Shadows and Shade Box Set

by Amanda Cashure

  Roarke risks a stray glance over his shoulder where the women were standing, a flicker of longing in his gaze.

  Which actually – stupidly – makes me a little jealous. Like somewhere inside maybe I want that look.

  Go back to scrubbing, Shade, I order myself.

  And I obey.

  Once we’re back inside the section of the stables currently called home, I start asking my next questions. Sometimes they get answered, other times Pax just has to look at me and I shut up.

  “Who exactly is the council?” I ask, waiting for everyone else to take their seats before perching myself on the edge of a bed – as out of their space as I can get.

  “Silva is ruled by one Crown and a council of ten,” Seth says.

  “Five,” Pax counters.

  Seth shrugs, throws his cloak around his shoulders and without saying anything, lets himself out of the room.

  “Four, actually,” Roarke sighs.

  “Where’s Seth going?”

  “I’m sure we’ll find out soon,” Killian mutters.

  I slip my boots off one at a time, massaging my toes. Kneeling all morning puts aches in to interesting parts of a person’s body.

  “Like nobility?” I take a stab at the council’s importance.

  “Like rulers,” Roarke agrees. “Our Crown can’t do anything without the consent of at least three council members. Even giving Sabers assignments requires three Council members to sign the orders.”

  Killian grunts and I wait for someone to offer up a translation.

  “It wasn’t always a requirement. The council brought that in when Lithael sat himself on the throne. Otherwise, he’d have us all sitting on the border, probably on the other side of the thing, permanently.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” I used to live there.

  Aside from some of the people, it’s not that bad.

  “Silvari can’t be near the border for long,” Roarke begins, pausing to make eye contact with Pax. “She probably doesn’t know. It’s been a few hundred generations on the other side.”

  “You could fill a library with the things I don’t know,” I mutter.

  “The border requires magic to exist,” Pax says.

  He reaches into a basket on the table, turns in his seat and tosses me an apple. “It draws this magic from several sources, Spring of Power, along the perimeter of the forest. But the border doesn’t really care much about the source. It’ll suck the magic from the most powerful things nearby. We could sit next to a spring and be unaffected, but if we’re the most powerful entity nearby, our magic would be slowly siphoned off.”

  “What happens then?” I ask.

  “We would never be completely drained, but we would be considerably more vulnerable. Other Silvari and most Sabers are not so lucky,” Roarke says.

  “So, you’d be vulnerable in a fight?”

  “We rarely need our magic to fight,” Pax says.

  “But others do?” I ask, growing tired of getting answers that make me more confused.

  “Others weaker than us,” Killian says, as he uses his boot knife to clean underneath his fingernails.

  I’d have thought a morning scrubbing would have done that for him. I’d also think the risk of cutting your own finger off is pretty high – but I’m not Killian.

  “Which is everyone else, so, yeah, others,” Seth says, frightening the crap out of me – I didn’t even hear the door open.

  I rub my temples. This is getting me nowhere.

  Seth taps my shoulder with the tip of a bottle and I take it from him before looking at it. Apple in one hand, bottle in the other, and my head still full of questions.

  “Why do you need a magic-sucking border anyway?”

  “We didn’t always,” Pax leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees, which means, from my position on the bed, that I can’t see his face anymore. He accepts a bottle from Seth before continuing, “One day, a rift split Silvari magic from your mortal magic. There was a war. Magic was destroying everything. There still isn’t much that grows close to your side of the border. The fires that raged were so intense they sucked the life from deep within the earth. So our Crown put up a border, forging our realm into the size of a forest and locking your realm out. In here, Sabers live to a thousand or so, everyone else lives to a few hundred, time works differently. Everyone is safe.” He talks with so much heart. “Was safe.”

  “Should she even be drinking?” Roarke asks, cutting the feeling in the room in half and replacing it with a challenge.

  “Yes, Three, I can drink.”

  “No, I mean this is Silvari wine,” he says, waving his bottle a little.

