The shadows stirred beneath my skin, writhing like serpents waking in a pit. I clenched my fists until the veins darkened, the coils beneath my flesh burning with unrest.
“I said no, Amara,” I rasped. “It’s too dangerous.”
She stepped closer, trembling, but her chin stayed high.
“Lazarus,” she said, voice edged with fire. “Help me up. You keep searching for what else he’s hidden while I brew it. That’s how we end him.”
Her certainty cut through me like a blade. I looked again at the jagged hole above us, at the pulse of darkness clinging to its edges, as though the stone itself remembered her passage.
At last, I exhaled, low and ragged. I set my hands on her waist, steadying her.
“Very well,” I muttered. “But if anything happens—if I hear you cry out?—”
“You’ll come,” she finished softly. Her hand brushed my cheek, the touch fleeting and fragile, carrying the warmth of life in this cold place. “I know.”
I nodded once. She gathered the glass dome to her chest with both hands, careful, reverent. My palms tightened at her waist; her body tensed, but she did not flinch. Her chin lifted, and for a heartbeat, the fear in her eyes gave way to defiance.
“Hold steady,” she whispered.
I bent my knees, grounding my feet against the blood-darkened stone, and lifted her upward.
Her grip tightened around the dome, her breath hot against my throat. The torn edge of her linen brushed my arm, rough, light, real. For a heartbeat, I felt her pulse thundering against mine—frantic, and human.
“Higher,” she urged, her voice unsteady but sure.
I raised her higher. My arms strained, the sinew pulling tight, heat flooding through me. The shadows inside stirred, whispering their pleasure—soft, serpentine, insidious. They savored the nearness, every breath between us charged, every brush of her body against mine a quiet devastation.
Amara reached upward. Dust rained down—bitter, dry—settling in her hair and across my shoulders like ash from a burned offering. The flamelight caught her face as she pulled herself toward the jagged lip of the shaft, her expression caught between fear and resolve. For that heartbeat, she looked unearthly—like something torn between the mortal and the divine.
“I’ll be quick,” she whispered.
Then she was gone—swallowed whole by the black above.
The silence that followed pressed like a shroud. Even the torches seemed to dim, their flames shrinking as if in reverence or fear.
I turned back to the hidden compartment. The vials within shimmered, silver and gold writhing through black, serpents trapped in glass. I pushed them aside, my hand brushing something leather and heavy.
I dragged it free and found a tome.
The same size and weight as mine—bound in black hide that pulsed beneath my touch. Heat spread through my palm, unnatural and rhythmic, as though it were breathing. Symbols gleamed across the cover, etched deep and uneven, as if burned there by flame.
Then I saw the words, branded so deep they seemed to bleed shadow?—
Mistress of Shadows
And beneath it—Marianna Lorian.
My breath caught.
Salvatore’s mother.
Her Tome of Shadows.
Her prison.
The book pulsed in my palm—a weak, stuttering heartbeat fluttering beneath the leather. The air around it grew colder, dense with a silence that felt alive.
Then, a voice.
