Page 13

CHAPTER 13

FARIPOZ

SHANNON

T he shadows.

Why did it have to be in the shadows?

That’s all Sombra is. Fire and magic and black shadows everywhere you look. The ash under our feet is a mix of black, white, red, and grey, while the lava pools add shades of orange to the color scheme. In other parts of the realm—the capital city, in particular—you can see different colors. Mavro is blue, for example, and full of flowers that would turn to ash in a village like ours.

I always knew that Nuit is one of the furthest villages on the outskirts of Sombra. We live here because it’s been Mal’s home for more than a thousand years. While some demons move from clan to clan—or even to other demon realms—my kindhearted, gentle demon artist had a loyalty to where he was born.

But the edge of Sombra’s shadows …

Malphas wants to protect me. He always does, but I see it now. In obvious ways, like how he physically moves himself to keep me from running right into the shadows, but in more subtle actions, like the way he keeps nudging any of the demon skulls surrounding us deeper into the ash so that I don’t see them.

As if I can miss them.

I know what this is. This deep, dark, impossibly black wall of shadows whose entire existence is a warning to the villagers that live within its reach. It’s not just the beginning of the end of the world. It’s a place that no sane demon can survive for long.

It’s a place they go to die .

After hearing the stories from Kennedy about her time in there with a fully demonic Loki, I told myself that I’d never go inside of the shadows myself. There’s no reason for me to. I’m not a hunter, and Mal’s eyes have never gone white; a sure sign that a demon has lost all their control. Even hunters rarely go more than a few steps inside. The prey beasts that they capture for the village lurk on the edges on purpose, as though even they are trying to escape what’s inside of the shadows.

But some unknown human dick kidnapped Alana. For whatever reasons he had—whoever the hell he is— he crept into our house through the back while Mal and me were indisposed, stole my daughter, and headed right toward the shadows. Dagon swears it. He points out all the bootprints he found that back up his theory, and by the time he’s done, I realize I don’t care. He says some guy brought Alana into the shadows with him. Fine. Then that’s where I’m going.

I thought that Mal would be right beside me. He’s my mate. Though, as a Sombra demon, he insists on serving as my shadow, when it comes to our relationship, we go together. After the misstep he made, hiding Duke Haures’s visits whether he had the best of intentions or not, I never thought he’d do something like this again.

But he did. He stopped me, and though I know I’ll never turn on my one true love, in that moment, I swore I felt my heart crack.

Malphas is the only one I can truly trust. The only one who understands what I’m going through. Not only because he has my essence and I have his, either. But because this is his daughter who’s been taken, too, and he wants her returned to us at desperately as I do.

I know that. To the marrows of my bones, I believe that… and that’s why I nearly broke to think he would rather let someone run off with our child rather than face the shadows.

I was right. I never should’ve doubted my mate, even if the moment was a fleeting one. After all, Mal was right. I needed to be prepared. Shoes. I needed shoes. Real clothing. We don’t know what kind of magic works in the thick, heavy shadows, but between Loki and Sammael, I have two mages in Nuit who might be able to help us.

So, against my better judgment, I hurry back to the house to get everything we might need. Malphas runs with me, and I can tell from the tightness of his muscles that he honestly expected me to ignore him and possibly sacrifice myself by facing the shadows myself before I was ready.

I send pure love down our bond. Even if it’s just the two of us against the rest of the world, if I know one thing, it’s this: Mal will always, always do what he thinks it’s best for me. I’m his mate. Sometimes, I need to let him.

We go in through the back. Within minutes, I’ve pulled on a fresh change of clothes. I throw my hair up in a ponytail, then stab my feet into a pair of sneakers. Mal tugs on a pair of actual tanned leathers—and if I wasn’t in the middle of a nervous fucking breakdown, I might muse on what kind of shadow animal did the tanners use to create pants like that—and keeps the rest of him bare.

Together, we make the mistake of heading out through the front. And maybe it’s not a mistake—maybe, like everyone else that happens in the shadows, it was meant to be—because, waiting for us outside of our home, is about half of the village.

