Beyond The Darkness: The Shadow Demons Saga, Book 9

by Sarra Cannon

  Win or lose, I would stand on that battlefield without fear.

  I would be free, because I chose to be free.

  I sent up a prayer to the spirit of my dear friend, thanking him for his sacrifice. I said a prayer for my brother, that he may someday understand that I pushed him away because letting him in would mean having to face something I wasn’t yet ready to face. I hoped that wherever he was, he knew that I loved him.

  I said a prayer for Harper, thanking her for saving my life. For not giving up on me, even when her own life was on the line.

  Finally, I said a prayer for Lea. For myself. The one thing that kept me from moving forward in my life was the mistake I’d made a hundred years ago in choosing to leave rather than tell her my truth. I prayed for the chance to right that wrong before I died.

  When the guards came for me, I would be ready. I had laid all my fears before the gods, and now there was nothing left but to fight.

  The Ashes Of Our Hopes And Dreams

  Lea

  By the time Lisette returned with the potion, I had changed into my old clothes. My human clothes. I strapped my bow and the bag to my back and thanked her for the potion.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked. “I’m worried for you.”

  “I’m going to get answers,” I said. “Don’t breathe a word to anyone about what you’ve seen tonight or what you’ve done. I’m trusting you, Lisette.”

  “I won’t, Princess,” she said. “If anyone knew, I would already be dead.”

  “Lisette, I know you’ve already done so much, but I need to ask one more favor of you,” I said.

  She nodded. “I will help you, Princess.”

  “There is a guard named Ezrah,” I said. “Do you know him?”

  “I know his face, yes.”

  “I need you to find him for me. Tell him we leave tonight,” I said. “Tell him to meet me in the south garden in four hours. Can you do that?”

  “I will find him,” she said.

  I said goodbye to her, and stepped out onto my balcony. I had no idea what truth I would find in the dungeons and in my father’s eyes tonight, but I prayed this was a risk worth taking.

  I had spent the years after Jackson slipped away from me doubting my own intuition. Feeling that I must have been a fool to believe he loved me. But over the past few months here in the castle, I’d started to connect to that intuition again, trusting that the things I knew to be true were real.

  I had been wrong about Jackson, but maybe it was as simple as a tragic change of heart. Losing his brother had changed him in ways neither of us could have predicted. I could no longer use that loss as a shield to guard my own heart.

  Pain was inevitable, but if we could somehow learn to rise from the ashes of our hopes and dreams once they burned to the ground, maybe we could also learn to rebuild.

  To dream again.

  I gripped the potion in my hand and took a leap of faith, jumping from the balcony and shifting into smoke. I soared through the night, finding my way to the east wing of the castle. I stuck to the shadows like darkness itself.

  Carefully, I made my way down to the lower dungeons, thankful to find it still empty.

  I walked to the back of the hall and stepped into the final cell, my heart beating wildly. I removed the key from my bra, and with trembling fingers, I placed it into the lock.

  For a moment, I hoped it wouldn’t work. Maybe Tatiana had been telling me the truth about the shaman. Maybe this key was not a match at all.

  But the lock clicked open and something shifted in my heart.

  Tatiana had lied.

  But she had given this key to Aerden long before Kael ever arrived in this city. Had she found it? Stolen it? Or did she have something to do with Kael’s presence here?

  I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Kael was her enemy. Besides me, he was the only person blocking her and her husband from taking the throne when my father died. I didn’t think she would be working with Kael, but something tied them together. I just couldn’t figure out what.

  I swallowed and opened the door, making sure to remove the key before I shut the door behind me.

  Inside, it was dark and cold. I was certain my magic wouldn’t work here, since we were so close to the dungeons, but when I reached for my power, I was surprised to find it waiting for me. I conjured a small light and looked around, realizing I was in an ante-chamber of some sort.

  The ceilings were several stories high, and in front of me, an enormous door had been carved into the stone. More of the strange markings from the previous door were etching into this one, but there was no place to insert a key. Nervous, I stepped forward and ran my hand along the symbol of a crown etched into the surface.

  My heart raced as the giant door swung open. I shifted to shadow, scared that someone inside might discover me here. I waited in the darkness, fear flowing through me, but no one came searching for intruders.

  After a moment, I finally reformed and stepped into the room. The ceilings were massive here, too, reminding me of the Underground where the Resistance Army lived. Had this place been created by trolls in some ancient day? The stonework was the same, and it was possible the carvings on the door matched those of the Underground, but I couldn’t be sure.

  It was so dark, however, that I could only see a few feet in front of me. I pushed my light deeper into the room, knowing I was close to secrets I was never meant to learn. But nothing had prepared me for this.

  My eyes widened, and the air around me grew so cold, I was frozen to the spot, my body shivering.

  I shook my head, not wanting to believe this could be true. Andros had come to me back at Brighton Manor with rumors, but I never dreamed it could have gone this far.

  I suddenly understood the sheer massiveness of the door. The sleeping creatures entombed here were easily three or four times my own height, and each of their chests spanned at least fifteen feet wide.

