Shadows and Shade Box Set

by Amanda Cashure

  I’m concentrating on breathing and hugging the saddle. Absorbed in the rhythm of the horses, of hooves on soft soil, of my men alive.

  Killian’s mount moves next to me, keeping pace in a way that allows Killian to look me up and down.

  “What did you do?” he demands.

  One arm is slung in front of him, hanging limp, looking broken. I should know.

  I swallow hard and just stare at him.

  What did I do?

  I have no idea how I moved through the blast. Or through a solid window without a scratch. Or how I lost my clothes. None.

  So instead I ask, “Are you okay?”

  He grunts, turning his head away from me. I can see he’s hurting.

  The landscape rushes past us until we’re blocked by a river. We veer to the left and start following the trail alongside it. Pax slows to a trot, and so do the rest of the horses. The trees begin to thin, allowing more space between the river and us. The water doesn’t look deep, gurgling around the odd stone.

  A large red leaf floats down from the tree overhead, landing on the water’s surface and flowing gently downstream – back the way we came from.

  Riding hard makes conversation impossible. It should have given me time to put my thoughts into order, but it hasn’t. My head won’t shut up.

  What set Pax off? Whatever it was made Roarke and Seth run for the horses before they even knew where Killian and I were – or because they knew where we were?

  Seth stops. My horse takes a few more steps before getting the picture, and behind me Killian does the same. Roarke pulls his horse to a stop, almost running into Seth.

  To our right is the river.

  To our left, Pax has thrown himself down from the saddle and is now circling around in the open space, still looking pissed. He looks like he wants to do the wolf thing, and at the same time like he’s fighting himself to stay human.

  I hadn’t realized my heart was pounding, but as he stalks toward me I can bloody feel the thing about to burst from my chest.

  It’s not that I feel threatened by Pax, like I’m in some danger, but he’s chuckin’ scary. I’m glad Seth and Roarke, and their horses, are in front of me – otherwise, I would very stupidly run to the guy and wrap myself around him again.

  My body decides to move anyway, obeying my heart.

  Crap...

  She’s through the broken window and running toward Pax before I can reach her.

  The glass alone should have shredded her. The gap should have been too narrow for a mortal to dive through. The power from Pax should have thrown her back. The bubble should have knocked her out.

  For a long second I’m stuck.

  Watching that thread of crimson-gold connect from her heart to his.

  Watching as his power pulls at her – at her life.

  “Shadow,” I scream. “Don’t touch him!”

  The lock clicks. I run. All of my senses are focused on her pain – waiting for the empty sensation of her death to hit me.

  Through the grate, out the door.

  Roarke rushes up on his gelding. He throws my horse’s reins at me, then keeps moving.

  “Hurry,” he shouts.

  I raise my hand, the only one I can raise with my shoulder dislocated and my arm damaged, to the gelding, trying to calm his temperamental nerves as I gather the reins and draw him in to me. He settles enough to let me on, snorting and offering a buck to express how much he dislikes this commotion. I pat his neck, racing after the others.

  Through the last market street and into the execution gallery.

  She’s alive.

  She’s seated on Pax’s horse. But Pax still looks ready to murder someone.

  His soul is tortured. His pain washes over me as I get closer. My instincts order me to keep my distance. I don’t want this pain, his pain. His anguish. A Darkness eating at him. It screams of loss.

  Of remembering Jessamy.

  My gelding steps inside Shadow’s bubble and the tension around my heart eases as I feel her again. She’s on Pax’s horse, and Seth is leading them. The forest offers an escape.

  Pax is winning his battle because of Shadow, but he’s not in control of himself yet.

  People die when Pax loses his shit. Bad people – usually.

  He takes the lead, and I chase them from the city, urging my mount faster to pull alongside Shade as soon as the terrain allows. Ready to grab her and run.

  There’s too great a risk that he’ll break her if he gets his hands on her like this. No restraint. No control. Just raw energy.