It’s still raining. Enough of it falls that, no matter how hot Sombra is, they’re… if not wet, at least damp. Malphas told me that the rain stings against a demon’s skin. It’s not all that pleasant for a human, either.

And, yet, here they all are. A lump lodges in my throat. I swallow it roughly.

Because, nearest to the porch, I see my friends and their mates. Kennedy and Billie, Sierra and Hope, even Tandy… they’re all here, offering their support while also waiting for me to tell them what the hell has been going on since my scream broke the quiet earlier.

I firm my jaw. Raising my voice, I say, “Dagon followed tracks into the shadows at the end of Nuit. Of Sombra. I don’t know who did it, but some guy… a human guy… took Alana. He took my baby . I’m going in there and I’m getting her back.”

I don’t have time for questions. I’ve given an update, and every moment I’m in Nuit, that’s a moment that I don’t have Alana back in my arms.

Grasping for Malphas’s hand, craving that connection, needing it, I’m ready to start dashing back to the edge of the shadows when someone calls out to me.

“I’m coming with you.”

I would know that voice anywhere. From the friendly greetings when I’d stop in at Turn the Page after my trip to the Beanery, to all the days we sat talking in the EL, watching over Alana, marveling over our lives and our mates… I know that voice.

And I know exactly why she makes that offer: because she loves my daughter as her own, just as she loves me as her friend. Of course Kennedy would offer.

I have to refuse. I have to.

“What? No. Ken, no. It won’t be safe.”

“I know. Believe me, I know. But you’ve never been in there before. I have.”

“Yeah, but?—”

“No buts. Loki will come with us. He spent over a hundred years in those terrible shadows. He’ll help, too. Won’t you?”

She turns to her mate, looking up at him through the fringe of her lashes. With her soft honey-blonde hair and heart-shaped face, I can’t imagine anyone telling her no. Especially not her mate… but he has to. She’s super pregnant. He can’t risk her?—

“Of course, I will, my heart,” grates Loki. “I have magic now, and the experience of spending long years in the dark. If you want to join the hunt, I will join it alongside you.”

“Hang on. Hunt?” I echo. “I’m not hunting?—”

“But we are,” murmurs Mal, squeezing my fingers. “We are hunting the ruthless human who might hurt our innocent spawn. Hunting him is exactly what we must do.”

He’s right. Obviously, he’s right.

And though Loki is a born mage, with the tell-tale purple eyes, a hundred years as a lost demon has turned him into an even more ruthless hunter. That can help us. So can his magic. I’d let Loki join us in a heartbeat, but Kennedy… I can’t. She’s so close to having her own child?—

As though she knows exactly what I’m thinking, she says, “You would do it for me. If it were my baby… I know you would, Shannon.”

She’s right, too.

“Okay.” I give in if only because I know, no matter what, Loki will put Kennedy’s safety before anything else. So long as he’s with her, she’s untouchable. I one hundred percent believe that. “But only if you’re ready. I’m leaving now.”

“We’re coming with you, too,” adds Billie, gesturing at her chest, then at Glaine’s. “We’ve survived the shadows before. Glaine has his sword.”

“I also have Duke Haures’s orders to see that the spawn is unharmed while I am in Nuit,” Glaine says, shocking the shit out of me.

Then again, maybe that revelation shouldn’t be so surprising. After all, Alana is supposedly the child of a prophecy that might lead to the end of this world as we know it. Who knows what would happen if she was harmed or… or worse … before the prophecy came to pass?

No. No . Nothing will happen to her because, instead of waiting for someone else to offer to come with us, I start tugging Mal away from the house. If they want to come, come. Whatever. The more the freaking merrier at this point, so long as they’re willing to help me get my daughter back.

I get two steps before I discover that Glaine’s pronouncement isn’t the biggest shock I’ve gotten in the last couple of seconds—or that I need to be careful what I wish for.

Otherwise, I just might get it.

