let me go. I told you. We’re wasting time here!”

“Shannon,” rumbles Dagon. “You cannot go on your own.”

“You think I’m an idiot? I know that. And I’m not going on my own. I have Malphas. My very own goddamn shadow. He’s coming with me. Right, Mal?” Turning in my hold, her eyes search my face, head tilted up so that she can meet mine even as the rain tracks down her cheeks. Rain… or are those tears? “Babe? We’re not going to just stand here and let him have her. Right?”

I look over Shannon’s head, meeting Dagon’s flat stare again.

He grits his teeth, upper fangs digging into his flesh. Like me, he shifted to his solid form when the sensation of the rain falling through our shadows became too much to bear. “You don’t know what you’re asking. I led a human female into the shadows once. We nearly didn’t survive the journey.”

Dagon is the new target of Shannon’s pointed stare. “But did you die?” she demands.

His expression turns confused. “I am a Sombra demon. I am immortal. The shadows nearly ended me… but here I stand before you.”

“Exactly! That’s my point. You’re not dead. You made it out.”

“Well, yes?—”

“What about the human?” Shannon interrupts. “She made it out, too. That’s what you said. We nearly didn’t survive. If she could do it, so can I.”

Dagon’s fierce red eyes shadow over. “Susanna is the reason I survived. She saved my life in the shadows.”

Shannon’s vindication slams into me. “See? Wait— hang on. Susanna? Like, the duke’s mate?”

“Yes.”

“Then there you go. If she survived whatever is in there, why can’t I? And if I can’t? At least I died trying to get my baby back.”

Every ounce of me… every ounce of who Malphas was, who he is, and who he’s become since I took Shannon Crewes’s essence and willingly gifted her mine… every last part of me wants to bellow at the idea that there could ever be another moment in time when I existed but Shannon didn’t. A thousand years waiting for her was enough. I can’t ever go back to that.

And yet… I suddenly understand that, if I stop her from going after the male who stole Alana… she might still exist, but she’ll never be my Shannon again.

There is only one thing to do.

“You need coverings,” I tell her. “More than my shadows since they might not hold inside of there. For your body. For your feet. And one of Loki’s light spells to help guide our path. Once we have those?—”

“You’ll let me go after Alana?”

“No, my mate,” I say before following with a vow with as much solemnity as I had the night I made my mate’s promise to my Shannon: “I will go with you to find our daughter.”

“We’ll go together? Really?”

Her hope burns inside of me, even hotter than the rain scalding my back. And the idea that she might have doubted her mate…

I tuck my pointer finger under her chin, lifting her face again so she can see the promise in mine. “We will find her. We will bring her home again. I vow it.”

And nothing will stop us.