“BecauseIam Thanadyn.”
That’s when the screaming started outside.
The room turned black. Not just lightless, but a thick, suffocating darkness.
Thanadyn’s shadows.
I ran for the door, but it was jammed shut. I made for the window, but my foot found a discarded cushion, and I flew through the air, crashing hard onto the ground. Panting, I tried to get back up, to run, to scream, to alert anyone or anything that things had gone very, very wrong. Before I could, a shadow—blacker than the darkness swarming me—wrapped itself over my mouth, suffocating my attempt.
There was nowhere to go. I couldn’t see nor hear anything save for the sound of my labored breathing and rapid heartbeat. I struggled against the shadow, clawing and biting at it, but nothing worked.
Thanadyn was in this room with me. He was in this town with me. And his shadow would kill me without anyone knowing.
“Enough,” a voice said. The shadow unlatched itself from me, and as it left, I could feel it sucking air from my lungs, like sipping through a straw.
I hunched over, trying and failing to gather more than a pinprick of air back into me.
No one will be hearing my screams.
Another burst of shadows came at me, throwing me back onto the ground and pinning my wrists and ankles down. My head cracked against the hard wooden floor, and a liquid puddled against my head.
Not liquid. Blood.
The tiny bits of air I managed to gulp down weren’t enough. I fought against the restraints, but the shadowy bonds held fast.
I won’t be escaping.
“Why?” I barely rasped into the void. “Why darkness?”
Deep laughter echoed all around me, filling up my senses and sounding in my head like hammers on hard metal.
Please, I begged my heart.Help me.
But I couldn’t stop worrying over the folk outside, over Hesper, and old thoughts were growing around my heart like briars.
Never enough.
It was always going to end in pain.
I have failed.
My magic fluttered feebly in my chest then died out completely.
Familiar emptiness again.
“Why, she asks,” Thanadyn drawled, his voice everywhere all at once, any sound of Mabel melted away. Only a choked, haunted whisper remained. “Because darkness is all that we have left at the end of the day. You know that well, Clara. No matter how bright the day may shine, night will come. Humanity is no different. Such injustice everywhere all the time. There is no use in fighting the inevitable.”
Do anything, I begged my magic. But I spoke only to the hollowness inside of me.
“Even your pitiful life is proof of that,” he said with an eerie happiness.
I stayed silent. I didn’t want to know.
“Eldrene made a fatal mistake, you see. When she bound me in heart magic, I was able to sense its movements. For countless years, the magic lay dormant, allowing me to eat away at it slowly—fear always found its way back into the soil. But then, heart magic awoke; the earth and the Fates had found a new soul to bestow that rare magic within. I had to intervene, of course. If heart magic renewed, then my task would become impossible. So I paid a visit to your mother.”
“I don’t understand.” My voice was barely a whisper.
“You will bear a child of great power. Never again will you know the taste of nothingness, for she will bring you everything. You will be everything.”
