Total pages in book: 247
Estimated words: 242728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1214(@200wpm)___ 971(@250wpm)___ 809(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 242728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1214(@200wpm)___ 971(@250wpm)___ 809(@300wpm)
“Do that, and you’ll be the one with her death on your hands, not me.” Solin stayed stiff and brave in the face of Darro’s wrath, but he couldn’t hide his sorrow.
In all the time I’d spent with the Nhil, Solin had always been fair and wise, just and kind. He wasn’t lying now, and he wasn’t gloating about winning. He spoke the truth, no matter how much it hurt.
“Darro...” I whispered, pressing my chin on Natim’s knobbly head.
Even so soft, my voice cut through his shades and whipped his head to me. His eyes glowed with a ring of silver; he looked as ferocious as the halcyodon I’d seen all those years ago.
“Enough.” I trembled as tears ran down my cheeks. “Don’t hurt him—”
“Yes, you savage. Don’t hurt our Spirit Master or I’ll just have to hurt you back.”
My heart sank into despair as Aktor stepped from the darkness.
He limped with his poultice-wrapped leg, but he didn’t use a walking cane. Instead, he fisted his spear. The same spear he’d thrown into Darro. Moonshine glinted on a stone knife strapped to his waist. The knife he’d used against my throat as he forced me to obey.
Darro went deathly still.
The very night sky rippled with power, stinging with intensity as every star shone brighter and every shadow sharpened. My skin prickled with the electrical charge of a lightning storm about to shatter the earth and sky.
I glanced at Darro and sucked in a gasp. “Darro....”
He didn’t respond. His skin undulated with silver and black, shadows and moonlight dappling and taunting to be used. His eyes were as dark as polished coal, narrowed and locked on his prey.
Aktor fisted his spear, partly for war and mostly for support for his bitten leg. He stupidly limped closer. “Give me back my mate.”
Darro didn’t reply.
For an endless moment, he didn’t move or blink or breathe.
But then, he chuckled.
Rich, black, and monstrous.
The night gathered with bone-crushing potential.
Solin sucked in a breath, sensing what I did—Darro hadn’t just enlisted the help of shadows but every dark and despicable thing in the grasslands.
“She will never be your mate,” Darro hissed like black wind through willow leaves. “I should’ve done this the night you tried to take what wasn’t yours to take.” Raising his balled hands, the sky ricocheted with a web of black.
“Oh, no.” Solin’s eyes flickered to mine before he half-ran, half-tripped toward Aktor. “Leave, Aktor. Now!”
But it was too late.
Darro’s eyes shot quicksilver.
His shadows spun into a vortex that blotted out the stars.
“I’m going to fucking kill you,” Darro whispered, unleashing his shadows. With a vicious noose of night, he plucked Aktor from the ground like a rotten autumn leaf and hurled him violently into the sky.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
. Darro .
I LOST MYSELF TO DARKNESS.
Death and despair, fury and violence.
I was barely aware of what I did, coursing with so much power. Too much power. So much addicting, intoxicating power.
A swarm of moths appeared within the shade vortex I’d summoned, whipping in my frenzy as Aktor screamed from the sky.
I threw Aktor from blackened gust to blackened gust. My shadows needed no commands. No conscious instruction.
I wanted him to fall, so he fell.
I wanted him jerked to the left, so he jerked.
I wanted his arms and legs flailing, so he flailed.
Something touched my hand.
Something warm and good and kind.
Runa.
She touched me.
My heart brightened with the light she embodied, trying to cast day on the blackest cloud I dwelled in. I wanted to go to her. To snap out of the nightmare I’d willingly stepped into.
But...not yet.
With a savage grin, I let Aktor go.
He plummeted toward the ground.
Solin yelled.
Aktor screamed.
He landed with a sickening thud.
The crunch of his bones against hardpacked earth made such a satisfying sound. So satisfying I wanted to do it again and again. Over and over until his spirit snuffed out and his body was nothing more than a meal for Zetas.
Runa’s touch came again. Clinging to me as if she needed my support to stand. “Darro...please—” The faintest whisper of her pure and wonderful voice was snatched away by the haunting howls of my swirling shadows.
My heart swelled into something I couldn’t contain.
I loved her.
No, that wasn’t the right word.
I was consumed by her.
Awakened by her.
Tortured with longing for her.
What I felt for Runa was everlasting and utterly unbreakable.
She. Was. Mine.
I tasted it in her blood.
I heard it in her heartbeat.
I felt it every time our marks burned, and every time our skin hummed with heat.
And when my lips had pressed against that very mark and licked at the ambrosia that was her lifeforce, I’d known things I still couldn’t remember. My heart knew, even while my mind didn’t. And my heart would never let her go.
I used a shadow to snatch Aktor from the ground, hurling him high again.
He screeched as he soared toward the stars.