Shadow Frost (Shadow Frost Trilogy Book 1)

by Coco Ma

  “Well, it’s our honor,” Rose said. “You cannot imagine how much we appreciate you letting us stay here with you. Our eternal appreciation wouldn’t be able to express how grateful we are for your kindness and generosity. A million thanks.”

  Harry smiled. “Of course, Your Majesty. I’m just grateful that you fixed my kitchen.”

  “What?” Rose recoiled, heart hammering. “What did you say?”

  “Fixed my kitchen? Oh.” Realization struck Harry and he threw his hands up in defense, backtracking. “No, sorry, I didn’t mean to alarm you—”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, mind working furiously. Had someone told him? Maybe Orion? But surely he wouldn’t reveal her identity. Or would he?

  “Immortals, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said—I mean, right, you’re right,” Harry stammered, snatching his crossbow off its hook and fumbling for the doorknob.

  Rose covered the space between them in two strides. She grabbed him by the collar before he could escape, dragging him away from the door. “How did you know?” she asked flatly. When he didn’t respond, she shook him. “Who told you?”

  He stared at her, brow furrowing. “No one.”

  “Then how did you know?”

  Harry blinked innocently. “Know what?”

  Rose didn’t take the joke well. “I could snap you in half right now,” she growled.

  Harry didn’t answer for a long moment. And then he said, “I went to feed the horses earlier while you were napping in the grass. I found Lux chewing up some fancy paper in the barn.”

  Rose’s jaw unhinged. “My Fairfest invitation.” She must have left it out on that rock. She remembered that impish glint in those black eyes and resisted the sudden urge to strangle Asterin’s horse.

  Harry nodded. “It was all torn up and … wet. It looked important, so I took a glance. I was going to give it to you, but … well, you seemed exhausted and I didn’t want to wake you up. I brought it inside so the wind wouldn’t blow it away.”

  “Where is it now?” Rose asked.

  Harry took a moment to think. Then his eyes widened. “Oh. Immortals. Rose, I left it on the kitchen counter while Orion and I were making lunch.”

  She hadn’t seen it during repairs. “So … you mean to say that …”

  “It must have burned up in the fire,” Harry finished, brow knitting. “I am so, so sorry.”

  His words sank in. And then she laughed quietly to herself. I guess there won’t be any unburning that, then. “No, it’s fine. Thank you for making that decision for me.” He cocked his head in confusion, but then yelped when she yanked him closer, her voice stone cold. “No one, save the other five people living under this roof, knows of my identity. And those five already have my trust. If anyone else finds out, I will personally see to your suffering.”

  Harry blew out a long breath and muttered, “You Axarians are a scary bunch.”

  Rose smiled sharply at that. “That they are.” She released him. “But I’m not from Axaria. I’m the Queen of Eradore, and believe me, by the time I’m finished with you, you wouldn’t even remember the meaning of scary.”

  Harry hesitated a moment more before tipping his chin in accord. Then he darted out the door, ignoring the porch stairs in his haste, and melted into the night.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Harry snarled at himself as he bounded deeper and deeper into the forest. You utter imbecile. How many more of Orion’s smiles would it take to render him a complete fool? Of course, Your Majesty. His words rang in his brain, an unintelligible loop. Almost no one except for Orion seemed to trust him, that much was clear. His mission grew harder and harder with every slip, every little lapse in judgment.

  His mission.

  He shook his head, refusing to think about it—not yet. He needed to clear his mind.

  Finding a hollowed-out trunk, he shed his coat. The rest of his clothes followed. Next came the crossbow and quiver, and finally his boots, landing atop the pile with a careless thunk. He wedged a few leafy boughs on top. Just in case.

  And then he closed his eyes and shifted.

  The restrictions on his body lifted as he curled back onto his haunches. He dug his toes and fingers deep into the dirt, sighing in liberation as they morphed into paws. His nose elongated into a snout, his ears stretched, becoming flat and pert, and his legs lengthened into powerful hindquarters. No more did he have that fragile layer of human skin, but a dense coat of silky, obsidian fur.