  I was so deeply listening to Pax’s story that I hadn’t even looked at what Seth gave me. It’s a plain brown glass bottle. Slightly squat, a little like a ball, and with no label or anything. Like wherever Seth got it from was a step before the part where they put a tag on it. I pull the cork from the top and a haze of ripe berries fills my nose.

  “Should I get it back?” Seth asks, his words aren’t for me, but he’s looking at me as he says them.

  Not that I needed any kind of head start.

  I tip the bottle to my lips and let the sweet juice fill my mouth and throat until there is no more.

  A satisfied sigh escapes my lips. As I lower the bottle I steal a quick glance at each of the boys. Killian is drinking his own bottle, his knife gone and his feet up on the makeshift table. Roarke is frowning at me, his bottle not even opened yet. Seth is smiling, because Seth is an idiot.

  “If the mortal gets drunk and starts running around naked, you’re catching her,” Pax says, pointing to Seth.

  “That sounds like my area of expertise,” Roarke chimes.

  “No,” Pax says.

  He holds out his hand, and Roarke passes his bottle over.

  “I’m not doing any of that,” I say, followed by a loud hiccup.

  Seth laughs, but his eyes don’t leave mine as he sips his own drink.

  Damn bastard set me up.

  Yelling at him from over here just isn’t going to be effective enough!

  I launch myself off the bed, onto the back of the hay-bale-couch, consider that every bone in my body has lost its mind, and find myself standing on the hay-bale-table in the middle of the room. Face to face with Seth.

  “This’ll be good,” Roarke mutters behind me.

  I stab my finger into Seth’s chest, the tip bending back and his chest not caring at all. A shovel, that’s what I need. A shovel would put a dent in his chest.

  “I. Am. Not. Your. Toy.”

  He stares at me.

  At this height I’m a smidge taller than he is, and that smidge does fantastic things to my confidence.

  The corner of his lips crack into a slow smile, but he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move, barely even blinks. I find myself not blinking too. Just staring. Like the first one of us to move loses – and what will be lost is my humanity, or individuality, or some other ‘ity’ word. Losing means sinking to toy status.

  He isn’t making it easy for me. Those pools of blue, like the sky, like freedom, try to hold my attention. Try to draw me deeper into this stupid game. The sun coming in through the high window behind him lights up the gold strands through his hair. One day I am going to pluck one from his head and see what it’s made of.

  He’s moving, I realize, leaning ever so slightly to the left.

  Then a little further.

  What’s he doing?

  Balance gone, I topple to the side and off the edge of the bale with all the skill of a child who’s been spun around and around real fast. Seth grabs me mid-air, pulls me into his chest and sets me on the ground. He’s taller than me again, and his body is vibrating with a winner’s laugh.

  “What did you do?” I demand.

  “Have you ever had a drink before?” Roarke asks, still seated somewhere behind me, and also laughing.

  Seth releases me, but I take a second before stepping
away from his embrace. Checking that the room has stopped spinning.

  Killian and Pax are sharing looks. Just the motion of their eyes, from each other to Seth and back, is full of communication that they don’t voice.

  “Didn’t think she’d last that long,” Killian says.

  “Didn’t know she could jump hay bales,” Pax adds.

  “Yes. I’ve had a drink before, of course I can jump hay bales, and I would have won if he didn’t fight dirty,” I say, turning to each of them as I speak and Seth last.

  “We all fight dirty,” Seth starts to say.

  I’m close enough to kick him in the balls and while I’m still considering it, my foot takes action. Apparently, the first side effect of being drunk is losing my body’s normal ability to behave itself. I have had a few sips of wine before, stolen from the bottom of the bottles. And shots of rum when Cook was trying to warm the chill from my bones after it snowed overnight. Apple cellars aren’t made for keeping the snow out, and their doors aren’t made for opening when there’s a snow bank outside them either. But then apple cellars aren’t supposed to be used as bedrooms, and I thought that was a pretty good idea myself.

  But he just chuckles.

  Chuckles.

  At me.

