It had no face. No voice.
Only eyes glowing like blood lit coals.
Its wrath flooded the air, mirroring his own. He sensed its need to hunt. To sink its claws in flesh and bone.
Then Rune commanded it with two words:“Find him.”
His shadow collapsed into mist and slipped through the cracks of the door, gliding into the night like a force of living death.
Alora slept soundly, curled into his side, her breath soft against his skin. In his mind, Rune saw a different world.
A darker one.
Rune remained in bed.
But his will did not.
Through the eyes of his shadow-self, he was smoke between trees and stone, his form incorporeal. The forest beyond the cottage stretched like a graveyard of twisted limbs, moonlight slicing through the canopy in thin, cold beams.
He moved through the night with the speed of the wind, traveling across the Midlands.
It did not take long to find Eldrik.
The shadows need only follow the scent of fear.
Oh, it wassweet.
The fleeing prince raced across the dark land on his horse, gold cape fluttering behind him. Illuminated by the faint light spilling from the knapsack secured at his waist.
Eldrik’s horse tripped over a strip of darkness, and the force hurled him off the saddle. He hit the ground hard with a pained grunt. The shadows gathered, rattling the branches. He scrambled back as he limped to his feet, wild eyes finding his horse dead and broken. Eldrik searched the dark woods, his gasping breaths fogging in the air.
Rune’s voice drifted through the stillness of the dark, distorted and layered.“Going somewhere?”
The prince yelped.
The sound of his racing heartbeat echoed like music. The delicious taste of panic and fear flooded Rune’s senses like decadent wine.
His shadow-self crept closer, slipping through branches and brush without sound. The prince’s stumbled, crying out. He scrambled to his feet, falling backward until his back pressed against a tree.
Rune’s shadow-self moved within the pockets of darkness where the moonlight didn’t touch.“Did you truly believe I would allow you to escape?”
Eldrik shook, clutching the bag to his chest. “You cannot lay a hand on me on fae soil. I have immunity. An agreement was made!”
He chuckled. “You hold no bargain with the dark.”
Eldrik panted, eyes bulging wide as the horned shadow slowly stalked forward. The stench of urine stained the air.
“The day I claimed my bride,I warned you in your dreams that if you touched her again, I would annihilate your entire House. I’m here to keep my word.”
Eldrik turned to flee. Rune’s shadow-self surged forward, snatching his neck. Eldrik screamed, the sound cut off when he tossed him against the nearest tree with bone-snapping force. The prince cried out, choking on broken sobs as he tried to crawl away.
“Calveron will fall tonight, with no one left to rise. My legion will sweep across the world like a shroud of death as they exterminate your army and all those bearing your family name. Beginning with you.”
The warmth of Alora’s breath on his skin grew distant beneath his cold retribution. The terrified prince pleaded for his life, but there was no mercy to be had.
“I have done terrible things in my existence,”Rune said, his voice threading through the shadows. He emerged from the night like a curse made flesh, stalking out of the trees toward Eldrik with slow, deliberate steps.“Things the Heavens could never forgive.”
The prince whimpered, reaching desperately for the knapsack where it had fallen in the leaves. But the shadows dragged him by his ankles, scraping his back across bark and stone, before hurling him into another tree. It pinned him there with brutal force. His leg snapped, bone splitting with his agonized scream.