  Seth looks back at me from the lead horse, nodding just slightly. Roarke does the same from behind.

  He might be in his human skin, but right now his impulses are all beast. Which makes him a sitting duck.

  We can’t stop. Have to keep running. Have to get away.

  The Override might be dead, but the BeastSeed is not. This is not over.

  “What did you do?” I demand, shouting at my Shadow.

  Adjusting my dislocated arm. Feeling the bone move too freely. Great, it’s dislocated and broken.

  She just stares at me for a long breath.

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  I grunt.

  I can feel her pain. Her broken wrist is screaming, her flesh is searing, and she asks me if I’m okay.

  Which twists something in my chest – something which I refuse to analyze right at this moment.

  We ride on, forming a pattern as space builds between us and Lackshir. A long thread of Allure trails behind Roarke, convincing the landscape that we weren’t here. Tracking us will be impossible.

  I’ll deal with the fact that Lithael has control of the local enforcement later.

  I pull my shoulder, lifting my arm, looking for the perfect spot so it’ll pop back into place. The bone is definitely broken. I growl at the inconvenience of having to bloody heal.

  Seth takes this as instruction to stop. The Jriinya River is beside us. Jri Forest on this side and Inya Forest on the other. Technically we’d be safer on the other side. The night mists there are like black-tar, and those mists could give us the perfect cover.

  Shadow is absolutely buzzing with threads. Fear, confusion, embarrassment, and a raging thread of possession. Not what I was expecting.

  Possession is what Pax has over her.

  The violet hues of desire are there, entwined with the crimson-gold of her heart, but they’re not her driving force.

  Possession, clear and fluid, fills the space around her. Brushes against her skin and forms a glow that reaches across the cleared space.

  A true mate’s response.

  Impossible.

  Pax responds. But touching him right now would hurt worse than death.

  Too much power.

  The girl coils, seconds from leaping off her horse and probably over Seth and Roarke. She’ll bloody fall and break something. An arm, a leg, her neck.

  I grab her around the waist and pull her out of her saddle and into mine. With a click, and a flick of my horse’s reins, we plunge into the river.

  “Take him to kill something,” I order the other two.

  “Let me go,” Shadow growls.

  I obey, dumping her in the water.

  “Pax, get on the horse,” Seth orders, pointing at Pax’s now riderless stallion.

  “No,” Pax growls, and in a flash of light he’s a wolf.

  Seth moans, rolling his shoulders.

  “If I so much as smell a BeastSeed, I will put an arrow through you,” he threatens, but the wolf would need the release just as much as the man.

  Roarke looks panicked, running a hand through his hair and looking at the spot where my Shadow has sunk to the bottom.

  The mortal can swim. Right?

  92.5 miles from Potion Master Eydis

  The water is ice on my bare legs. It soaks into Seth’s shirt as my ass brushes the gravelly riverbed and the current gently drags me downstream. I don’t fight it, watching the small whi
te bubbles on the surface.

  Feeling my soul return to my body.

  Feeling my soul return to my body?

  What the chuck was I just thinking?

  When I need to breathe, I push myself to my feet, and pop my head into the air not far from Killian. The water is up to my stomach, and Seth’s shirt floats up around my waist. The other boys are vanishing into the trees. Roarke and Seth riding, Pax running as a wolf.

  Running away.

  Yep, that hurts.

  “Where’s the BeastSeed?” I manage as I try to swallow my feelings down, helped by the fact that I’m freezing my tits off – and everything else.

  “No one followed us,” Killian grunts.

  It’s just me and Killian sitting on top of his gelding. Nearby, the horse I stole has its nose in the river. Horses are weird when they drink, lots of slurping.

  Pax’s stallion is eating grass like nothing interesting is going on. That horse acts like nothing interesting is ever going on. I wish.

  I’m not entirely sure what just happened.

  I’m not entirely sure about anything that has happened today. But I have the distinct impression that Killian may have just saved my life. Saved me from myself. Nothing new.

