She stiffens, and a tendril of shadow slices out at me. I dodge back, avoiding a deep cut, but pain sears my skin in a line from my abdomen to my thigh.
Inana whirls around, and the shadows disappear. Her eyes are wide, her face and hair coated in blood, but she scrambles to her feet with a sob. “Dominic.”
I start toward her, still not understanding what the fuck just happened, but I don’t care.
She’s whole.
She’s safe.
She’s alive.
Inana takes one step forward before she launches back, her voice pitched with sudden rage. “What is that?”
I pull up short. Gods, she’s so close. Just three paces away. Why is she suddenly angry? Or is she…terrified?
Her chest heaves with panting breaths as her eyes lock on my thigh. I follow her line of sight and find blood coursing down my dark trousers. But it isn’t mine. Not most of it, anyway. The cut is shallow; the Shade merely nicked my—
Dread carves a hollow in my gut as I stare at my holster of vials. Three were cracked open by the attack. Two bearing Calvin’s blood.
The third…
No. No. No.
Not the king’s blood. Any vial but that.
“What the fuck is that smell?” Inana says, voice ragged. She shakes her head, backing away from me. Her gaze won’t leave the leaking blood. “I won’t. I won’t go back. I won’t go back.”
I assess her, my mind scrambling to make sense of this.
Inana stands at her full height and the cloak of Shades returns, wavering around her like a pitch-black aura. They’re still invisible to my body’s eyes, but my Shades can see them. Yet mine don’t react. Sloth doesn’t growl. Pride doesn’t shout. They just…watch. Entranced. “I’ll never go back,” she says through her teeth, her voice pitched low. “He cut me away, he doesn’t deserve me, he—”
“Inana,” I say, making her jump.
She relaxes the slightest bit. The shadows disappear, but her voice maintains its haunted edge. “That blood. It belongs to…”
“King Kaelum,” I say, the words cold on my tongue. “Why did you react to it?”
“The smell,” she says, hugging her arms around herself and shrinking back. “I can’t stand it, and yet…I want to devour it, claw at it, kill it, become it.”
Shadows dance over her shoulders, humming, vibrating, growing more and more visible in the waning light. My heart falls to my feet. Suddenly everything I’m seeing makes such cruel sense. “How long?” I swallow the lump in my throat. “How long…have you been Incarnate?”
She shudders at the word, and so do I.
I hold my breath for the answer. Did it happen here? Just now? Because I was too late?
Was this…my fault?
“Since the day I killed Henry Berkham,” she says, voice empty. Slowly, she drags her eyes away from the blood leaking down my thigh to my face. She tenses as soon as our eyes meet, her own widening. She hugs her arms tighter around herself and takes a step back. “What are you going to do to me?”
Only then do I realize my automatic response. One hand is already on the hilt of my sword, the other hovering over my vials.
“You’re going to kill me,” she says.
I open my mouth, but I don’t know what to say. Nor can I force my hands to move. I may not be the most devout Shadowbane, but killing Incarnates is what I’ve been trained to do. Incarnates are inarguably dangerous. They consume their victims. Slaughter those who once were their victims’ friends and lovers. Incarnates can’t live like real people. They can only act out an imitation of the life they stole. The only fate for an Incarnate is death, and I’ve never balked at that. Never been tempted to let one live.
But if what she says is true, it…she…Inana has been Incarnate since the day I met her. Living. Breathing. Smiling.
How is that possible? She showed no sign of being like the Incarnates I’ve slain. None are as sensitive to sunlight as Shades are, but it never occurred to me an Incarnate could walk past silver gates or be surrounded by silver walls without so much as flinching. And she’s so much more thanjustan Incarnate. She’s one of the king’s elusive Shades. Her reaction to his blood makes that plain, though why is she reacting like this now? She’s been near when I’ve held the open vial—no, I suppose that isn’t true. She’s never beenthisclose to it, and never for this long. The closest she ever came to it was on the rooftop in Thornfal, which was only for a moment before I capped the vial. Ever since, I’ve kept my Summoners at a distance when I test the blood. The amount that drips down my thigh is prolonging her exposure. Even I can smell it, clouding the air with its sickly-sweet aroma.
