Page 18

And Enemies

I stand at the edge of the Shadowood, the air around me dead calm, and wait for Scoria to arrive. Apparently carting souls around means it takes longer for her to teleport.

Sun sparkles off the white snow- and ice-covered lands, the blinding light giving me a headache that’s stirring my stomach in bad ways. Hours spent flying here on Bene’s back is not the most comfortable of rides.

Just when I think the discomfort will become unbearable, Scoria arrives. Not wanting to waste time we don’t have, I forget the pain in my head and the rolling in my gut and get to work. Scoria has control of the Shadows, and now I’m together we face the murky wall that hovers in the trees.

The now-familiar oil-slicked, tar-like darkness of the hells, of trapped shadow souls, is a solid barrier around the southern tip of the forest where we stand. I can no longer make out the details of the towering, red-barked trees that form the woodland that I hope still lies behind this veil of…wrath.

Eidolon’s Shadows stir within me. They feel it, too.

“Mother Goddess,” Horus whispers at my side, horror in the words.

“Do you still wish to do this?” Bene’s voice rumbles through me.

I reach behind me to pat his nose with gloved hands. Scoria and I can do this.

For just a second, I wish Reven was here, doing this with me.

You can’t let him be a distraction. Not now.

If not now, though, then when? When do I get to make saving him the priority? I can practically hear his voice telling me that my people come first, stopping Eidolon comes first.

I know that. It still doesn’t make it easy.

“Scoria, will you be able to hold them all?” I ask her, forcing myself into the here and now. She struggled with the number in the Wildernyssian temple. This is more.

Her rocky eyes scan the wall of shadow before us, as if she’s counting each of the souls within. “I do not know.”

I go to take a step, but Horus jumps between me and the trees, arms wide like he’s corralling a herd of horses, expression daring me to try to dash around him anyway. “We should wait for nightfall, domina.” He glances over his shoulder. “You’ll need to harness more darkness to deal with this. Won’t you?”

“The Wanderer is of the right mind,” Bene says. “And you should rest more.”

More waiting. In the freezing cold. Sure, that will be restful.

Without a word, I crawl back on top of Bene, who lifts a sandy wing so that I can sit beneath it protected from the wind, like a chick under a mother hen. After a second, Horus climbs up and joins me. “Tabra will need time to settle everything with Wildernyss anyway. She’ll forgive the delay.”

I snort. “Tabra will. Cain…not so much.”

He was pissed enough at being left behind, but as the son of Zariph Cainis, he holds a position worthy of negotiation. He also knows the plan for taking back the city of Oaesys better than I do. He needed to stay behind to talk with our new allies. Pella and Hakan had already returned to the zariphate, or I’m sure Cain would have insisted on her doing the talking and him coming with me.

Horus chuckles. “I was worried he was going to follow us anyway.”

Me, too, actually. It’s exactly something I would do, and Cain and I are a lot alike that way. Plus, he’s followed me to this very forest before.

A gust of wind sneaks under Bene’s wing and I shiver, which makes the Devourer adjust to block it better. “It is, perhaps, advantageous that Tziah was there.”

“Tziah?” I ask.

Horus makes a sound that might be a laugh and I turn a questioning frown on him. The creases around his eyes deepen, dark-brown depths twinkling with humor. “They’ve been close since Tropikis.”

I guess so. “Well, if anyone can talk Cain down, it’s Tziah.” Even without the ability to speak.

“She does have a knack for that,” he agrees.

Have Cain’s affections moved on? I don’t think so, but maybe I’m too close to see it clearly.

Cain was mine—my best friend since childhood, my own personal hero, the person I have always trusted most. And he confessed his love for me, asked me to marry him. But Reven and I…we were always supposed to find each other in this life.

I think I’d be thrilled for Cain to find happiness elsewhere. But am I just telling myself that to ease my own guilt for hurting him?

I’m not sure yet.

I don’t realize I sigh until Horus pats my hand. “My sister used to sneak off into the desert most days for, as she called it, ‘a little peace and quiet,’ which I never understood, because she did this when the zariphate was camped during the heat of the day, and at its quietest with most everyone asleep.”

That he can talk about the sister he lost like this, with a smile hovering around his lips… I wonder if he realizes. “Did you ask her?”

“Yes. She said she’d sit by the wells or oases. That clear waters made for clear thoughts.” He chuckles. “Never did figure out what that means.”

“It makes sense to me,” I tease.

Horus lifts his eyes heavenward. “Of course it would. You’re just like her.”

He’s never said that to me before. “I’m honored you think so.”

“Without knowing her?”

I grin. “I assume you mean I remind you of all her best parts, of course.”

Horus chuckles, and my heart warms despite the freezing cold seeping through my layers of clothes.

I’m starting to recognize those rare moments of pure happiness life gifts us. I’ve learned these past months to never turn away from even a smidgen of happiness. To absorb it and carry it with me into the dark days that I know are ahead, like a small flame that can never be extinguished inside my heart and soul.

Scoria shifts, the snow and ice crunching under her rocky feet from outside Bene’s wing, followed by the sound of her muffled voice. “Someone else is…” Bene lifts his wing, and I can see her searching around us, obsidian eyes sharp. “I sense a presence—”

A flash of cold hits my blood a second before a swirl of smoky shadow spirals up from the ground. When it dissipates, a man stands close to the walled-off forest. I jump off Bene and run for him before I know what I’m doing.

“Domina!” Horus yells after me.

I don’t stop.

Neither does Eidolon.

Even when Bene takes off behind me with a roar, the bloody king makes no acknowledgement of our presence, focused on what he’s doing. The night all around us sucks through him and into the forest. Faces and arms and legs punch from the wall, thrashing as though in pain. Hundreds of them.

Faster than I could ever have believed possible, he feeds the warmth of shadows from this world into those trapped in the hells’ limbo. More than that, though. I stumble to a stop, watching as a misty form lifts off the king himself, different in color. Is he…is he feeding parts of his own flesh to the shadow souls?

“Meren!” Horus shouts behind me.

Eidolon’s blazing turquoise gaze collides with mine. Before I can do anything, he offers me a sly smile and disappears behind the thick swirl of night churning around him.

It blasts outward, consuming us. I plow through the fog of darkness, trying to get out, unable to see and feeling my way through as his Shadows inside me scream out for their maker. Not even Scoria can keep them silent when he’s this close. I’m about to ignite my own access to his power when the night suddenly turns crystal clear, and I’m standing not even ten feet away from the evil bastard who has wrecked my life since long before my birth.

And behind him stands an army.

My army.

Except, they look…different. Not like the souls I’ve freed. These are more human, more alive, as though their bodies exist just beneath a layer of darkness.

What did he do to them?

And why are they all focused on me, furor written across their creepy-as-hells features?

Whatever the reason can’t be good.

“Scoria?” I toss back over my shoulder.

“I cannot. They are something else now.”

Bene plows through them from above, snapping them up in his maw only to have them disappear.

“Thank you for showing me the way,” Eidolon says with so much self-satisfaction that my hands fist at my sides, impotent rage pumping inside me, making my ears pound.

Anger rips through me. “The hells I did—”

With a flick of Eidolon’s hand, the army vanishes.