  His senses exploded—eyesight sharpening tenfold until he could see every single detail on each leaf and each clod of dirt, even in the dark. He couldn’t believe the things these humans missed. Colors, smells, touch—he could feel the tiny pebbles beneath his paws, every bead of moisture clinging to his fur. With his hearing intensified, he caught the quivering of a rabbit in its hole from a mile away.

  He couldn’t help but release a moan as his wings broke past his shoulder blades. Relishing the caress of the night breeze along their ridges, he carefully tucked them at his sides. He couldn’t fly tonight—Asterin and her team hadn’t yet returned to the cottage. He could only hope they hadn’t been lurking nearby when he had crashed through the trees.

  Because of Asterin and Orion and the others, who would surely search for him if he disappeared for more than a half hour, he had been stuck in his human form for days—but he had never been able to stand being trapped in it for long. It was worth the risk. Now, when he became one with darkness, not even an Immortal would be able to tell them apart.

  If he couldn’t fly, he would run. Paws thudding against the ground, he hurtled through the forest, a black glimmer in an ever-darkening world. He could feel the shadows billowing behind him like a cloak, slithering across every inch of his body as he tore through the trees beneath the star-speckled sky.

  His was the cursed gift of the god few mortals dared speak of. The ruler of darkness, the God of Shadow, the self-proclaimed King of the Immortals and all the other nasties crawling around the Immortal Realm. Harry’s master had as many names as he had personalities—charming, cruel, generous—but Harry knew him simply as Eoin.

  Eoin had been the first Immortal. With every god or goddess that came into being, Eoin’s power only grew. Each Immortal, no matter how virtuous, brought darkness beneath the soles of their powerful feet and with the stains of the sins they had committed to rise above the rest. All together, ten strong, they formed the Council of Immortals to govern the growing Immortal Realm.

  “We need a ruler,” Lady Siore had said from her throne of earth and ivy. “Someone to ground us.”

  “No,” Lady Audra had said, the sky beneath her throne an endless expanse of ever-shifting heavens flickering with lightning. “We are all equals.”

  Of course, this wasn’t true, but Eoin said nothing. All were treated fairly, and he saw no reason to protest.

  And then the other Immortals gave life to a new sort of beast—a fragile beast that Eoin’s power would not allow him to produce. Mortalkind.

  Eoin demanded that all mortals be destroyed. For how was it fair that the other Immortals could pass their powers through the bloodlines of other beings, a feat never before achieved, when he could not?

  But the Council loved their little mortal descendants too much, and outvoted him.

  “We have created them to exist on their own terms,” Lord Ulrik, God of Light, had insisted, his lynx curled up at his feet. “That is their purpose—to choose their own paths, as we have. To further their own societies, their own humanities. We have forbidden ourselves from interfering with their lives, so there is ultimately no difference.”

  It was not enough.

  Enraged, Eoin renounced the Council and built himself a new kingdom, far more magnificent than anything the other Immortals had ever seen. He built himself a new set of rules, created new nightmarish and be
autiful creatures to roam his lands.

  The wise and patient Lord Tidus had been the first to come and reason with him. Eoin snapped his fingers and the God of Water’s body crumbled from the inside out. For a century, Lord Tidus lay broken at the foot of Eoin’s throne. And when the other Immortals came seeking revenge, even their powers combined could not overcome Eoin. Only the nine of them united, including Lord Tidus at full strength, stood a chance against him.

  “We are not equals,” the God of Shadow announced. “I am no Lord. I am a King. And I do not care if you refuse to bow to me, because I can break you instead.” And that he did.

  Afterward, Eoin lost interest in destroying the mortals—he had already destroyed their creators, so what was the point? He wasn’t a barbarian with a senseless thirst for death. In fact, he decided the Council was wrong to stay away from their creations.

  The other Immortals could only watch as Eoin rose to the Mortal Realm and meddled all he liked, restrained solely by the infrequency of total solar eclipses—the only time the two realms joined as one, allowing him to create a portal strong enough to withstand his power.