  I raise my arm, ready to poke him harder – on the nose or something equally as ineffective. But he grabs both of my arms before I can connect.

  My right arm doesn’t care, but my bandaged-under-my-sleeve and damaged-from-a-broken-knife left arm screams in pain.

  I buckle, dropping like a sack of seed. My eyes squeeze shut against the pain in my wrist and my knees thud onto the slate floor. He lets go instantly and jumps away from me, arms raised, palms open.

  As if to prove he means no harm.

  Everyone is on their feet, and there’s a low grumble coming from beside me. Pax. Pax is beside me. He steps closer and I find myself cowering a little.

  “She’s still healing,” Killian says.

  “Of course she’s still healing,” Pax says, gripping the shoulder of my shirt and hauling me to my feet.

  Just Pax, I tell myself. Just pain from the stupid cut I gave myself.

  I’m annoyed as crap at how all of that just unfolded, like the sensation of pain triggered the same response I’ve had my whole life regardless of how different these guys are to the Manor Lord.

  “Of course I’m still healing,” I say, my mouth trying to get the rest of me to focus. “It’s been two days.”

  Pax makes it clear he wants me to sit on the hay-bale-table and doesn’t let go of my shirt until I’ve obeyed. Then Killian takes front and center.

  “One of us would be healed by now,” Roarke says, also sitting close by.

  Apparently, my buckling in pain created a serious reaction in them all.

  Seth’s the only one who gives himself some space – and I think that’s a matter of self-preservation. He walks over to one of the beds and stretches out, still sipping his bottle.

  “Yes. I’ve been wearing a bandage on my hand all day just for fun,” I say, rolling my eyes a little at him.

  “Logan must enjoy that about mortals,” Seth says.

  Pax growls, sudden and sharp.

  “We’re not going to let that happen. We’re not letting her out of our sight,” Roarke says.

  “I know. I was just saying,” Seth stops himself there.

  The guy really knows how to dig himself a hole.

  Logan scares the chuck out of me. Especially given the minions he has gathering around him to bully me. Asanta might have her own reasons – and they run pretty deep – but she’s not the Crown’s nephew. She’s not the one who can open a door into the world of the dead. More importantly, the Elorsins aren’t afraid of Asanta. But Logan, he’s high on their problems list.

  “You feel too much,” Killian grunts.

  I huff at him, mostly because he’s not wrong. As I swallow back my feelings, he unties the knot and unravels the layers with efficient, almost disinterested movements.

  “Sit down,” he says, the instruction isn’t aimed at me, it’s aimed at Pax, who offers him a glare in response.

  “I’m fine,” Pax growls.

  “Sure you are,” Killian counters.

  He pulls the last of the bandage off, the part going around my wrist and hand.

  Pax turns and heads for the door. Just like that. Gone.

  I risk a glance over my shoulder – risk because the world is still slightly too easy to unbalance, before turning back to Killian.

  “Can someone please tell me why the Darkness guy is the one I’m trusting with my broken flesh?” I ask into the silence.

  “He feels pain,” Seth says. “He knows how it works. When ‘ouch’ means ‘ouch’ or ‘holy shit I’m about to die’.”

  “A flesh wound compared to a mortal wound,” Roarke says.

  He leans across and picks up the bottle of sweet Silvari wine that Pax took off him only moments ago. Seth’s off the bed in a flash, snatches it from Roarke’s hand and holds it out for me.

  “Mortal, meaning a wound on a mortal?” I ask, accepting the bottle with Roarke making a snorting sound in the background.

  “Mortal meaning about to die,” Killian says.

  A small bag of supplies appears on the table next to me, thanks to Seth. Fresh bandages and a bottle of crap-that-stings-like-hell.

  Killian uncaps the bottle.

  “Scream,” he suggests.

  “No,” I grunt, the liquid already flowing over my arm.

  Burning and searing.

  It passes, he pins the wound under his palm and just looks at me.

  Revenge is required. I have the vaguest recollection of needing to repay this guy for something else too. Like maybe letting Asanta try to kill me. I think it should involve horse shit.

