Page 10

TEN

EVRYN

T he smell of something warm and barely edible tugged her from sleep.

Evryn blinked against the filtered light bleeding through the stained-glass remnants above her. The colors danced weakly across the cracked stone floor, fractured reds and golds shimmering like blood-streaked sunbeams.

She sat up slowly, muscles aching from the last so many sleeps on stone and root. Her throat felt dry, her mind fogged with remnants of the dream—of the panther, of the crown, of fire licking up through shadow.

Lucien sat near the broken altar, back leaned against a half-toppled column, tossing something small and round in his hand. He caught it mid-air and held it out to her.

“Eat.”

She took it reluctantly. A hard biscuit, slightly warm. Stale but not inedible.

Her stomach growled before she could decide if it was gratitude or suspicion she felt more of.

He hadn’t said good morning. Of course he hadn’t. Lucien Umbraclaw didn’t seem to do soft .

“You bake this yourself?” she muttered, dry.

“Stole it from a Wyrdling trader two valleys back,” he replied. “She was too busy trying to sell me a dream-worm.”

Evryn raised a brow as she chewed. “A what ?”

“Exactly.”

She snorted under her breath. “Charming place, the Veil.”

Lucien didn’t smile, but something in his shoulders eased—fractionally.

Evryn noticed the way the shadows curled around him even in the broken daylight. They weren’t just shadows the way most people saw them. They moved. They watched.

They whispered in the edges of her Sight.

And they were always near him.

Like pets. Or sentries. Or maybe something darker.

She swallowed the last bite of the biscuit and nodded toward the tendrils curling near his boots.

“They follow you.”

Lucien’s silver gaze flicked to the shadows. “Yes.”

She waited, but he didn’t elaborate.

She leaned forward slightly. “So... are you going to tell me why you’re trailed by creeping night-mist, or is that another one of your royal secrets?”

He exhaled through his nose. “It’s called shadowmancy .”

“Sounds made up.”

“It’s not.”

His voice was calm, but clipped. Like explaining this wasn’t something he liked doing.

“They’re not just illusions. I can manipulate shadow—shape it, move through it, cloak myself in it. And if I want... I can use it to silence people. Permanently.”

Evryn froze. “So you’re a walking execution order.”

Lucien looked at her, face unreadable. “I was.”

Something in that was made her pause.

The shadows seemed to settle closer to him, like they were listening too.

“So they’re alive?” she asked quietly.

“They respond to emotion. Intent. Bloodline.” He hesitated. “Pain, mostly.”

Evryn’s eyes narrowed. “And they follow you because of how much you’ve felt ... or how much you’ve done ?”

Lucien didn’t answer.

Evryn stood and paced a slow circle around the fallen pillar, letting the air between them charge with all the things they weren’t saying.

“I don’t get you,” she said. “You say you’re protecting me. But every time I look at you, you look like you’re trying not to be that guy.”

Lucien arched a brow. “What guy?”

“The one who wants to help.”

His mouth twitched. “Maybe I’m not that guy.”

“Maybe you’re lying to yourself.”

Her voice didn’t shake, but her hands did. Just a little.

“I think you’re hiding more than just where Eamon is. I think you’re playing me.”

Lucien’s eyes flared. “I’m not.”

“No? You’re the Queen’s son. Her weapon. You stalk me through the human border, you don’t kill me, and now I’m supposed to believe you’re just doing this out of... what? Guilt? Curiosity? You won’t even look me in the eye when I ask where he is.”

Lucien stood slowly.

Tall. Controlled.

Dangerous.

“I told you—Eamon’s not your biggest problem right now.”

“But he’s mine, ” she snapped, voice cracking. “He’s the only family I’ve got. And I’ve trusted you more than I should. I’ve been letting my gut guide me, but maybe I shouldn’t. Because right now? My gut’s saying you’re still deciding whether I’m worth saving.”

Lucien stepped forward, shadow trailing behind him like a cloak made of regret.

Their faces were inches apart.

His voice dropped to something ragged. “You have no idea how much I’ve already done to keep you alive.”

“I didn’t ask you to,” she whispered.

“You didn’t have to.”

The silence trembled between them, full of breath and heat and questions with no safe answers.

Her eyes flicked to his mouth.

His to hers.

Suddenly, a rush of cold. A snap of pressure in the Veil.

They both turned too late.

The shadows behind them twisted .

Evryn’s scream tore from her throat just as something lunged from the edge of the cathedral, all fangs and bone and black-glass eyes. A shadowbeast—one of the corrupted things that slipped through Veil rifts when the thresholds weren’t sealed tight enough.

Lucien shoved her behind him. His shadows reacted .

They struck like snakes, lashing forward, slicing across the beast’s hide. It screamed, high and wrong, as Lucien moved with deadly fluidity, cloak flaring.

Evryn recovered fast.

She grabbed the blade from her boot and circled around to flank, adrenaline burning the doubt from her limbs.

“On your left!” she shouted.

Lucien ducked just as a second creature leapt from the shattered arch above, claws whistling through air where his head had been.

Evryn struck the first with a clean slash across its throat.

Black ichor hissed into the air. The beast fell, writhing.

Lucien turned, shadows coiling like whips from his hands, slamming the second into a wall hard enough to shatter bone.

It collapsed in a twitching heap.

Silence returned. Except for the thunder of their breath.

Evryn wiped her blade on her sleeve, hands shaking. “What the hell were those?”

“Veil spawns,” Lucien said, still watching the shadows. “Drawn to raw bloodlines. Old power.”

He looked at her.

“You’re starting to call to them.”

Evryn felt her spine stiffen.

“Is that a bad thing?”

Lucien’s gaze darkened. “It means you’re awakening. And that means we’re running out of time.”

She met his eyes. Still panting. Still pulsing with adrenaline. Still angry.

But under it all, something unspoken passed between them.

She had almost kissed him. He had almost let her.

Instead, they turned from the corpses and gathered what little they had because survival didn’t wait for emotions to catch up.