Stops sinking.
Stops struggling.
Just watches the blackness and a silver glow as it leaves my chest. The little glowing ball watches me mournfully before floating from view.
Feeling starts to seep into my actual body, the one being held up by Pax and Roarke.
“Breathe,” Roarke is saying, and my body is trying to obey.
The memory is just too heavy. The darkness everlasting.
Until it isn’t. Until out of the nothingness, there’s a pop of light. It gathers me up, then tugs my subdued body up from the depths and into the air.
I bob to the surface and somehow float in the narrow space at the bottom of a well. The sharp sensation of cold air forcing my lungs to work.
My screams echo up against the stones, and my mother’s face appears at the top.
“What kind of a bastard drops a baby in a well?” she shouts. “Fucker better have run, or I’ll drown her.”
She throws her legs over the side then starts to climb down. Inching closer to me, always looking over her shoulder. Her auburn hair is just as I remember it, waves and curls. I want to be here, stay here, wait for her and feel her arms around me again, but someone is trying to shake me back to the present.
“Shade,” Pax demands and everything in me stills.
I try to hang on to the moments I just relived, but each one slips from my grip.
There was a sunny house… I think… maybe people were in it… but… wait, in what?
There was water, I’m sure there was water. Somewhere.
Were people talking? I can’t remember.
Then even those details are sharply replaced with a sudden awareness of my limp body, and the tears rolling down my face.
Like a dream – they all vanish.
It takes a while. A fuzzy few hours of the kind of sleep that has me suddenly gasping for air as if I’m still drowning, before sucking me back into fitful darkness. It’s in one of these moments that my eyes snap open and I try to sit up, try, and fail because I’m already half sitting. A sea of blankets and pillows are under and around me.
Pax’s arm draped across my lap.
The light outside the oversized window is spilling slithers of apricot and amber into the room. Something is thumping in a tune somewhere. Behind my right shoulder the fire is crackling, and behind my left shoulder Roarke is acting like a man-pillow. A mallow.
He looks down at me, his cheeks dimpling and a little sparkle lighting up in the corner of his eye.
“You weren’t supposed to die,” he says softly.
“I died!”
There’s movement around the room. The rhythmic tapping sound stops, and I realize the sound was Seth, laying back on one of the couches and throwing one of his balls at the roof, catching it, then throwing it again. He sits up, swinging his legs to the floor and beaming like he just got a free pass to throw the best prank ever.
The lounges have been re-rearranged, forming an arc around the blanket nest on the floor.
“I died?”
“You almost died twice,” Seth says.
“You stopped breathing,” Roarke elaborated.
“Makes sense, I think I drowned.”
“Do you remember?” Pax asks.
“Please tell me you remember. I don’t want to do that to you again.”
The memories skitter away before I can grip any of them. Only a few are left. My mother's face – I remember that clearly. The moss and water – I remember where I was.
“Where’s my book?” I ask, trying to get up too quickly.
My head spins, my stomach turns, and I fall back into Roarke’s lap.
“Just go slowly,” he says, lifting me aside so he can move out from underneath me.
Pain doesn’t wash over me as he moves away, which means his position as my mallow was more choice than requirement.
Not sure how I feel about that.
I’m not sure how I feel about the communal watch-Shade-sleep space they’ve created either, or the way Pax seems to need to have his arm laying across my legs.
Oh, crap. When did I start liking them all this much? All of them. I blame Pax.
“Here,” Roarke says, holding a book out for me and cutting off the other thoughts rushing through my mind.
I flick through the pages quickly, helped by the fact that I’d started to rip the picture out and half-ripped pages sit funny in books.
“There, I was born there. Or somewhere near there.”
“The Origin Spring? You were born on our side of the border?” Roarke asks.
I nod as everyone shuffles in closer.
“You were born on our side of the border?” Pax repeats, his words are slow and deliberate.
I nod, again, slow and deliberate, then squint against the pain in my head and the thread of conversation that float forward in my mind.
“Before they drowned me, they said my mother was mortal, but my father was not. But I can’t remember exactly what they said.”
I tap the picture, trying to pull their intense gazes off me.
“She still smells mortal,” Killian grunts – as if we need the reminder.
I’d argue that I still feel very mortal, but instead say, “What does it say?”
“Good luck,” Seth says, adding a wave toward the book for emphasis. “Silvari only write crap in riddles or lists. That’s not a list – so it’s definitely a riddle.”
“What looks like stone is living root. What looks like water is living blood. What looks like down can be up. What looks like death can be life. Here grows the one thing that can power them all. When this life ceases to flow, all life will go.” Roarke’s finger traces the page as he reads.
“That sounds pretty straightforward to me,” I say.
“What looks like death can be life,” Roarke repeats.
“Does that mean I didn’t actually die?”
“I’m pretty sure you died. The no heart beat for three hours thing is pretty serious,” Seth says.
“I what?” My voice shoots up. Three hours is a long time. “How am I still here?”
“He’s exaggerating. You had a beat – I made sure of it,” Roarke says, his voice silky. “Your heart is very obedient.”