  Eoin found that he adored mortals. They were as ever-shifting as he. Manipulative, loving, greedy. And over the centuries, he reaped the debts owed to him by the hungriest of mortals—hungry for power that only Eoin could loan them. Like he had loaned to the Woman.

  The Woman. She had yet to tell Harry her name, so he’d taken to calling her that. She still thought she held dominance over him. But the blood oath, the obedience—that had all been a ruse. Just the way Eoin liked, because only Eoin could control him. Only Eoin owned him.

  Harry was Eoin’s pet. His property. He was an anygné, or a shadowling, in the mortal tongue. An immortal demon, enslaved by the contract he had signed centuries ago and couldn’t seem to ever escape. If Eoin wanted Harry to do something, he did it. Somehow, the Woman had learned of the existence of shadowlings. Using her borrowed powers, she had summoned him through Hollenfér, one of the three gateways between the Mortal and the Immortal Realm, temporarily freeing him from his contract. That in itself was reason enough for Harry to carry out her bidding, as thanks. But after the Woman had dumped him in this forest, he had awoken one morning to find a message burned into his chest.

  Obey the Woman. Her assets are of great importance to me.

  The words—from Eoin, of course—healed as soon as he read them, but they were permanently seared into his mind.

  Assets, Harry thought to himself as he raced the moonlight filtering through the trees and sailed over a river with one mighty leap. What could that mean? It couldn’t be power. Eoin had more than enough of that. Some kind of army, then?

  No human in their right mind dabbled with dark magic. The nine mortal kingdoms didn’t share many international laws, but association with dark magic had long been forbidden. If discovered, the Woman would, at best, face permanent exile.

  At worst, she would face execution.

  And her reason for summoning Harry in the first place?

  To kill Princess Asterin—and whoever else got in the way.

  But why? Harry wondered desperately. Most likely, based on his past observations of mortals, the Woman wished to overthrow the crown. He didn’t see how killing a village full of people had anything to do with that, though. And while he hoped that ultimately, their deaths had been a mercy, killing Asterin and the others was another matter entirely. He thought of Orion, with eyes as blue and dazzling as northern frost, as full of mischief as Eoin himself. The loyal captain, and the gentle lady-in-waiting who thought herself the best of Asterin’s best friends. And the two Eradorians, one a queen—which the Woman couldn’t possibly know, not that Harry had any intention of informing her. They were all good people.

  No, it wouldn’t be mercy—it would be murder.

  You’re no hero, he reminded himself. A hero protected the good people. A hero would save Asterin. You’re a hunter. A hunter did anything he could to survive.

  If he disobeyed the Woman, he would face Eoin’s wrath. He had no choice.

  The scent of hot, quivering flesh wafted beneath his nose. If he tuned his hearing just right—ah, there it was. Blood pumping through thick arteries, a hefty body.

  He let his instincts take over, guiding him west. He became nothing more than the shadow of one tree, then the next. The young buck snuffled at a mulberry bush when Harry glided out of the darkness, jaw locking around its soft neck before it could so much as glance up.

  By the time he at last returned to the hollow tree and shifted back into his human form, the moon was high and the constellations twinkled like shattered glass in the sky. Now, with all his senses uncomfortably muted and weakened, he stalked back to the cottage, the buck’s body slung over his shoulder, bumping against his quiver with every other step.

  He smelled the food cooking before he heard their voices. Warm, golden light flooded the clearing like sweet nectar as Harry reached the cottage. Asterin had returned. He could hear her yelling at someone. The others chattered, and Orion was singing the Axarian anthem again. Harry smiled despite himself. If he hadn’t been so focused on listening to the sounds of the house, he might have noticed that he was humming along himself.

  They were all good people.

  As he pushed the door open, they rushed to help him, welcoming him home with laughter and light touches. Orion’s hand lingered on his back, fingers tracing south. Even Rose gave him a little smile, though her gaze was wary. Only the captain’s face showed not a hint of warmth, but that was nothing new.

