23

Prickles wave over the tar pool.

The surface doesn't shimmer or ripple anymore, not even boil and bubble. Now, it's like the needled claws of monsters are pushing up from under, trying to pierce through the veil.

It might worry me more if I wasn't about to collapse into a fucking earthquake, because beneath me, the stand rattles with the same violence of the tremors assaulting the courtyard.

I've abandoned Aleana's hand, and she now grabs onto my side as though a grip on me will somehow steady her if the stands come crashing down.

It's the same as how I hold onto Eamon. For dear life.

My fist is twisted in the flimsy fabric of his shirt, my other hand reached out for the spine of the seat in front of me, nails cutting into the blackwood.

Curved against my shoulder, Aleana's breaths shudder something hoarse and strangled. But I stay braced against the tremors beneath the stone of the courtyard.

Then her grated breaths hitch—and turn into a hollow cry.

My scream isn't far behind her.

A tornado of darkness punches up from the centre of the tar pool.

A whispery breath escapes Eamon, like he's too frozen to even cry out at the sight of it. But I cry out—and so does Aleana.

Monstrous.

It's fucking monstrous, a whirling cloud of black smoke violently spearing through the portal—and it slams into the shadows of this land, thickening and blackening the eternal weight of darkness all around us.

Daxeel…

Maybe Caius.

I don't know which, but one of them made it to the close of the first passage. One of them got their anchor. And this is the grim proof of that feat.

The darkness swells above the courtyard, it spills and pours out of the tornado that whirls so violently that my hair is whipping at my face and parchment snaps and flaps through the air.

The iilra, scattered around the pool, start to shiver with the quake. Their screeches split the air in two. But I can hardly hear their screams piercing through the rattles of the stands, the bangs and groans and creaks of the wood, or the cries from the spectators like me—the ones losing their nerve.

Cringed against it all, the only anchor keeping me grounded is Eamon. He steadies himself at my side, he doesn't panic.

My trust in him is deep and so I don't let the fear steal me away, like it does with the litalf across the courtyard who snatches up her youngling and rushes down the steps.

I don't know if she makes it.

My attention is snapped back to the shaft of the tornado when it spits someone of out of it. Then another someone.

Then more, in the masses.

Contenders, flung out of the black storm.

Boots are slamming all over.

I watch in terrible awe.

Fae warriors, slicked in blood of crimson and black alike, flip themselves midair and land with thunderous booms all over the courtyard.

Corpses, too.

Those ones don't land. The winds slingshot them through the darkness and—I cringe. They crash into the stands, crack into the courtyard walls, smack down on the towers and some are even flung all the way out to the battle blocks.

Bodies still spit out of the vicious column of inky winds until no more come. Then—

Shouts rise up from the stands just as the column suddenly splits with a thunderous growl and spears off like shadow blades. They pierce right into the chests of the iilra, inky arrows spearing through them.

All twelve of them…

The iilra fall to their knees.

Time stands still for a heartbeat.

Their screams are silenced.

Another heartbeat.

They sag—sag onto their fronts, their sides, their backs. But all of them go limp.

A third heartbeat.

The iilra are dead.

I'm stunned into stiffness.

Can't move.

Can't breathe more than a short, sharp sound. I'm too fucking dazed to do anything more than sit here, hand now limp in Eamon's shirt, and my face slack.

I just… watch.

It's all I can do. Watch.

The darkness draws back together, forming something of a spiral, aiming up into the sky, a never ending but calm current, like it's fuelling the blackness that belongs here, and I fleetingly think of boneworms, ofparasites.

Everyone watches. No one screams or cries or hollers.

The silence of the courtyard is deafening. And all eyes are on the churning coil of blackness that spirals from the portal to the skies.

I don't get the chance to find my breath before it happens—the blast of panic. It comes with the violence of a sea storm, shouts and roars erupting all around me—and the cheers of praise screaming in my ears.

But I can only watch.

I watch him.

Daxeel.

Kneeling on the stone floor, hand splayed and pressed onto the ground, he keeps his head bowed. Lashes of darkness coil around him—his arms, his ankles, rolling over his shoulders. And I know whatever darkness sticks to him is unlike any I've ever seen before, unlike any that is meant to exist.

