Shadow Reaper

by Debbie Cassidy

  Ah, there he was: good old Clay.

  Seriously? You’d let them enslave you like that? What about your people? What about home?

  I was torn. I knew what the moral thing to do would be, but my feet just wanted to run. I decided the best course of action was to call their bluff and take it from there.

  “Look, I barely know the guy. I felt bad ’cos he brought me here, and I didn’t just want to leave him, but he knew what he was getting into when he escorted me here so . . .” I shrugged. “If they push me, I’m out. When it comes to the bigger picture, Daemon is not my problem.”

  A shift in the air alerted me to another presence, and I glanced to my left to see Daemon standing there; clean and dressed, healed but still shackled. His eyes were fixed on the ground at his feet, but the wry twist of his lips told me he’d heard every word.

  I wanted to take them back, to explain that I was . . . what? Hoping to bluff my way out of this? Was I really? Or was I telling myself that to justify my escape should they call my bluff?

  I tore my gaze away from Daemon and met Bernie’s. There was a strange light in those hazel depths. Triumph? Satisfaction? I wasn’t so sure.

  He smiled. “I’ll relay your message.”

  “Oh, and there’s something else.” This was it, my big idea. “Tell them if they agree to provide regular food supplies to the human realm, I’ll work for them whenever needed.”

  Bernie went very still. “You’d come whenever called, whenever needed?”

  “Yes. Who knows when the Shadows may strike again, or what trade route may need clearing.” I was winging it, but the calculating look in his eye told me I was nailing it.

  He moved so close I had to lift my chin to look up into his face. “A long-term, mutually beneficial agreement . . . that may work.” His breath fanned across my forehead. His words, although innocuous enough, were delivered in a suggestive tone that sent a shiver of doubt through me. I told myself I was imagining things, that I had no reason to doubt one of my oldest friends.

  I cleared my throat. “Just tell them. There won’t be any need for coercion.”

  Bernie reached up to brush a strand of my hair off my face. “I’ll take them your revised terms.” He stepped back, his eyes sliding over Daemon dismissively before settling on the Hellion. “Take the human out to the grounds, some fresh air will do her good. You will be summoned when the council has reached a decision. Do not let her out of your sight.”

  “And me?” Daemon spoke for the first time. His voice like a rough caress.

  Bernie shrugged. “Accompany her if you wish.” His eyes fell to the shackles on Daemon’s wrists. “If you try to run, you won’t get far.”

  “I brought the human here, and I will not leave without her.”

  Wow, now I felt shit for even contemplating leaving him behind, but then I reminded myself he was only worried about me because of what I could do for him. For Avery and Jiva. He wanted to use my ability.

  Why is it so hard to believe that a Shadowlander can have honour?

  Shut up!

  Bernie simply snorted before turning on his heel and heading back to the council meeting.

  A long moment passed, and then the Hellion guard broke the thick silence. “Follow me.”

  Now he speaks!

  ***

  The air was heavy with that scent of incense. The moon seemed huge in the sky, an almost perfect circle, filling the world with its silvery light. The Hellion had taken us out of the room and through some twisting corridors, which I found impossible to keep track of. We’d ended up outside. Once again, we hadn’t taken any stairs. I was flummoxed.

  We’d come out at the back of the mansion. From there, all I could see was neatly kept grounds. In the distance were a couple of low stone buildings.

  “Thank you, Fen,” Daemon said softly.

  The guard inclined his head and stepped back.

  “You know tight lips here?” I asked.

  Daemon quirked a brow and stepped abreast of me. I was reminded again of how small and fragile I was in comparison to him.

  “Fen has been in Brialla’s employ for a long time.”

  “So she created him? With Aether?”

  “Yes.” He moved off in the direction of the stone buildings, and I followed. “The hybrid noble . . . he is the friend you came searching for?”

  For a moment, I was confused as to who he was referring, but then I realised that, of course, he meant Bernie—part human part . . . whatever made him one of them.

  “Yes, that’s Bernie, although he used to be a she.”

  “In that case, you’re a fool. You should have left while you had a chance. You found your friend. Safe. In a position of power. There was no need to expose your ability for my sake.”

  He was pissed, of course he was. He’d heard what I’d said to Bernie about not really caring what happened to him.

  “Look, what I said back there to Bernie . . . I didn’t mean it.”

  He turned to face me, his silvery eyes drifting over my face, but not really focusing on me. “Didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “You lie. I detest liars. Self-preservation I can respect. I sense that in you. You meant what you said, so why lie now? If it’s to spare my feelings then don’t bother. I don’t have any. You forget that I’m not human.”

