"They volunteered. I didn't steal them."
"Shadows don't volunteer."
"These ones did. Very helpful shadows. Very supportive of domestic improvements."
They wiggle slightly against my shoulders.
The warehouse looms ahead, all rust and ruin and architectural sadness. But not for much longer. Not if I haveanything to say about it. My feet splash through a puddle that's definitely not just water. Need new shoes. Need new everything. Need that house with its seven glorious bathrooms.
"Help me set up supplies. Quietly. If anyone wakes boss before he's ready, I'm making them personally scrub every mushroom with their toothbrush."
"What if he's angry about the shadows?"
I look down at the darkness wrapped around me. So warm. So weirdly affectionate. "Then we'll explain about the seven bathrooms. Very calmly. With visual aids if necessary."
"Visual aids."
"I'm thinking a nice chart. Pros and cons. Heavy on the pros." I push open the warehouse door. "Trust me. How could he say no to proper drainage?"
Gray Streak follows me in, muttering something about civilian logic. But he helps arrange the supplies quietly, and when Finn appears, excited about the soap variety, Gray Streak only threatens him a little bit about staying quiet.
The shadows stay wrapped around me as I organize bottles and plan my bathroom-based argument. Somewhere in this diseased warehouse, Ruvan sleeps on, unaware that his shadows and I have been house hunting.
He's going to be so confused when he wakes up.
Good thing I got that chamomile tea. We're all going to need it.
Chapter 17
Voices. Not screaming, not the wet sounds of violence, just... voices. Discussing bathroom schedules.
My eyes open to afternoon light filtering through grimy windows. Wrong. Everything about this is wrong. I should wake to reports of overnight casualties, territory disputes, the usual soundtrack of controlled chaos. Not Finn's earnest voice saying, "But if we stagger morning shifts, everyone gets hot water."
I'm warm. That's the second wrong thing. The warehouse kills through hypothermia and mold exposure. But I'm wrapped in something heavy that smells like lavender and paint and—
Her.
The blanket. She covered me with her blanket while I slept like a trusting fool in a shadow chair. In the middle of my guild. For... I calculate angles of sunlight, the ache in my neck from sleeping upright. Ten hours. Minimum.
I've been unconscious for ten hours in a room full of killers.
My hand goes to my throat. Still attached. No new scars. The only pain is the crick in my neck she was so concerned about. My body feels... functional. Actively functional. No tremors, no ice picks behind my eyes, no copper taste coating my tongue. I stretch experimentally. Nothing protests. My joints don't grind. My vision stays clear.
This is what healthy feels like. I'd forgotten.
My body feels alive while surrounded by decay. Black mold creeps up the walls. That puddle in the corner has definitely grown overnight. The mushrooms have formed what might be a small civilization. And here I sit, pain-free for the first time in years, in a building that's actively decomposing around us.
"—but Boss gets the master suite obviously," Gray Streak is saying somewhere to my left. "The one with the tower? Good sight lines for—"
"Shadow storage!" That's Olivia, interrupting. "All that extra space for shadow... activities."
Shadow activities. My shadows.
They're gone.
The realization hits cold. My constant companions for twenty-seven years, the weapons that make me the Shadow King instead of just another aging killer with good knife skills. Gone.
Someone drops something metallic. The crash echoes through the warehouse.