  Stone Guardians. Rows of them so far back in the darkness, I couldn’t even begin to count. Hundreds, maybe.

  Andros had said there might be one Stone Guardian here in the city, and that had terrified us, but this? It was unimaginable.

  I was too shocked to even cry out or run away. I could only stand and stare.

  When I finally found my voice, it came out as a whisper. A plea. A curse.

  “My God, Father, what have you done?”

  Hearts

  Lea

  When I’d recovered from my shock enough to feel confident on my feet, I walked around the massive room, studying the Stone Guardians and trying to understand why they were here. And why they were sleeping.

  Their bodies were made of light stone, almost like alabaster or marble. They had joints similar to humans in their knees and arms and shoulders. Their heads were massive, and though their eyes seemed to be open, they didn’t seem to move or see at all.

  I sent my light toward one near the front, and explored every inch of the creature, noticing that in the center of the guardian’s chest was an indentation where its heart should be. Was that why they were sleeping?

  I continued to explore, thinking through the legends and stories I’d heard about the guardians. Some legends said that before the Stone Guardians first appeared in this land, we were much like humans. Except for our ability to shift, we had no magic at all.

  But during the first Stone War, when the guardians fell, their decaying bodies turned to gemstones. Over time, the magic inside these stones seeped into our land and our magic was born. The stories said that each guardian had a colored gemstone for a heart, and when its body, decayed, a massive crater of that same gemstone appeared.

  I had seen these craters before, of course, but I always thought those stories were myths. I’d never truly believed in the existence of Stone Guardians, and the stories about them were so varied, it was hard to know what was real and what was simply made up over time.

  During the Age of Stone, the guardians came again, this time starting
a war that nearly wiped out demonkind. Those were the stories that kept shadowlings up at night.

  If the people of this city knew there were a hundred sleeping guardians beneath the castle, they would never sleep again.

  Still, it didn’t make sense that they were here. Stone Guardians were not supposed to be easily controlled, but these were arranged like soldiers. The rows were perfectly formed, as if these creatures had been created on some assembly line and placed here on purpose.

  I studied each of them, searching for one with a diamond heart. When Andros came to me, just before the attack on the domed city, he’d said the rumors were that a Stone Guardian with a diamond heart had been seen here. But none of these guardians had a diamond for a heart.

  None of them had any heart at all.

  Looking for more answers, I finally reached the back of the chamber. Here, I found a set of five equally large doors. Each door had a stone embedded in its center.

  Sapphire. Emerald. Ruby. Citrine. Amethyst. The five stones of the Order of Shadows.

  There was no door with a diamond stone in its center, and I wondered why.

  I stepped forward and placed my hand on the sapphire stone, jumping back as a loud clicking sound filled the chamber. The door swung open, and I pushed my light inside, terrified of what I might find.

  The room beyond was lined with large sapphire stones of all shapes and sizes. In the center of the room was a long work bench with smoother, rounder stones being shaped. The new shape perfectly matched the indentation on each guardian’s chest.

  Hearts.

  I closed my eyes and leaned back against the wall, my entire body trembling in fear.

  The prisoners had been mining stones so that Kael could create new hearts for his army of guardians.

  The only question that remained was why?

  The Warrior You Were Born To Be

  Lea

  An hour later, when I had gotten all the information I could from the chamber hidden in the dungeons, I made my way to the one person I hoped would have some answers.

  I had come here many times as a shadowling, seeking comfort in my father’s wise words, and as I landed on the balcony of his private room, I prayed for one last chance to speak to the demon I’d admired so much back then.

  I prayed I wasn’t making a huge mistake. On the outside, it appeared my father was my enemy, but there had been several times lately when he’d looked at me in such a way that I could have sworn I saw his sadness. Regret. It was as if the man I once knew was trapped inside his own body.

  But if I was wrong about him, and he was truly my enemy, I would be killed by morning.

  All I needed was a few minutes with him. I prayed my intuition was guiding me down the right path.

  With silent footsteps, I walked into my father’s private chambers where he lay sleeping in the center of his large bed. I stood at the foot of the stone platform in the middle of the room and slowly uncorked the potion Lisette had given me.

  I poured the murky brown liquid onto the floor and watched in awe as a dome rose up around us, locking my father and me inside.

  “Father,” I said, placing my hand on the bed at his side. “Father, please wake up. I need to talk to you, and I don’t have much time.”

  I held my breath as he stirred, opening his eyes wide at the sight of me.

  “Lea, what are you doing here?” he asked, and I nearly cried at the sound of his nickname for me. He hadn’t called me that once since I’d come home. Not until now. “It’s too dangerous for you to be here. Go, before someone hears you.”

  I shook my head and reached for his hands, recognizing the man I had once loved still there behind his eyes.

  “We’re safe for now,” I said. “I don’t have time to explain everything, but I’ve encased us in a protection spell. No one can hear us, and no magic can reach us inside this room.”

  He glanced at the diamond scepter lying against the edge of the bed and let out a breath of relief.

  He gathered me into his arms and held me so tightly, I thought he might crack a rib.

  “Dear girl, how I’ve missed you,” he said.