  “Thank you,” I say, swiping at my hair and trying to unstick it from my face.

  “Get the horses,” he growls.

  He rides to the far side of the river while I wade through the frigid water, grabbing the horses’ reins and dragging them, like a child having a tantrum, after Killian. I trip up the riverbank. My fingers are shaking – from the cold.

  My teeth are chattering – from the cold.

  My breathing is shallow and hard work – from the cold.

  “You’re in shock,” Killian grunts.

  “I’m cold,” I counter. What’s shock?

  He moves beyond the first few trees and dismounts, running a quick hand down his horse’s neck before digging something out of one of the saddle bags. He’s favoring one arm and has a slight limp. If he did break something, and I’m pretty sure he did, it’s not slowing him down.

  I seriously envy Saber healing.

  He hands his reins to me.

  “Tie them up,” he growls.

  “Sure,” I try to say. “Give the shaking girl three horses to care for.”

  He ignores me.

  I latch the reins to the easiest and closest branches I can find. Rubbing my arms with my hands and feeling my stomach swirl.

  “Am I going to be sick?” I ask, moving slowly from behind the tight tangle that I’ve gotten the animals into.

  Possibly should have chosen trees a little further apart.

  Definitely not my priority right now.

  “Probably,” Killian says.

  “Because of the cold,” I say.

  “Shock.”

  My fingernails are blue, and fine lines, like bolts of lightning, have spread from under them and up along my fingers.

  Shock?

  Killian’s made a pile of wood, leaves, and brown grasses. The sound of a flint stone chipping at chert punctuates the quiet forest.

  “Why am I in shock?” I demand, holding my hand out for his inspection.

  The fire catches, flames eating through the dead-looking grasses and licking along the twigs and sticks. Killian leaves it, his eyes boring into me as he approaches. His shoulder is still held at an odd angle – odd for Killian.

  A hint of damage.

  A hint of ignored pain.

  A flash of the moment he rammed his full weight into the bars, bending them, fills my mind.

  Crap, of course that’s what happened. He broke his own arm trying to get to Pax.

  I wasn’t much better. I threw myself at a solid wall. I would have broken my neck if Pax’s blast hadn’t shattered the glass.

  “You went through the window,” he says, his gravelly tone filling the silence around us.

  He grips my hand and tugs, making Seth’s way-too-big shirt sleeve roll back to my elbow. I’m really, really glad I offered him my good arm to inspect.

  His thumb brushes over my fingernail, tracing the lightning-like lines over my knuckles, along the back of my hand, and all the way up to my elbow.

  “This is not shock,” he says.

  He holds my gaze for a very long heartbeat. I’m not sure what he’s searching for, or if he finds it. Then he lets go of my hand and points toward the river.

  “What?” I ask, because I am not going swimming again.

  Not that it would matter much, I couldn’t shiver and shake any harder than I already am.

  “Find your wall,” he demands.

  Also not my priority right now, but if it’s important to Killian… well, that makes it important to me.

  “Because... Pax was too far away. I shouldn’t have made it to him,” I say, only working out his train of thought as the words leave my mouth.

  Killian nods.

  I hold out my good arm and move toward the river, tripping twice as I go. Twenty-two stumbling paces away from Killian and my hand brushes against the wall. Still solid. Still with a zing of static to it.

  “It’s the same,” I say, using the wall to lean on.

  “Get back here,” Killian growls, like I’m taking too long.

  “I’m chuckin’ freezing,” I say, staggering back the twenty-two paces.

  Maybe it’s less, maybe I should double check – or care – or maybe Killian should double check, since he’s not having trouble walking.

  But he’s looking at me like he’s waiting for more complaints, so I don’t add the rest – that my arm hurts, the threads of lightning have a sting to them, riding a horse with no pants really rubs a girl in all the wrong ways, and the bruises. I really don’t want to look at the bruises.

  “Here,” he repeats, moving to stand beside his horse.

