I snapped.
An ocean of darkness exploded from my skin. I thrust out my hands, and a solid wall slammed into the serpent. It wrapped itself around her body, cutting off the snake’s heads in her hair and flinging them to the ground. Her body was swathed in shadows, completely swallowed by the darkness until?—
Blood sprayed, coating Nox in black-and-red ink. The Shifter’s scream ended in a wet gurgle. When my shadows unraveled and rushed back to me, her body dropped in a dozen pieces to the ground, hunks of scaled flesh now ripped to shreds.
I dragged in a breath. As before, my shadows were now tinged in red and humming with dark satisfaction. They twisted around my limbs and filled me with an overwhelming sense of power. It flooded my veins, trickling through my blood and steeling my spine.
It feltgood.
A whisper, cold and low, brushed my ear. But it wasn’t the familiar whisper of my bloodthirsty shadows.
“Exquisite,” the voice said.
My euphoria halted. I knew that voice.
“Scarven,” I breathed out. Whirling around, my shadows scattered into the night, seeking out the source of the voice. But he wasn’t there. The battle raged on around me as if no one else had heard him.
Laughter echoed next to me. I swung out a hand, but again, nothing was there.
“You grow more beautiful every day, love,” his voice murmured. “I almost forgot how stunning you are when youbreak.”
“Where are you?” I shouted, shadows circling in anticipation. “Show yourself!”
“You can’t see me, Devora. But I see you. I always have.” Magic pulsed around me, and on the outskirts of the surrounding forest, more shadows emerged.
“You were the first,” Scarven whispered. “We thought fatesprig was meant totakepower. But I changed that. Igaveyou power. I made your magic bloom into something I could only dream of. And look how glorious you became when you stopped fighting it. When yousubmittedto it.”
My knees threatened to buckle. I pressed my fingers to my temples to try and block him out. “You turned me into a monster,” I spat.
“I turned you into a masterpiece,” he hissed back. “And I’ve done the same thing with the rest of them. There is no limit to what I can do.” A sharp pain dug into the cut at my thigh. “You aremine. By the end of the night, the rest of you will be too.”
The sensation in my leg dimmed, and his presence disappeared. The shadows that lurked on the edges of the tree line elongated and widened as several more creatures came into view.
“Nox!” I shouted. I ran forward into the thick of the fight between him, Everett, and the wolf Shifter. Nox spun at my call, and I was relieved to see he’d already healed from the serpent’swound.
He grabbed my forearm. “What happened? Was it your shadows?”
I glanced down at my hand to see black veins, identical to the ones on these mutant Shifters.
“It’s Scarven. He was here. He—he talked to me.” I shuddered. “Whatever he did to make my magic so uncontrollable is the same thing he did to all of them,” I explained, brandishing an arm to the battlefield. “They’re stronger than us, Nox. And there’s more coming.”
His eyes followed my hand when I pointed toward the oncoming opponents.
There was no fear in his gaze, like the kind I felt in my own bones. Only resolve. His features hardened as he said, “The prisoners. You and Arowyn have to go—now.”
“But there’s too many?—”
“We’ll hold the line. Wehaveto get the prisoners out, Devora. Stick to the plan. Finish what we came here for.”
I met his stare and swallowed hard, willing my shadows to calm. My eyes took in the courtyard, the broken Shifter corpses, the fallen refugees. I nodded slowly. He was right. We had to try.
Arowyn appeared beside me with her blood-smeared sword and dirt speckling her pale hair. “You ready for this?” she asked.
I clenched my hands into fists and spun to face Nox again. “You promised me tomorrow.” Grabbing the back of his neck, I forced him to meet my eyes. “So you willnotdie today.”
His answering smirk shot straight to my heart. “As you wish, darling.”
He claimed my lips with his, a heady flood of desire, fear, and unspoken promises lingering between the blood and sweat. When he broke away from me, it took all my strength to let him go.