Whatever this is, it is alive.

The way it's separate from the darkness all around, these shadows curve over Daxeel like shields, like beasts returned home to their master.

A part of him.

Pushing his weight onto his hand, Daxeel shoves himself up in one strong move. He stands, cobalt eyes gleaming from the thickest black I've ever seen, so dark that it'll take a hundred more fire torches and light jars to illuminate the courtyard again.

I can hardly see at all beyond the pockets of dim torchlight. But Daxeel's eyes are deep blue lights flickering from behind shadows—

He looks right at me, and black blood shines on his lips.

He holds my stare, turns his chin to the side, then spits out a glittering spray of glass. Slowly, he grins—all toothy, red and black blood glistening on his lips—and my guts rinses me inside out.

There's nothing about that grin that makes a smile.

That is a fucking threat.

My heart is an iron ball. So unwelcome in my body, it burns and it aches and it plummets to my gut with crushing weight.

Sweat glistens on my brow and sticks wind-wild hair to my temples. My lips are swollen from the quiet tears shuddering through me. And my wrist aches from the grip Eamon keeps on me as he rushes through the crowd.

Hundreds are dead now. Contenders who lost their lives in the first passage. And yet it somehow feels like more fae have been crammed into the courtyard than before the passage started. It's never seemed busier, sounded louder, felt hotter—or more dangerous.

All because of that: The black coil.

That spiral of darkness hasn't faltered. It keeps a calm and steady pace up into the black sky from the heart of where the portal once was but has now returned to a stone ground.

It's stone we walk on.

Hand fierce on my wrist, Eamon snatched me up thirty minutes ago from the seats and, leaving Daxeel's family behind, stole me onto the steps of the stands. It took us that long to get down the stairs to the courtyard, to push through the scrambling spectators; all those who rush to see their loved ones or check the corpses for familiar faces, and even the military fae who assess the dead for their recruitment favourites to cross off their names from the parchments.

"Cursed Shadows," a litalf hisses the words, not with purpose or rage, but with icy fear. "Not the first time I've seen them, but they have never been this powerful before."

And I hear it again and again as my boots scrape over the courtyard, unwillingly dragged through the trove of corpses and bloody contenders.

Cursed Shadows.

Cursed Shadows.

Cursed Shadows.

Those words echo in my mind, a voice whispered down a long, empty cave, but I don't fully grasp them. Maybe this is what it means to be in shock, I'm not sure, but I feel not quite myself, not quite in my body. It feels so much like my soul being peeled off my bones at a glacier pace.

Eamon yanks me through a knitted group of iilra. His shoulder smacks, hard, into one of the black-robed fae, but she doesn't stagger. I never see them lose their balance—but I have no thoughts of that once Eamon's grip tightens and he pulls me to his side.

I stare at the dark male the iilra were whispering to, always whispering in their ghostly voices, voices that sound like they come from other worlds and speak only through layers of veils.

But there's no veil standing between me and Daxeel.

Daxeel tilts his head but not in a gesture of greeting. He bows, as though to get a better look at me, to lock me in his sights like prey.

Tendrils of inky hair fall into his eyes.

Those eyes, those eyes, those eyes.

Nothing but pure, unfiltered victory alights them from the darkness of shadows and kohl lines.

My boots catch on reluctance.

A sudden urge to turn and run.

But he would chase me. He would catch me before I could take a step. Daxeel is a hunter, a warrior—and now it seems the son of darkness itself.

No playful glint in the way he watches me, those tendrils of shadows cling to him as closely as his tattoos mark his neck.

Never before have I felt this small before him, really and truly felt like I'm in danger.

Eamon releases my hand. I feel him near me, so I know he only took a step back to give us a moment, but he sticks close enough that it's obvious he doesn't trust his cousin, not before, not now—and maybe I am in more danger than I ever realized.

Swallowing thickly, I take a tentative step for Daxeel. A tear rolls down my flushed cheek. My lips part around shaky words, words I whimper at him like a plea, "What have you done?"