  His tears fell onto my skin, and I hugged him back.

  “I’ve missed you, too, Father,” I said. I pulled away, wiping tears from my own eyes. There was no time for tears now. Thirteen minutes would pass by in a blink if I let it. “I need you to tell me the truth. What happened after I left? What happened to you? Why don’t you fight it?”

  He shook his head. “I’m so sorry, Lea,” he said. “But I’m afraid the time for fighting has come to an end. I no longer have the power to stand against the Order the way I should have all those years ago when you begged me to join you. You have to believe me when I say that I truly thought I was doing what was best for our people at the time. I believed the Order would take what they wanted and leave us alone. We are immortal, after all. I thought we could outlast them. I never dreamed they would destroy our lands the way they have.”

  “But why didn’t you fight after you saw what was possible?” I asked. “I don’t understand what’s happened to your power, Father. You should be stronger than ever.”

  His face crumpled as more tears flowed from his eyes.

  “I was only trying to protect you,” he said.

  “Protect me?” I asked, clutching his hands. I remembered Tatiana’s words to me the first night of the King’s Festival. She’d spoken to me of sacrifices beyond my understanding, and I realized I was about to hear the truth from my own father’s lips. “Please, tell me. What have you done, Father?”

  He shook his head. “After you left, Kael came to the city gates, demanding to speak with me. He said he had news of the princess, so I allowed him to pass into the city and meet with me in the throne room. He told me you had followed Jackson into the human world. I had already suspected as much, but I knew you were a fighter. I thought you could hold your own.”

  “What else did he tell you?” I asked, chills running through me like waves.

  “He said that the High Priestess herself had taken notice of you,” he said, finally glancing up to look in my eyes. “He said that unless I agreed to her terms, she would capture you and use you to open a new portal in the human world. He said that you would become a slave to the Order, and that I would never see you again.”

  I lowered my head, the truth of his words finally starting to sink in.

  “Tell me you didn’t make a deal with the High Priestess,” I said, glancing again at the scepter with its large diamond embedded in the top.

  “I felt as though I had no choice,” he said. “You are the future of this kingdom, Lea. At the time, I had no idea it was even possible to free a demon who had been captured by the Order. If I refused to agree to their terms, it would be like condemning my own daughter to death. I couldn’t let that happen.”

  “So, you condemned the entire kingdom,” I said. “You condemned yourself, instead.”

  “The High Priestess demanded a piece of my power,” he said. “A large piece of my power. Kael placed a curse on me, allowing him to drain my power whenever he wants. He was placed here as watchdog for the priestess, keeping your mother and me in line with her diamonds that are constantly watching us. In return for this piece of me, she agreed to keep her hunters away from you. She also agreed to let me continue to rule this kingdom, even if only in appearance. The demons who lived here in the King’s City would be spared, as well, as long as I agreed not to interfere with her hunters outside these gates.”

  “All those demons,” I said, my heart breaking. This was all my fault. Thousands had been taken just to save my life. “Father, how could you agree to such a thing?”

  He lifted a hand to my face. His lip trembled for a moment before he spoke again. “How could I refuse her?” he asked. “You did what you thought was right in following Denaer, giving up your place and duty here at my side to save Aerden and bring him home, no matter the cost. Have I not done the same thing?”


  I shook my head. “This is different,” I said. “You had an entire army at your command. You could have refused her offer and joined us in the fight. You could have stood by my side in the human world and helped me bring them down.”

  “By the time Kael had worked his way into this castle, the choice had already been taken from me,” he said. “If I had refused him, he would have taken you and destroyed this city with an army of hunters. Yes, I made a mistake not joining you in the human world when I had the chance, but when Kael arrived, it was too late for me.”

  I fought for the words I needed to say, feeling the seconds tick by and turn into minutes. I was running out of time.

  “How do I fix this?” I asked. “If I kill Kael, will that restore your power?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But Kael is much stronger than you can imagine. He not only has the greater half of my power flowing through him. He also has taken every soul stone and sacrifice given to me over the past twenty-five years for himself. You are strong, my daughter, but taking him on in a fight by yourself would be a death sentence.”

  “I would rather die than see you like this,” I said. “But I do understand Kael’s power. He’s manipulating the games, Father. He sees Aerden as a threat, and he’s determined to have him killed. Those potions today? I know you saw them. Those demons cheated. They could have killed Aerden if he hadn’t broken free at the last minute. I’m not sure he’ll be so lucky in tomorrow’s fight. But there’s something else, Father. Something I have just now seen with my own eyes. Did you know Kael has an entire army of Stone Guardians beneath the dungeons of this castle?”

  Father shook his head, the truth evident in the flash of fear in his eyes. “That can’t be true,” he said. “The Stone Guardians have been extinct for centuries.”

  “No, Father. He has at least a hundred hidden below the castle,” I said. “That’s why the prisoners have been mining sapphires for months in the secret deposits at the edge of the city. I think Kael has slaves working down there to create sapphire hearts for each of the guardians. I think he intends to awaken them soon and destroy this city. He has to be stopped before he gets the chance.”