A crackle, a hiss of sparks, and illumination bursts into being before my eyes. I blink, not believing what I’m seeing. It’s a torch’s flame, to be certain. It shivers and dances and burns. But it’s blue fire, like the massive one that broadly lit the Shadowlands on my approach, blue as veins pulled taut in an arm, and it’s suspended in the air, hanging on nothing. It shouldn’t be possible.
“How …?” The question escapes of its own accord.
“We nightfolk,” the monster says out of the dark, “have many abilities your people would decry as unnatural.”
“That’s not fire at all, is it?”
“No.” The blue light is just enough to illuminate the open palm above which it hovers, and the face of its carrier, but only in indistinctlines. A cruel sweep of jawbone. The barest twitch of a smile. “No, we have no use for such primitive things.”
I square my shoulders. They crack and groan with the motion, but my healed shoulder holds fast. I think I already know the answer, but I ask anyway, “Are you the one who captured me?”
“Yes,” she answers, her mouth’s movement barely visible in the dim unnatural light.
“Then I’ve already seen your monstrous form,” I say, with more boldness than I feel. “You have nothing to hide. Step into the light.”
The monster chuckles. “There’s nothing here worth seeing.”
“Concealing yourself won’t be enough to make me afraid. If you want to intimidate me, or make me tell you of the Daylands, or bring me pitifully to my knees, begging for mercy—you’ll have to do more than hide.”
There’s an awful beat of silence. Then the monster blows out a breath, and the false torch greedily absorbs it, whirling violently, intensifying. Soon it engulfs the monster’s entire hand, which remains outstretched and unburned. Its brightness brings the rest of my captor into view.
Her skin is moon-luster white, but with undercurrents of blue, like an entire network of split, broken veins. It stretches like old parchment over the amalgam of enlarged muscles that she presumably calls arms or legs; the bulk is such that I can’t tell if she has only arms and no legs, or vice versa. If she wanted to, she could easily pursue an enemy on all fours, or else wield a freezeshot weapon in every one of her clawed hands. Or feet. My brain spins from trying to process. Wings, too, arch powerfully from her shoulder blades, their span broader than my height. They look like aged leather. I have the strangest urge to, if I were closer, run my fingers across the membrane, see if it feels as strong and solid as it looks.
“Better?” the monster says, sardonic.
She draws her arm back, the ball of false flame now illuminating her face. My breath catches in my throat. She looms above me, even as I riseup on my toes, her height terminating at perhaps eight feet. That arch of jawline could’ve been carved from glass, and likewise the curves of her cheeks, the solid line of her brow—her face is more bones than skin, a skeleton animated, a corpse confused at its own continued breath.
Beginning on her face, descending past her throat and all across her body, persistent half-healed wounds spot the overstretched canvas of her skin, as though her very blood cannot bear to be contained in such a form. Her hair looks as though it was closely cut, but the unruly ink-black curls have grown longer, with two proud horns poking through. Twin flashes of violet hold my gaze with unrelenting intensity.
“Better.” My voice would certainly tremble if not for the mask’s filtering.
“I could ask you to do the same and show yourself,” the monster says, torchlight flickering in her irises, “but your kind would wither outside those accursed suits.”
“Sorry to disappoint.” I cross my arms, again keenly aware that while this monster queen imprisoned me and separated me from Aspect, she’s also the only reason my left arm is a functional limb. Deep down, beneath the layers of obvious threat, she may harbor a remnant of mercy that could get me out of this nightmare alive. “You already know my name,” I venture. “It’s only fair that you tell me yours.”
The claws encircling the torchlight shudder. The monster’s mouth lifts, almost imperceptibly—a sham of a smile, but a smile all the same. “Adria,” she says, in a clear, ringing baritone, and then she waits.
I fidget with my gloves. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
“I suppose not. Your people know little of what transpires in the shadows. I prefer it that way.”
“And here I thought you had nothing to hide.”
The monster—Adria—laughs sharply. If sound had a shape, the shards of this amusement would scrape her throat on the way out. “The Shadowlands is not to conceal us from you. It is to spare us the sight of your pitiful civilization.”
“Lovely.”
“Do you make a habit of back talking people who’ve imprisoned you?”
This time, I’m the one who laughs. “I have lots of practice with my mother.” Something shifts in Adria’s face, but it’s gone in an instant, drawn back into unreadable tension. I press on, emboldened. “What do you want from me?”
Adria starts to pace, every lumbering step vibrating through the stone floor. The indigo torchlight dances wildly against her skin as she moves. “You’re a valuable asset to your people, Kori of the Daylands.”
Caught somewhere between exhaustion and fear, I almost laugh again. Sometimes I think I could disappear into the relentless sun and never return, and no one would notice. Sometimes I think about vanishing with nothing but Aspect, a pack of supplies, and a cache of Morpheus spheres. How long could I make it in the Passage, selling memories, making memories, being my own person until I fell victim to the elements?A valuable asset.
I close my eyes. “Depends on who you ask.”
“You committed a crime against the Daylands by leaving, but also against the Shadowlands by coming here. Your people might like to see you suffer. But your mother …”
