Still, how did I not know what she was? How did myshadowsnot know? Sloth whines beside me while Lust and Pride are as dumbstruck as I am.
My own voice echoes in my mind, words I relayed to my Summoners.
Shades don’t see Incarnates as one of their kind anymore, nor are they interested in them like they are in humans.
Then why…how…
I shift my attention to the wild Shades drawing closer, closer in the fading light. They watch Inana with hunger and fascination.
My mind fills with the memory of her voice weaving stories. The anatomical hearts she crafted with her own hands. She isn’t like anyIncarnate I’ve seen. She isn’t like the ones that try so desperately to feel alive by copying human art.
Instead, she succeeded at it.
No wonder Shades are so attracted to her.
Because her very existence is a lie. Art. A replica of life.
She blows out a sigh, shoulders slumping as if her very soul has deflated. Her lower lip wobbles and she drags it between her teeth. “Okay,” she whispers, her voice cracking. Lowering her arms to her sides, she gives me a sad smile. “Do it. I want it to be you.”
My heart shatters like it’s been severed in two. Three. A thousand tiny fragments.
Everything in my rent-open chest screamsNo,while my mind says,Yes, this is what you must do. You cannot let an Incarnate live, no matter how human it seems. Kill this thing and be done with it. King Kaelum’s vial of blood is no more and one of his Shades has become Incarnate. This monster has ruined decades of planning. Decades of work by the rebellion.
There was always a chance that some of the king’s Shades had already become Incarnate and been killed. But I was determined to try anyway. And I got close. So fucking close. I only had two Shades left to find.
Inana was one of them all along.
She’s the reason the rebellion will fail. The reason the king will never be made mortal again.
She gives me a knowing nod, tears streaming down her cheeks, carving rivulets in the blood that paints her face, then slowly turns around. “Please, Dominic,” she says, pulling her hair over her shoulder to bare her nape, as if to aid me in beheading her. “Let it be you.”
I hate the sound of the wordpleaseon her lips, so sorrowful, when last time it was uttered in pleasure. My feet move before my mind knows what I’m doing, squelching in the gore on the road. Then I’m behind her, the scent of blood and flesh and something intoxicatinglyherfilling my lungs. I wrap my arms around her, pinning hers to her sides, and crush her back against my chest in a fierce embrace.
“Don’t be gentle,” she says, relaxing in my grip. “I’m ready to go. I don’t deserve to live. I remember what I did now. I remember it all.”
Sloth curves around her legs while Lust and Pride encircle her too,caressing her bloodstained cheeks, her hair. Her own shadows rise from her, mingling with mine. I don’t understand how she’s come tohaveshadows. Incarnates are merely a single Shade that copied a human and consumed their flesh. They can wield their own shadowed substance, but these are clearly separate, the same way my three Shades act separately from me. How is it possible? How isshepossible?
My vision clouds over as if in answer to my growing desperation. I find myself in the same dream I already witnessed, the one that showed me what happened between Inana and Henry. I thought my perspective had been that of a helpless bystander, but that wasn’t it at all. It was howshe—the Shade—saw this event. But, no, this isn’t a dream this time; these must be Inana’s current thoughts, the memories tormenting her. I’m experiencing them now the same way proximity allowed me to experience her dreams.
I watch everything happen all over again, but this time, when the Shade’s fingertips reach for Henry’s back, I don’t launch out of the vision. I experience the satisfying crack of bone, the warmth of his sinew and blood, the gurgle of his final breaths. Then I experience the Shade grieving for Inana, trying to help her. It’s been watching her for so long. It remembers more about her than about the life it lived five centuries ago, when it once shared a soul with a king. Now the woman it admired, the woman who used to tell it the most enchanting stories when no one was looking, is dying. It burns with rage for her. Rage Inana feels too.
Next I witness Inana’s final, fury-laced breath as she surrenders to the Shade. With a battle cry, the Shade consumes her body. Not in the way I always assumed a Shade would eat a human to become Incarnate. Instead, it assimilates her, wrapping its arms around Inana’s body and drawing her into its shadowed form, not with a smothering violence but a sorrowful, parting hug. Color spills over the creature, like an inkblot spreading over paper, the more and more they merge.
Until there’s only one of them.
I watch through Inana’s newly Incarnate eyes as she stares down at her hands, her body, the bloodstained floor. She rushes to her feet and stumbles out of the cell, legs wobbly. The guards outside the jailhousestand at attention, hands flying to the hilts of their swords, but Incarnate-Inana flicks her wrists, sending tendrils of shadow from her fingertips to sever their heads from their necks.
“Revenge,” Inana mutters, remembering her body’s last request. Then she runs across the field outside the village, into the woods. There she collapses at the base of a tree, mind racing with confusion, with tangled memories she doesn’t understand. Rage bubbles up inside her, and shadows leap from her fingertips, whipping through the undergrowth and cleaving branches in her fury. She doesn’t know how to stop it. Her mind is fraying at the seams.
Seams.
Sewing.
Calm.
A memory rises to the surface, of a needle gliding in and out of flesh. No, it was fabric.
Inana takes a needle from her cuff and begins to sew with threads of shadow until her pulse evens out, until her breaths come easier. She sews and sews and sews, a tapestry of shadow.