I nearly choke, but manage to control myself just enough to say, “Thank you.”
Explains why I’m in the guy’s lap then. My mallow was keeping me alive.
“How did you die?” Killian asks.
The room is completely still. Like they were waiting to see who was actually going to ask me that question.
“They put me in the spring, in the water –”
“Who?” they all ask, in their usual ways, which includes several growls and Pax going super tense.
“White-haired Silvari women. They put me in the water, I sank to the bottom and came back up in a well.” I have to stop for a moment, something dawning on me. “My mother was there. She found me in the well. Only I’m pretty sure babies don’t come from wells.”
“Wells tap into springs, but I think if the Origin Spring was feeding into a well on the other side of the border we’d hear about it. Weird stuff would be happening,” Roarke says.
“The well was filled in that day. I mean I always knew I was born beside a well, just not in one… or at the other end of some spring… anyway, the way Cook told it, the men had dug it the week before, and my mother filled it in by hand after I was born.”
“You should have cowered when you first laid eyes on us. Your cook ran, the servants in the fields watched us with fear even from a distance. The merchant we borrowed the cart from was so keen not to see us again that he insisted we left the thing at the crossroads. You should have run,” Pax says, which is slightly off-topic.
“That was kind of my fault,” Seth says. “I acted friendly.”
“It’s definitely your fault,” I say, stretching one lazy foot across to kick him but running out of energy and pretty much just dropping my foot in his lap.
Seth wra
ps his hand around it and gives it a squeeze – sending a delicious sensation up my leg. This makes the decision to leave my foot in his care easy. My arm is okay if I don’t move it, my head aches, and my chest is a little sore.
Roarke fetches another book off the shelf, finding a specific page and passing it across to Pax.
“The land on the south of the estate borders on Alauthshae. Our Potions Master is in Alauthshae. If Shade saw a Master, then Eydis would be a good place to start asking questions.”
Pax nods and Roarke snaps the book shut, followed immediately by a knock at the door.
I don’t move, and Seth, holding my foot, doesn’t move either. Pax gets up and forms a huddle with Roarke next to the bookshelf while Killian goes to the door.
“You’re welcome,” Seth says.
And I just look at him – because I have no idea what he’s on about.
“For intervening, for bringing your mortal ass back into Silva.”
Back into Silva, the idea swirls around in my head.
“I’m still me though, right?” I ask, loud enough that Roarke and Pax can hear – because I’m ninety percent sure Seth has no expertise in the knowledge department.
“We don’t know,” Roarke says. “You resisted me a few times. Not full, but just a little.”
“And you resisted me in the cart,” Pax says. “Just a little.”
“Plus you got in here, past the wards. Still not sure how you did that,” Roarke says.
“And you like that guy,” Killian says, pointing at Seth. “That’s not normal.”
Killian pushes a cart full of food trays into the room.
“That hurts, bro,” Seth says.
He gives my foot a squeeze then rubs his thumb into the ball of it. The spike of something blissful that shoots up my leg is so sudden that I yank my foot away on instinct. His face lights up with a satisfied smile, like that was the whole point. It reminds me of kids poking each other just to find a ticklish spot. Only that was so much better than a childish tickle.
“Being stubborn is pretty normal for me,” I say, crossing my legs because this conversation is more important, right now, than falling down one of Seth’s rabbit holes.
“But,” Roarke begins, sounding as if something just occurred to him. “You didn’t even blink at being in front of Lithael. Pax makes the servants uneasy because of his power, but a DeathSeed feels like death. No matter how noble it is to be serving to the Crown – he still should have scared the shit out of you.”
“He did,” I mumble, taking this moment to fix up the way I’m sitting and finding that the little bit of pain shooting through the break in my arm is a welcome distraction.
“Food,” Killian says.
Which Pax and Roarke take to mean, ‘pick up that table and put it in the middle of the nest.’
Darkness has fallen outside, and I don’t need to be offered steaming hot, dripping in gravy, cuts of meat twice.
“I’m getting us something to drink,” Seth says, launching himself off the ground and toward the door.
Killian makes a ‘me too’ grunting sound, abandoning the cart.
Pax and Roarke settle the low table into the middle of the blanket and pillow nest.
“Right now if any of us need to go any further than shouting distance, we go together,” Roarke explains. “We’re safer together.”
Then he leaves with them.
Which leaves me, and I’m staying in the comfort of right here, and Pax, who takes over the task of laying trays of food on the table.
Me and Pax.
The guy simultaneously intimidates me and fascinates me, so I hunt around my list of topics I really need to bring up and throw the biggest one out there.
“What happened to your parents?” I ask.
“My parents?” His head tilts a little like he’s trying to judge my motives.
Without meaning to, I just asked a double-edged question, and I feel instantly embarrassed.
Whatever happened to Pax when he was about my actual age in mortal years, not that he looks or acts any older, boils down to his parents and something that happened to them – or because of them, before he was adopted by the Crown.
