Scorned by Shadows (Kissed by Shadows Series, Book 4)

by Lola StVil

  “They could never hurt me because I didn’t care about anything or anyone. But then I found you. And anyone who wants to send a message to me or hurt me can do it through you. And I won’t always be there to protect you. I can’t stand the thought of you being in danger just because I love you.

  “As much as it pains me to say this, Regal was right all along. You deserve better than me, Atlas. Way better. You deserve someone who never strayed into the darkness. Someone who hasn’t spent a lifetime accumulating enemies. You deserve someone who is as pure of heart as you are, and who won’t risk getting you killed just by loving you. You should take the test with Regal.”

  I feel an uncomfortable urge to laugh. As if I am going to take the test with Regal. We kissed once forever ago, and all I feel for him is the love I feel for the rest of the team; it’s more like a brother and sister love than anything.

  “Kane, that’s not going to happen,” I say. “You know why? Because I don’t love Regal. I love you.”

  I try not to see the wounded look that flits across Regal’s face at my words.

  “I didn’t see it at first. The thought of losing you to Regal or anyone else for that matter made me feel broken inside. It made me want to burn the whole world just so that there was no one left for you to be with but me. But now I see it.

  “I have been selfish wanting you for myself, and it was only when you made me really see the danger being with me puts you in that I saw the truth. I would rather you be happy and in love with someone else than live in constant danger and fear with me. You might not see it now, but you will.

  “Imagine your life ten years from now when you’re constantly looking over your shoulder. When every footstep behind you, every shadow that crosses your path, could be someone looking to hurt you. That’s no way to live.

  “I know you’re saying you don’t love Regal, but you could love him though. If I had never come into your life, you could have loved Regal.”

  “But you did come into my life, Kane,” I say. “And I love you, and only you.”

  He shakes his head.

  “You just think you do, Atlas. You have to let me go. For your own sake and for the sake of this mission.”

  I am getting angry now. If he wants to dump me, why doesn’t he just say so instead of pretending he’s doing this for me?

  “Let’s just pretend for one crazy moment that I’m actually going to go along with this ridiculousness. How on earth could Regal and I stand any chance of passing that test when I’m in love with someone else?”

  “You’re being naïve, Atlas,” he says.

  “Fuck you,” I snap. “How is it being naïve to know my own feelings? Stop deflecting and answer the question. How could I pass a test of true love with someone I’m not in love with?”

  “Think about Princess Snow and Prince Charming. They had known each other for what? A week or two? They couldn’t have been in true love at that point. They spent most of that time avoiding each other, and the whole time, Prince Charming was under the spell of the curse. The curse was broken because they were right together and would one day have true love. Just like you and Regal will if you open your heart to him.”

  I just shake my head in exasperation. Maybe he’s right about Princess Snow and Prince Charming, I don’t know, and I don’t care. Because I know the one thing that matters. He’s wrong about us. I could never love anyone else the way I love Kane.

  “Kane, I’m going to say this one more time, and I want you to really hear me. I love you now. I will still love you tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that. And if that means that life won’t all be plain sailing and rainbows, I’m on board with that. I knew who you were when I got with you and I’ve made my peace with it. I don’t want a cozy, safe little existence where I never truly live.

  “I want you and everything that comes from being with you. I want to feel things deeply enough that it scares me a little bit. I want to sometimes fight with you because we’re both so stubborn and passionate. I want to live, Kane. Really live. And I want to do that with you.”

  “No, Atlas. Because being with me will destroy you. We both know it, but we haven’t wanted to face up to it. But now we have to. Because if we get this wrong, then you’re going to spend eternity being tortured. That’s not the only reason. I’m saying this now. I have to tell you now before I lose my nerve because I don’t think I can be so selfless once we’re home. I think I would just sit back and let you love me even though it’s wrong for you. Atlas, you deserve to be with someone who can give you what you need. And I’m not that person.”

  I feel all of the anger and fire rush out of me in a wave as I realize that I’m not going to be able to make him see that he is the only one I want, and I don’t care if that means life might get a little dangerous at times.

  I want to fight for him, for us, but suddenly, I don’t have the energy anymore. And everything I say, he has an answer for. It’s fast becoming clear to me that he wants me out of his life, and this is his way of doing it without hurting me. It’s not working. I’m so hurt I can barely think, but in his mind, this is the nice way of breaking up with me.

  It’s Kane’s version of the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech.

  “Do you really mean that, Kane?” I ask finally.

  He nods, and I see a mixture of relief and pain on his face.

  “Yes. I really mean it. You’re the princess, Atlas, and the princess gets the prince, not the demon.”

  I know that I can’t let myself believe this is all because Kane thinks I deserve better than him. I can’t go through the rest of my life with a “what if” hanging over my head. I have to hear him say that he doesn’t love me.

  “Fine. You win. We won’t be together anymore. But first, I need you to look me in the eye and tell me you don’t love me,” I say.

  Kane’s eyes open wide.

  “Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said? This isn’t because I don’t love you. It’s because you deserve to be loved by someone better than me.”