  “Why not? It helps,” he says, drawing me back from my thoughts.

  I ignore that question – it’s stupid. Whether I choose to scream or not is up to me.

  He starts to wrap my arm in a fresh bandage. Layering the bandage toward my wrist, even though the cuts on my palm are healed enough to leave in the air.

  “That’s enough,” I say, trying to take it from him.

  He shakes his head.

  “Pax,” he says, his thumb running over the rough edges on the scars around my wrist.

  “What do you mean ‘Pax’? They’re just scars and they’re mine – nothing to do with Pax.”

  “Let him wrap them, lass,” Roarke says, his tone too reasonable, his gaze too gentle and the sedate slouch to the way he’s sitting makes this conversation feel too serious.

  “Why?”

  “Have you considered why Pax broke the chain from your wrist in the first place?” Roarke asks.

  “Because I have bad luck and you guys have him,” I say, stabbing a thumb toward Seth who’s laying on a bed again, with his arm over his eyes.

  To all appearances he’s having a nap.

  “It’s a blessing,” he says, but he doesn’t crack an eyelid to look at me.

  “Pax didn’t jump in and crush that cuff. Actually, he worked very hard to ignore it – and me. He only bothered noticing because of Seth,” I say.

  “There’s a difference between a mortal you’ve never met and a girl named Shade who is right in front of him all the time,” Roarke says.

  “Cover these for now, he’ll get used to them,” Killian says.

  The Darkness guy is worried about something his commander feels when he sees the marks left on me from being held captive. I look around for Pax again, and confirm he hasn’t silently re-entered the room. Which these guys are very good at doing.

  “He better not see me naked then,” I say, slamming a hand over my mouth. “Crap, did not mean to say that.”

  Killian ties off the ends of the bandage and stands, almost stiffly. Which leaves me at a considerable height disadvantage. I jump to my feet and up onto the hay bales.

  “Why?” I ask. “I meant to say why – forg
et the other stuff.”

  “We all have a past, Kitten,” Roarke says.

  He’s managed to find another bottle and without thinking, I launch myself at it. Snatching it from his fingers and replacing it with my empty one.

  “What’s his sto–” Hiccup. “– ry.”

  A bell rings and Roarke gives up on having something to drink with lunch.

  It’s only lunchtime, and I’m considerably on the tipsy end of the scale.

  Killian leaves first, but Roarke’s still getting his boots on when I abandon my half finished third bottle of wine. I wander myself toward the door. Maybe stumble. No, not quite a stumble. Could be a stagger. Either way, I make it to my boots and have to lean against the wall to pull them on.

  “Pax’s story, spill,” I order, eyes on Roarke.

  The world starts to lean to the left and I feel my body leave the wall and begin to fall toward the floor. Roarke’s arm shoots out, bracing me and then pushing me upright again.

  “Hey, that does work,” he says, smiling over my shoulder at Seth.

  Roarke leans me back against the wall and I grab his wrist before he can get too far away from me. I don’t care if his long hair is so damned cute, or if his eyes are the kind of black pools that hold the world’s knowledge, or if he’s number Three and his brother will probably punish him for opening his mouth. I want answers.

  I fix my gaze on him and muster up some allure of my own.

  “You know you want to t-tell me,” I say, and it was going great until I stuttered.

  He smiles, genuine, warm, all-consuming. Wrapping his own fingers over the top of mine. He doesn’t lean in, doesn’t impose on my space, doesn’t clamp down on my hand as if to hold me here.

  “You can’t use my tricks on me,” he says, his voice taking on hypnotic depths. “Hop on one foot.”

  And I chuckin’ do.

  “Stick out your tongue,” he says.

  And I do that too.

  “Now ask me your question.”

  I try, but only gibberish comes off my too-much-wine tongue that happens to be sticking out between my teeth while I’m hopping on one foot. Seth cracks up, bent double, falling to the floor, thinks this is so funny.

  Roarke lets go of my hand and I instantly let go of his.