The more the merrier…

“The human women must all accompany the first,” intones Lucian, his voice deep and his words clear.

The first? Does he mean Alana, or me? Because I’m not the first. That’s Susanna… unless it’s something else he’s referring to. Like, oh, being the first human woman to procreate with a Sombra demon?

Tandy lays her arm on the crook of Lucian’s elbow. “Even me?”

His tone turns regretful even as he says, “Yes. Even you, dear one. Your mates are, of course, welcome to join you. Damien and I will be there to keep Tandy safe from that which might hunt us in return.”

Hope looks up at Sammael. “I’ve been in there before. It was terrifying, but I was alone.”

“And I was in chains, doing everything I could to get back to you. Now you’ll never be alone, Hope. We cannot defy the doppelseers. You’ll go, and I’ll go with you.”

Sierra shrugs. “Well, count me in. You, too?”

Dagon tucks his mate against his side, red eyes blazing out of his solid face. A hint of water dots his ridged brow. His long hair is shoved behind him as he nods. “I know what the bootprints belonging to the human look like. I don’t like the idea of you going in there with our spawn, but I would’ve offered my help in tracking either way. Now I can keep you safe and out of this blasted rain at the same time.”

There’s that lump in my throat again. Shit. I’m getting emotional again and for a totally different reason now. I… I don’t know what to say. Sure, Lucian made it clear that we have to go—and I can only imagine what it is he has seen that made him know that he had to risk the mate he waited three thousand years for alongside his twin—but even if he hadn’t… they would’ve come. I know it.

We’re our own clan within a clan. Alana being born without shadows of her own doesn’t mean a damn thing to them. Neither does her being the child of the prophecy… they want to help her because she’s an innocent child, and because she’s mine and Mal’s.

And I will never, ever forget it.

As a group, Dagon takes us back the way we came. I have to hold back, resisting the urge to take off so that I can feel like I’m doing something . It’s only as we’re back among the bleached skulls and the damp ash that I realize that running into the shadow is about as far as my plan goes.

I’m okay with it, but I have twelve other people—humans and demons—that I feel responsible for. We need a plan.

And, as strange as it seems, we get one from the usually quiet, always prophetic second doppelseer.

Speaking for the first time all day, Damien suddenly intones softly, “Float on the air, lead the way.”

Huh?

Obviously, his twin has some idea what Damiens means. While I’m confused as hell, Lucian sucks in a breath as he follows his brother’s gaze somewhere behind the rest of us. “Faripoz.”

I turn, doing a double-take when I notice the glowing white… shit. I don’t know what it is. It looks like the outline of a winged thing , the striking glow surrounding it the only way to tell its shadows apart from the impenetrable black shadows at the end of Sombra.

It flutters, the wings moving so quickly it’s hard to make out its shape, but as the word ‘flutter’ pops in my worried brain, I realize exactly what I’m looking at after all.

It’s a butterfly.

I blink.

Sombra has butterflies?

Now, I haven’t lived in Sombra long. Only a couple of months since I gave birth, though I’ve had to make pretty frequent trips so that Azazel could check me out during the pregnancy. I’ve never once seen a butterfly. To be fair, the only animal I’ve seen is Kennedy’s pet squirrel-cat-looking shadow animal, Freya, and if I wasn’t shitting bricks over my missing baby, I’d marvel over witnessing Sombra’s version of a butterfly.

But then, over the roar of panic in my ears, it hits me what Damien said. Something about lead the way …

I clutch Mal’s arm. “Do we follow the butterfly?” Hope swells in my chest. This… this might work. Lucian saw it, right? So did Damien… this has to work. “Will it lead us to Alana?”

The ridges over his brow scrunch together, water dripping slowly down his solid skin, beads of moisture welling in the smile creases above his upper lip. He’s not smiling now, though; concerned and confused, he narrows his golden eyes on the butterfly. “What is this creature?”

“One of the faripoz,” repeats Lucian. “And a sure sign that the spawn is in control of her own fate.”