  “Screw that,” I say. “I’m not going to stand here and let you break my heart if it’s not because you don’t love me. If you’re really ready to give up on us, if you really think that what we have isn’t real or good enough, then fine. But you have to say it. You have to look me in the eye and tell me you don’t love me. And then I’ll walk away and live this fantasy life you’ve built up for me in your head. But first, you have to break my heart completely. You have to make sure that door is closed because if I know it’s still open, I won’t be able to walk away from you. I’ll spend my whole life in a limbo where I wonder how different it could have been if I was with you. So, if you really want to end this, you have to tell me that none of this was real and none of it mattered. You have to tell me it was all a lie.”

  I am shouting now.

  “Tell me, Kane. Tell me you don’t love me,” I scream.

  “You know I can’t do that,” he yells.

  “Why not?” I demand.

  “Because I do love you, Atlas. I love you more than anything. You are my whole fucking world, and as much as I want to keep you safe, I can’t look you in the eye and lie to you about the one thing that is real to me. Okay?”

  I smile then, and Kane frowns.

  “Don’t you see, Kane? You’re all I’ll ever need. All I can ever ask for is to be loved so completely by you that you were willing to give me up. You were willing to let me walk away from you because you thought that would make me happy. And if that’s not true love, then I don’t know what is.”

  The tears are pouring freely down my face now, and Kane reaches out and brushes them from my cheeks. He leans in and kisses me. He pulls me tightly against him, and I cling to him like he might disappear if I let go for even a second.

  “Promise me this is forever, Kane,” I whisper.

  “I promise,” he replies. “For as long as I live, I am yours.”

  “Well, damn. What are you going to do
for an encore after that?” Perry says from behind us.

  I bark out a laugh and step out of Kane’s arms. I had almost forgotten that the team was still standing there.

  “When you get front-row seats to a performance like that, you don’t need an encore,” I say.

  I turn to Kane.

  “Ready?” I ask.

  “Ready.” He nods.

  He takes my hand in his, and we start walking away from the team and towards the golden patch of snow.

  I know the consequences we will face if we fail this test, and although I really don’t think we will, not anymore, I need to know that Kane is willing to risk that.

  “If we fail, you’ll be trapped in a permanent vision of the Meat Market,” I say. “I want you to know that I don’t think for a second we’re going to fail this test, but I need to know if you’re truly willing to risk that.”

  Kane looks across at me and smiles.

  “I’ll do anything for you. You know that. I know what we’re risking, and I’m doing this,” he says.

  I nod, and we walk a couple more steps in comfortable silence. We’re almost at the golden patch in the sea of white when Kane speaks again.

  “My own personal Hell wouldn’t be the Meat Market, Atlas. Not anymore. It would be losing you.”

  Kane and I get to our knees in the snow and begin digging through it with our hands. We brought healing mixtures, mixtures that have allowed us to cheat death, a mixture to blind a demon, and an enchanted dime that can take us home. But not one of us thought to bring a spade.

  And the team can’t help us with this part. If they get too close, they will be affected by the curse as well. This is something Kane and I must do alone. I fear it will take longer to dig the thing up than it will to actually break the curse and get home.

  I’m glad Sadie was able to make us resistant to the temperatures here because I don’t think we could have done this otherwise. We’ve been digging for about twenty minutes when we finally break through the snow and hit the ground. It’s frozen solid.

  “Kane, we’re never going to get to this,” I say.

  “Blast it,” Kane says.

  “Huh?”

  “Blast it with your powers. It’s not going to destroy the apple. If it were that simple, then it would have been destroyed instead of buried here.”

  I wish I’d thought of that sooner, but at least now we can take the quick way. I nod my head.

  “Okay, stand back,” I say.

  Kane gets to his feet and backs off a bit. I aim my hands at the ground and blast a power ball from each palm. The ground beneath me shakes a little, and a crack appears in it. Kane gets back down beside me, and we push our hands into the crack and drag at it.

  I swallow hard when the ground crumbles away and the apple comes into sight. The apple is nothing special to look at. It is a standard, yellow-colored apple with a stalk and one leaf on the top of it. It isn’t even very big. I can still feel the power coming off it though, and I can sense that the power it holds is dark.

  The golden glow in the ground around the apple fades away as I pluck it from the ground. Kane and I stand up. He looks into my eyes and smiles.

  “This is it, Atlas,” he says.

  I nod and slowly, almost reluctantly, I raise the apple to my mouth. I take a bite and start to chew. I expect the apple to taste musty and bitter, but I’m pleasantly surprised to find out I’m wrong. It tastes beautifully sweet, and the juice runs down my throat, sating an appetite I didn’t know I had.

  I hand the apple to Kane, and as he takes a bite, I feel my knees buckle, and I fall to the ground. I am not unconscious, but I can’t move. I can see and hear everything around me, but I can’t speak. I can’t even blink.

  I try to get up, but it’s no use. I don’t feel the panic I felt when the icy net had me in its grip earlier. I feel a strange sort of calm, like somehow, deep down, I was expecting this. I suppose in a way I was.

  This is all on Kane now. He has to be the one to break the curse. He has swallowed his bite of the apple.