  The sooner Harry killed them, the better.

  That night, after all the others had fallen fast asleep, Harry woke. A mirror framed in obsidian hung across from his bed, gleaming in the moonlight. At the top pulsed a symbol—three lines with a horizontal slash. The shadow sigil.

  He got out of bed and approached the mirror on the wall. His bedraggled reflection blinked back at him, tufts of hair sticking up in every direction. But his sleepy haze vanished when he pressed his palm against the frigid surface of the mirror, the cold jolting him well and truly awake. The glass rippled, shifting from his reflection to a black void.

  In a voice colder than the mirror’s surface, the Woman spoke. “Shadow demon.”

  He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. While he could only discern a black void, he had no doubt that she could see him. “It’s Harry.”

  “I shall address you in whatever way I desire,” she snapped. Stupid mortal bitch, he thought. There was a pause. “Is it done?”

  “No, milady.”

  “How convenient,” she said. “Things have been postponed. I have other duties to attend to, and the last thing I need is to help arrange a royal funeral. Keep Princess Asterin alive and busy until I command otherwise.”

  To help arrange a royal funeral? So the Woman likely lived at the palace, then, working closely with the Queen of Axaria. “Yes, milady.”

  “And the blond one, too,” the Woman added.

  Harry tilted his head in confusion. “You mean the princess’s Royal Guardian?”

  “No, the girl. Luna. She is valuable to the queen. The others are expendable. Understood?”

  Before he could reply, the mirror rippled again, signaling the end of the connection. Staring at his own reflection once more, Harry studied the defiant jut of his chin, the curl of his fists.

  He forced himself to trudge back to the bed, where he plunked himself down and pondered the Woman’s words, trying to dismantle the new information. He pulled the covers over his head like a shield and closed his eyes. If he wanted, he could shift, right now, and slaughter all of them in their beds. But now he had to wait, when with each passing day he grew more attached—not just to Orion, but to all of them. Fierce Asterin, sweet Luna, patient Rose. Protective Eadric, even though the captain still distrusted him. And Quinlan, who he sensed carried a great burden
from a childhood of pain, but kept it buried deep inside. Just like Harry.

  How can I kill these people? he thought, but for once, the shadows did not give him an answer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Despite Quinlan’s optimism, they did not find the demon. Not the first week, nor even after the second. Asterin spent her off-days restless, fidgeting, waiting on edge for the hours to crawl by until dawn arrived. She had welts up and down her forearms from scratching at herself, trying to soothe an unappeasable itch for vengeance.

  A little more than three weeks after they had arrived in the forest, the frustration became too much. They had covered miles and miles of ground, to the point where they had started mapping out repeat routes. Asterin felt pathetic. They didn’t have a single lead. And her feet ached.

  It’s always difficult admitting failure.

  She gritted her teeth and came to a stop in front of a towering spruce. She gave the gnarled roots a mighty kick. It felt so good that she did it again. “I am not a failure,” she snarled, each word earning a kick.

  “Calm down.” Quinlan said, grabbing her wrist as she kicked the tree again. Luna observed them from a safe distance up ahead, hovering behind a bush.

  “Why should I?” Asterin seethed.

  “What did you expect?” He spread his arms skyward. “Look at this forest! It’s huge.”

  “But we’ve been searching for three whole weeks and we haven’t found anything!” She aimed another kick at the tree but Quinlan grabbed her outstretched leg and held fast.

  “Don’t get all pissy just because you haven’t gotten a chance to slay the demon yet.”

  She scoffed loudly and shook herself free. “I’m not pissy.”

  “Right, and Rose isn’t the Queen of Eradore,” Quinlan quipped. “Look. You’re pissy because you feel useless. We know, okay? All of us are frustrated. But starting tomorrow, on off-days, we’re going to start your training. I don’t know why you’ve been acting weird around me, but I don’t care anymore. I told you I’d help you learn how to control your magic without the omnistone, and so that’s exactly what I’ll do.”