Slicked in blood, the smile he lets warp his face is wicked. "Worry about yourself, Nari. Will you begin your month of slavery now?" He growls out the words as though they are loving—a mockery as my mind fights to catch up. "Or do you need a phase to prepare yourself?"

Slack-faced, I blink once, twice, then a frown pinches my brow. It takes some moments for my dazed mind to catch up.

Slavery. A month—the term served by defectors.

A jagged breath rattles through me. The sound of betrayal.

I take a step back, no I stumble. My spine connects with the tense chest I know too well.

Eamon's hands come to my sides to steady me. But I slump against him, my watery and blank eyes fixed on Daxeel who wears no pity, only cruel triumph.

That's how he did it.

He didn't get me out of the Sacrament. He defected me. And he stole away my month of slavery under his command. Behind my back, he orchestrated this with the iilra—signed my name to his.

Then it flashes in my mind like a whip splitting me in two.

Before I took my place in the stands, the iilra with the parchment. I signed it…

I signed it.

And so did Daxeel.

I can't breathe.

When I put that quill to paper, I signed my final agreement that I won't be participating in the first passage. It's all they needed, it's all Daxeel needed, to hand me into his ownership.

And I'm the fool who didn't read the parchment.

I can't breathe.

I can't breathe.

I can't breathe.

Against Eamon's chest, I lose my strength. My legs buckle under my weight, a sudden crushing weight of reality falls down on me.

My slavery.

The Cursed Shadows, the darkness from Mother herself, one that can be wholly controlled by the iilra the way that the Sisters control the light—and if Daxeel wins the second passage… the Cursed Shadows will be under the complete command of the iilra… and there will be no limitations of where it can go.

Watching me piece it all together, watching my heart break on my twisting, wet face, Daxeel drops his mask.

His smile splits into a fierce grin that shudders my spine. Teeth made for tearing out throats, he bares himself to me, his true self.

I might faint.

I might scream.

I might run.

But all I manage to do… is whimper.

And in answer, Daxeel advances on me. His eyes darken with each step closer, his smile fades away to nothing—

I flinch as he snatches my jaw in his bloody, gloved hand. The bite of his fingertips cuts into my cheeks.

He angles my grimaced face to meet his.

Gleaming ocean eyes hold my gaze, not with love or obsession, but with a threat—the promise of spilled blood if I look away.

But what he does is worse—much worse.

My face twists with the ache rinsing in my chest.

Daxeel brings his lips to my cheek. Tenderly, he brushes his soft mouth over the trail of tears there. A loving caress, a kiss of threats—and a murmured promise…

"You were right to fear me then. I was wrong to pity you. I will not make that mistake again."

Stray shadows peel away—and come for me. Little lashes of it flick up the clench of his jaw, then whip out at me.

I feel them like flickers of cold. A whisper of a breath. But something is different about these ones—because in three flicks against me, they have wiped away the tears from my other cheek.

Shivers wrack my body. I think I pee a little, a couple of drops, and I know he smells it.

Daxeel's lips twitch into a lazy grin, sharp teeth bared at me.

The breath I release is a guttural one, as terrified and hoarse as I stand before him. "You played me."

Smile intact, it loses none of its viciousness as he bites out at me. A small bite, toying with me, but enough that his sharp teeth nip at my damp lips.

"You lose to yourself at checkers," he whispers softly over my wounded lips. "So when you entered a chess match with me, did you truly think you stood a fucking chance?"

His gaze is unwavering as he watches me crumble. My whole face twists, my mouth grimaced, and I choke a cry of pure defeat.

Softly, he brushes his smile over my lips, then nips again. "Save your strength for a fight you can actually win."

Then he's gone. The shadows, too, as though with those steps back, as he pulled into the crowd, the shadows went with him.

"Nari…" Eamon's voice is lost in the noise of the crowd. I hardly hear it as little more than a distant echo, but I do feel the support of his arms coming around my middle. "Come on, Nari… Let's get you to your room."

Whatever else he says is lost on me.

The crowd, the shouts and cheers, the blood and the corpses—it's all background noise now.

I live in one moment, in one harrowing realization.

Daxeel played me. He betrayed me.

And I pranced right into his trap.