“I’m sorry, your second parents – your bonus family. What happened to your Crown?”
He releases the tension that had built across his shoulders and sits down exactly where he is, which is on the opposite side of the table. In my direct line of sight. I’m good with that.
“Crowns can sit at the head of the council for a thousand years. Seeing the change of our ruling order is pretty rare. Lucif took his place on the council before we were born, and to get that place he’d been slowly destroying our realm, though no one at the time could prove it. Several council members died or disappeared. The Black Castle was in turmoil. But in the end everything happened so quickly. Lucif being exposed, Mother confronting him.
“He manipulated the council into putting a Return Seal on every one of us. The Elorsin tetrad used to spend most of our time at the Black Castle, right beside the council and our parents, but the Return Seal means we’re forced back here.”
“I don’t understand, wouldn’t they want more protection?”
“A triune was caught trying to kill a council member, making the Sabers a liability. The Black Castle is guarded by the grimm now, and lots of them – one of many moves that has cemented Lithael in power. He brought them through to defend the Crown and restore order and at first it truly looked like he was trying to do exactly that.”
“But you didn’t believe him?”
“Never, but the only one of us who could get past the grimm and into the castle was Killian. He took the sword blows meant for our mother, but he couldn’t deflect the magic.”
“He shielded your mother with his face?”
“With his whole body.”
“From Lithael.”
Pax shakes his head, pulling apart a piece of broccoli so he can eat just the inside stalk.
“The whole family. Killian killed Lithael’s son, Kuornos, and the sixteen other triunes loyal to Lithael. Triunes who were supposed to be on various missions around the realm, but had somehow managed to get the Black Castle,” he says, his jaw clenching and almost cutting off the last two words.
He had thought his mother was safe. Had thought the new seal system was neutral, that all of the triunes had been sent away. I wonder what kind of power it took for them to disobey the seals, all the way from here to the Black Castle, only to be too late.
Pax doesn’t let me voice my new questions, and I know I’d feel like a jerk if I denied him the opportunity to finish his story. Painful stories shouldn’t be interrupted.
“Lithael told the story that he had killed his father and his only son to defend this realm. He was holding his son’s dead body – it was convincing, and enough members of the council believed him. The grimm – as scary as they are – obey the Veil Queen and she is neutral – or she was. Now they obey Lithael. Lithael’s father was close to mother, almost raised by her the same as we were, and it wasn’t much of a leap for him to be handed the Crown by sunrise the next day,” he says, his syllables dripping with anger.
Goosebumps rise on my arms.
“Wait, I’m confused. Is Lithael’s father your father?”
He smiles at me softly as he says, “We live for more than a thousand years. Most of us chose to wait until we’re a few hundred years old before having children and even then our bodies will allow between one and four children. So four generations of Sabers, at least, all look about the same age to you mortals. My mother adopted Lithael’s father – Lucif – like he was one of her own, but that was well before she took in any of us. We ate at the same table every full moon and that’s about as much as Lucif, or his son Lithael, and I ever interacted and Logan and his sister, Kyra, grew up in the Black Castle like they owned it well after we were locked in here at the White Castle.”
“And now they rule it?”
“Now Lithael
rules it, and the Council is in his pocket.”
“But he killed his own father?”
“Lucif – he was the beginning of all of this. Castles falling and the other DeathSeed families dying out. Lithael killed his father and his son, and that move proved to the Kingdom that he is the only one strong enough to keep the people safe, even if he has to keep them safe from his own family.”
“But you were there, why didn’t you kill him? You’d be powerful enough.”
“Did you see the necklaces he wears?”
“The small jars?”
“Each grain of sand in those is a soul. DeathSeeds have the power to do whatever they want with the souls. DeathSeeds were actually good people, guiding the dead to the afterlife, helping those who died in battle or trauma to find peace enough to continue on their journey. If we break those vials and the sand spills out, all of those souls will be released back into this world. Silvari souls aren’t like mortals. We don’t become shadowy ghosts; we become balls of pure energy, and everything we go near is affected by our power. There are some really good potions to disperse the energy, move the souls on through the Veil if they don’t move on themselves, but we’d need a few million of them for just one glass pendant.”
“He was wearing six of them. So we’re pretty much screwed then. Why doesn’t he just kill you guys?”
“He can’t for many reasons. One of them political, keeping all appearances of protecting us is the only thing that keeps the half of the realm who don’t want him in power happy. Kill us, and he gets a civil war.”
“War sounds better than leaving him in power.”
He shakes his head as he gets to his feet, moving to a stack of clothing on the writing desk. He carries them over in one hand, holding out his other for me to grab. Getting myself up off the ground isn’t as easy as I thought, but once I’m up, he holds out the pile to me.
“These aren’t servants’ clothing,” I say, because the majority of the pile is black or dark shades of gray, the same kind of soft linen clothes that the boys wear.
“We challenged Logan to bring four triunes into the arena. Lithael has been pitting triunes of every power combination against us for years. It’s time he knows exactly how powerful we are.”
Shadows and Shade Box Set Page 31
