“You may not be a threat, but you’re still rather extraordinary,” he murmured. “I can see why that brother of mine is so drawn to you.”
“That’s what this is about, isn’t it?” I asked. “Why do you hate him so much?”
“Because he hadeverything,” he said with a growl, that carefully curated voice of control beginning to slip.
“He had the life that should have been mine.Iwas Caius Duma’s firstborn, yet my mother and I were thrown out with the trash. Do you know what it’s like to be shunned by your entire society, simply for what you were born into? To watch your own mother suffer the consequences of her and my father’s actions by herself, while he faced no scrutiny, no ire?” He cocked his head as if he were inspecting me.
Then his lips curved into a smirk. “No, you wouldn’t, would you? Because your mother died before you could wipe your own spit from your chin.”
My chest caved in, the backs of my eyes burning with the effort to hold back a sob.
“I did my research. Born to Malijah and Ceres Sephorne, a pair of gifted but ultimately unremarkable Shadow Wielders. It’s a pity, isn’t it?” He ran his hand up the bare skin of my back. “Growing up without an identity. Without a past or a purpose.”
His guard entered just then, and Scarven finally released me. He looked over at the shiny, sharp objects on the tray in the guard’s hand. There were several syringes full of multi-colored serums—black, red, clear, green. Their needles shone in the candlelight, primed and ready to break into my flesh.
“I hadnothing, Devora. But look at me now.” Scarven picked up a blade coated in an oily dark green substance. “I rose from the silence of the shadows to take my rightful place in this empire. I have full control over theentiretyof Veridian magic.”
He brought the blade to my ribs and pressed the tip into my skin, slowly dragging it down. That entire side of my body was lit on fire. I screamed in agony as my shadows themselves were split in two, writhing and shrieking inside my mind.
And then…they went silent. Dead. Gone.
My heart stopped in its tracks. Hopelessness and paniccollided in my chest, mixing with the excruciating pain. Was it gone? Had he taken my shadows away? I only just found them, but the thought of losing them forever gutted me completely.
“Do you hear that, Devora?” Scarven asked softly, his voice carrying over the sound of my screams. “Your magic is mine.Youare mine. I aminevitable.”
He removed the dagger from my side, leaving my shirt in tatters. When the pain passed enough for me to think straight, I rolled my neck on my shoulders to meet his gaze.
“You—are—a coward,” I said on a gasping breath.
He drove the blade into my thigh.
I let out another guttural shriek. The pain reverberated in my very core, ripping and shredding through more than just skin and muscle.
A small part of me thought that perhaps I deserved this.Thiswas the kind of punishment traitors endured. Nox’s gilded tower was a mercy.
Nox.
I closed my eyes and tried to picture him. I could almost imagine him kneeling before me in front of the fireplace. His warm hands cupping my cheek, so gentle despite the strength of the dragon living inside him.
I never told him how brave he was. How much I admired him for everything he was doing for his people, how I’d been so wrong about him in the beginning. How he was the kind of man I was proud to stand beside.
I should have told him. Maybe then this wouldn’t hurt so much.
As if Scarven knew who I was thinking about, he pulled the dagger from my thigh and leaned in closer. “Do you think your precious Nox is going to come save you now, love?”
I hope he doesn’t, I thought to myself. Keeping the rest of them safe was more important than me.
I must have said it out loud, for Scarven smirked at me. “Well,Ihope he does.” He put the dagger back on the tray and grabbed a syringe with red liquid inside, then placed the tip to the same wound on my neck. I gasped as he drove the needle in.
“Because I have a surprise for him.”
47
Nox
We moved through the night like wraiths. Tessa in her sleek black and tan jaguar form, Kieran in his brilliant white stag, and me. The dragon.
No longer hidden, but rising like a beacon in the midnight sky. A warning. A promise.