  I can hear the team screaming my name, and I want to call back and tell them I’m okay, but I can’t. Kane steps towards me, and he stands there, towering over me.

  His face is twisted into an ugly sneer, and I can see the desire in his eyes and the way he smiles cruelly. It isn’t the sort of desire any girl wants to see on a man’s face. It’s the sort of desire that leads to girls getting hurt.

  Kane kneels down between my legs, roughly pushing my thighs apart. His fingers linger over them, and he grins at me. His eyes swirl madly in their sockets as he reaches out for me. He caresses my cheek and moves his hand lower, running his fingertips over my chin, my throat, and down over my stomach.

  The look on his face scares me, and I’m afraid of what he will do to me. For a horrible minute, I’m back in the Meat Market, but the memory has gone as soon as it arrived. I could never think of Kane in the same way as I thought of those perverts, no matter what happens here. Because I know this isn’t Kane. It’s the apple’s magic. Those men chose to act the way they did. Kane would never hurt me in any way.

  Although I can still feel the tingling of fear running through me, I have complete faith in Kane and our love and the feeling of love, of hope, is far bigger than the tiny niggling fear that gnaws at the edges of my brain.

  I know he is strong enough to fight the curse, and I will him to fight it now.

  “Come on, Kane, fight it. Prove to everyone who ever doubted us that our love is real,” I say in my head.

  The team is still shouting, but their voices have merged into one. I hear the occasional phrase louder than the others.

  “Atlas, get up.”

  “Kane, stop.”

  Suddenly, Langston’s voice rings out louder than the rest and the others quiet down as they hear the truth in her words.

  “Kane, you have to break the curse. You have to kiss Atlas with true love’s kiss,” she shouts.

  Kane’s eyes sparkle as he starts to lower his face to mine. His eyes drink me in hungrily, but there’s no humanity in his gaze. He is seized by an animalistic hunger, and I know what’s about to happen isn’t true love’s kiss. It’s something darker than that. Something more primal. And if Kane kisses me now, it won’t end there. He will brutally take me right here and now and there won’t be any coming back from that. No matter how much I tell him it wasn’t him, he would never be able to forgive himself.

  That alone could be used to torture him for all eternity. It hits me that that’s exactly what our torture will be: his knowing he hurt me, mine knowing I wasn’t enough for him to break the curse and knowing that’s why he’s being tortured. Hades will use each of us to torture the other.

  I beg him with my eyes not to do this, but it’s like he doesn’t even see me. He sees my body, but not the actual me inside of it. I am an empty vessel to him, a body to be used for his own carnal pleasures.

  His face is only inches from mine, and I can feel his breath on my face as he pants with need. His lips brush mine, and I want to screw my eyes closed so I don’t have to see what happens next, but I can’t.

  Suddenly, he’s pulling back, and he’s back to kneeling between my thighs. He drags his gaze away from me.

  “I can’t do it. I can’t kiss her. Not like this,” he yells back.

  His voice sounds pained, and I know the real Kane is still in there, fighting against the curse.

  “You have to,” Perry shouts.

  “I won’t,” Kane roars. “I’d rather face a lifetime of torture than force myself on her like this. And I if I kiss her now, I know I won’t be strong enough to stop there.”

  “Then find a way to be strong enough. Do it for her, because she’ll face a lifetime of torture as well,” Perry responds.

  Kane gives a tortured groan, and his eyes sweep over me again. I can feel the hunger coming off him in waves, and I know that no matter how much he wants to fight the urge, if this goes on much longer, he won’t
be able to.

  “Kane, listen to me,” Saudia shouts.

  Kane drags his gaze off me again and focuses on Saudia.

  “You have to fight the darkness of the curse like Prince Charming did. You have to kiss her, but you have to kiss her as a lover would. Remember how much you love her, Kane. Remember how you were willing to walk away from her if it meant she’d be happy. Use that love to beat the darkness,” Saudia says.

  Kane turns back to me. His tortured breathing and pained expression make my heart ache. He leans down towards me, and I see the swirling madness of desire there again. I want to be able to switch off, to not feel what is coming next, but I don’t have that luxury.

  “You are mine,” Kane snarls, his face twisted with impotent rage.

  He hovers above me, resting on his hands, which are planted on either side of me. He leans down to my body and inhales deeply, savoring the scent of me. He moans and inhales again.

  He turns his face up to me again, and the madness is gone from his eyes.

  “You are mine, Atlas,” he says gently. “And I would never, ever hurt you.”

  As his lips touch mine he is my Kane again and the paralysis that had me pinned in place breaks. I reach up and wrap my arms around him, and I kiss him back. The kiss is soft and tender, and I feel warmth spreading through my body.

  I can feel Kane trembling beneath my fingers, but as our kiss deepens, his clenched muscles relax and the trembling stops.

  The ground beneath us begins to vibrate, and Kane pulls back from me.

  “I love you, Atlas,” he says.

  “I love you too,” I reply.

  He stands up and reaches down a hand to pull me to my feet. I can feel the tears welling up in my eyes. He fought it. He fought it, and he won. He has proved to the whole universe that our love is as real and true as I always knew it was. He is mine, and I am his, and that’s the way it should be.