The shadowmote danced across his vision.
“Did you want to show me this, little friend?” he asked, reaching his hand out. The mote came to sit on the palm of his hand. “Why?”
Before the mote could offer any sort of response, an inexplicable force tugged at his very essence. It was as if his insides were being wrenched outside of him. This wasn’t like the usual sensation of shadowslipping, which was often akin to drifting from one place to another.
No, this time he was beingyanked,forced.
His surroundings blurred and flickered like a fading dream. The world seemed to lose its grip, fragments of the ruined city dissolving like mist.
He closed his eyes, gave into the phenomenon, and let himself be pulled away.
twenty
Julien
Moments Julien would never forget:
The sight of Béatrice’s dead body, burnt and broken, after he’d insisted he be the one to formally identify it.
The first day of university, when a single ray of sunshine had shone through his impenetrable darkness.
The day he’d killed his mother.
And now, the collection of these present ones:
The umbraphage making its relentless charge towards the four of them, the rising sense of terror increasing as it closed in.
Cinn’s scream of sheer agony as his gold band burned blisters into his skin.
Julien attempting to wrench the fucking thing off his body by any means possible but being pushed away.
The nightmarish shadow creature lunging itself at Cinn, a hair’s breadth from touching him.
Julien urging himself to reach for the motes so easily within his grasp, within his control, but doing nothing. Nothing to save him.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Elliot miraculously appearing next to them, pushing Cinn and Julien out of the way to throw himself in front of the umbraphage, hands manipulating a sphere of lumenmotes.
And then, the sight of the monster lashing out at his best friend’s chest, splitting his torso open in a gruesome gash that Julien himself felt every inch of, a visceral echo of anguish.
The next few moments were a black hole in his tapestry of memory. At some point, he must have realised Cinn had shadowslipped, because next he was half carrying, half dragging his limp body as far away from the scene as he could, before collapsing with him in a long narrow path between two houses.
Then he’d simply sat there, back against a wall, breathing hard.
It could only have been moments before Darcy, breathless and wild-eyed, came rushing up the path. “Elliot is okay. Genuinely. His wound isn’t that deep. The paramedics are treating him now. And they’ve managed to get the umbraphage back into the light cage. Though now they’ve knocked out our radio signal somehow. Eleanor is supporting the commander, and I’m running back to the van to tell them what’s going on. Stay here with Cinn.”
Julien blinked at Darcy’s ramblings until they started to sink in. Sickening panic at being left alone to protect Cinn’s lifeless body gripped him, and he almost begged Darcy to stay, but then he nodded.
“You could try this,” Darcy said, uncertainty lacing her tone as she rummaged through a first-aid kit she must have borrowed. “I know it’s not really the time to be experimenting, but…”
She tossed him a vial of thick, milky blue liquid.
He eyed it suspiciously. “What is it?”
“Zenolique. It’s a calming drug most often used in our psychiatric wards. It should reduce his adrenaline levels.”
He was fairly certain Cinn would have hesitations if he were awake to have an input, but he wasn’t, so Julien nodded. “I’ll see how we go.”
