Kial looked at me, the silence dragging between us like a thief stealing a sackcloth of trust, pieces of our friendship, chunks of familiarity, leaving behind two people who didn’t know each other nearly as well as they had a minute ago.
I honestly thought he’d understand. Kial clearly never thought I was a person capable of doing the things I’d done.
“You’ve been hiding that chest for three years.” His voice was a low mutter beneath his breath, but I heard. “You silly fool. How am I supposed to help you, how do I protect you, when you play games with fate?”
When had he named himself my protector?
“A shape shifting Demor mauled Beth, twice,” I ground out, “and you’re bursting a vein over some little family heirloom I reclaimed! If you want to help, Kial, summon me a couple of Guardians. I’d love to hear them explain today.”
“You don’t summon the Guardians,” he said bluntly, turning away from me to pace.
As if I didn’t know. The Guardians were a distant entity, so far removed from life on earth, I rarely spared them much thought. I certainly didn’t expect help—or enlightenment—from that quarter.
My gaze fell on Beth, on the steady rise and fall of her chest. Where there should have been comfort, relief, anger built inside me instead. Every breath Beth drew piled on another layer, thickening the foundation, heating behind my eyes. My caustic retort had been nothing more than a flippant throwback, but now the idea fuelled me.
“You’ve met one of the Graces, haven’t you?” I said to Kial. “Which one was it? How did you summon her?”
“The Graces are not Guardians.”
He hadn’t denied it.
“They are the eyes, ears and hands of the Guardians. The Furies and Fates, Muses and Graces, Winds and Rivers, all obey the Guardians.” I unscrambled my legs and stood, anger pushing through frustration into a blazing fury. “Who was it, Kial? Aglaia, the Grace of Brilliance? No, it would have been Thalia, right? The pretty one.”
Kial’s pacing had taken him around the sofa Beth lay on, and now he stopped there to raise an incredulous brow on me. “Zeus’s daughters are all beautiful.”
“But none more so than Thalia, the Grace of Bloom. Call her down, Kial. I have a message for her to carry back to her masters.”
When he did nothing but look at me as if I’d gone mad, I threw my head back and shouted up at the ceiling, “Thalia! Get down here.”
I wasn’t crazy. I didn’t expect her to pop in for a chat. But it felt good to scream at the top of lungs, to punch my impotent fury at someone, something, even if it was only the ceiling.
“She won’t come,” Kial said.
“Thalia! I have a message for—” My heart slammed into my throat as a flash of silvery white light lit up the room.
Dear gods, what had I done?
As my vision adjusted to the sheer brilliance, an ethereal form solidified from the white flare. Silvery blonde hair hung down to her waist, sleek and shiny beyond the efforts of any shelf product. Her heart-shaped face was exquisite, pale cheeks set high above a perfect bow of pink lips. And her eyes… Silver frosted with the merest hint of blue, ice-hot with the sensual contempt only a Goddess could pull off.
Those frosted eyes bathed me in scorn before moving on to Kial. “Nikial, darling one, it has been the wink of a star, and far too long.” Her voice painted a picture of a summer sky at dusk. “You are well?”
“As always, Aglaia.”
Nikial? I filed that titbit away for when I wasn’t engrossed, make that enraptured, by the near-naked Grace in my living room. Strips of white silk crisscrossed her breasts and a semi-transparent skirt of the same silk hung low on her hips and stopped mid-thigh. Otherwise unadorned and bare-footed, her slender curves and endlessly long legs, creamy skin and dreamlike movements made me feel short, stubby and clumsy.
She looked at me again, and her voice flipped seasons to the deepest, darkest hour of a winter night. “I am no message bearer, Raine Shelle, but hear this: Heed the warnings and walk with caution.”
In another brilliant flash, Aglaia was gone, and the room seemed strangely dim and gloomy.
*** Part 2 is now available ***
Thank you for reading the Shades of Dark Series.
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This story, Where Dark Collides (Shades of Dark Series: Book 1), is being released in three parts, of which this is the first. If you enjoyed the read so far, please note that part 2 is now available.
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Where Dark Collides: Part 1 (Shades of Dark) Page 6