  When I get to him, he grabs my shoulder – only one shoulder, because he currently has only one usable hand – and pushes me so my back is against the horse, and he is at my front. Like maybe he’s narrowing my escape options.

  “Take off the shirt,” he orders.

  “Why?” I demand.

  Not because I don’t want the shirt off – it makes me shiver twice as hard every time the wet fabric brushes against my knees – but I want to know why he wants my shirt off.

  “It’s wet.”

  Right, that’s simple enough. There’s got to be some dry stuff in Pax’s bags. I turn to search out where I left Pax’s horse, but Killian’s hand firms on my shoulder, stopping me before I make it anywhere.

  “Now.” His tone is low, the word is an order.

  His hand moves up from my shoulder to rest on my neck, his thumb brushing along the length of my jaw. The light scratch of calluses from hard work feels comforting.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “I need to see you’re okay.”

  Maybe it’s because he’s being so honest. Killian sharing feelings makes the world stand still.

  Maybe it’s because I’ve already been butt-naked once today, and a second time isn’t really a big deal. Whatever the reason, I grip the hem of Seth’s shirt and pull it up over my head, standing completely bare and feeling his eyes brush every inch of me. Not a hint of creepy in his gaze.

  He inspects my features, bare flesh, and a few old scars. The thin lines from my bad attempt at learning to wield a knife. The purple marks where Logan’s men almost broke my ribs. The punctures on my shoulder left from Pax. Just thinking about those makes my insides quiver – or that could just be the cold.

  Water droplets run down from my hair, over my bare breasts, and past the sting of my nipples in the cold. That, the pain, and the trembling, make it impossible for me to feel even remotely comfortable in front of him – but I’m not uncomfortable either.

  New bruises dot my shoulders and hips. But no blood.

  He motions for me to turn around. I move slowly, rubbing my arms to try and push some warmth into them. My fingers shake.

  H
e growls, the sound sending a chill down my spine.

  His horse turns its head, looking at me with its dark eyes. It snorts, then lowers its mouth to the ground and begins munching.

  Easy for you to say, you’re not freezing your ass off… And yes, I’m currently having a mental conversation with Killian’s gelding.

  “Can’t you feel pain?” I ask.

  I don’t turn around, though.

  Killian takes the wet shirt from my fingers and tosses it over the nearest bush. He pulls the cloak from its ties on the back of his horse and wraps it around my shoulders. I fasten the buttons and nuzzle into the soft lining of the collar. Then he tugs the hood up and over my wet hair.

  “I didn’t believe it,” he says.

  “You didn’t believe what?” I ask, turning to face him.

  His dark eyes find me. Deep and soul-warming.

  I feel my cheeks flush a little. About time!

  Standing around naked should have had an effect on me, but aside from this delayed bit of turning red, I’m still missing the common sense to be modest.

  “You went through Silvari glass.” As he talks, he grips the index finger on my right arm and pulls it up. Dangling my arm in front of me – which has a sharp effect on my broken bone.

  I wince.

  “You can’t move through air without breaking, and you went through Silvari glass without a scratch.”

  My arm thrums with pain, my head spins, my knees buckle. He barely lets go of me before I stagger to the side and throw up. Stumbling backward from the force. I’m just lucky Killian hooks an arm around my waist and steadies me, holding me while I heave.

  And heave.

  Until I stop.

  “Shock,” he says, steering me toward the fire.

  Warmth bathes over me as I get closer, and I let him direct me to the exact spot he wants me to sit, my back to the forest and my view looking out over the river. Let him is an overstatement. I might be staggering and incapable of directing my own steps right now.

  Killian sits down next to me and shoves a water bottle at me.

  “Hydrate,” he orders, trying to undo the buckles on his saddle bag with one hand.

  Now that I’m looking closely, I can see his knuckles are swollen. He damaged everything from shoulder to fingertip, and the way he’s favoring it only highlights his pain. If it’s affecting Killian, then it would almost be killing me.