  I opened my mouth to argue that he was wrong, but the words stuck in my throat. I realised that I couldn’t honestly say that I wouldn’t have left him. When it came down to it, my people came first and being held as a prisoner here wouldn’t have served my purpose, which was to help them. To take the truth to them. Now that I’d found Bernie, now I knew she . . . he was okay, I could finally focus on my next task. Getting home and telling my people there was no treaty, about the moon beyond the Horizon, about food and possible shelter. If I didn’t get help from the Infernans to feed my people, then I would demand it of Avery and Jiva. If they wanted my help, then they had to give me something in return. Yes, they’d kept their part of the bargain and got me to Bernie, but I wasn’t averse to forcing a new one on them. Honour be damned.

  I hated that he’d just made me confront the darker side of myself, the ruthless side. I mean, I knew it was there, but I kinda let it take a backseat most of the time, let it lurk in the shadows and slide in now and then when I needed it. But staring it in the face and accepting what I was capable of made my skin itch. It made my anger rise and I snapped at him.

  “We can’t all afford to be noble and save the damsel in distress.”

  He huffed. “Believe me, I’m not here for you, and I wouldn’t stay for you. I’m here for what you can offer my people, a chance at living free of the Shadows. My motives are most certainly not altruistic.”

  Well, I couldn’t argue with that, considering I was willing to hold them over a barrel for my people, but I couldn’t let him have the last word either, and his not-looking-me-in-the-eye habit was beginning to get on my nerves.

  “You know what they say about people who don’t look you in the eye, don’t you?”

  The muscles in his shoulders tensed.

  “They say it’s a sign of deceit. So tell me, Daemon, what are you trying to hide?”

  His jaw clenched and his gaze shifted, once again skimming over my face but not locking on any one feature.

  “Seriously?” I said.

  “Daemon?” Fen said.

  Daemon turned on his heel and strode off.

  I planted my hands on my hips and watched his huge form move into the shadows.

  “He can’t see,” Fen said. “I mean, he can see but not the way we do. I don’t understand it myself, but . . . he’s not being deceitful.”

  Shit. Man, I was such a bitch sometimes. But how was I to have guessed? He moved with such fluid grace and confidence. But all the times he’d looked just beyond me, at me but not at me, now made sense.

  I broke into a trot and caught up with him. His step didn’t falter, but I knew from the tick at his
jaw that he sensed my presence. We were almost upon the stone buildings when he stopped abruptly, his chest rising and falling rapidly.

  “Daemon?” I reached for him, but he tensed, and I curled my fingers before making contact. The Hellion behind us cleared his throat.

  Daemon’s shoulders relaxed. “Old habits.”

  I glanced at the building he’d been making a beeline for. “Did you . . . did you live here?”

  He turned and began to walk the way we’d just come. “They should have finished deliberating by now.”

  A strangled roar brought us to another standstill. “What was that?” I asked, peering into the moonlight. I could see a large shadowy shape to our far left. The strangled roar morphed into a whimper. “What is that?” Whatever it was sounded like it was in pain. I set off in the shape’s direction.

  “Wait!” Daemon grabbed my elbow. “Leave it.”

  “Leave what?” Damn, now I just had to see. I shrugged him off, and he didn’t fight to hold on.

  I approached cautiously and faltered when the shape shifted. I caught the shadowy profile of a long snout, the arc of a back, the length of a thick tail, and as I drew closer, the full picture formed to complete a huge monster covered in dark green scales. Except this monster didn’t look scary, it looked as if it was in pain. Its eyes rolled, and it made that horrible strangled sound again. I walked warily around it, and it tracked my movement with its weeping eyes.

  “What is it?” I asked again.

  “A dragon,” Daemon said.

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  Daemon moved closer, right up to the dragon. His head came level with the beast’s. Daemon crouched and the dragon huffed at him in warning. Daemon spoke to it in that strangely melodic language again, and the dragon dropped its head.

  Daemon examined its front leg, and I noticed the huge, dark shackle that was wrapped around it.

  “She’s hurt,” Daemon said. “She obviously tried to free herself, fly away, and the metal has cut into her. These shackles are evil.”

  “Why is she shackled?” I asked.

  Daemon glanced over his shoulder at Fen.

  Fen answered me. “The dragon is proving to be a weak flyer. Brialla doesn’t tolerate weakness in her acquisitions.”

  Daemon hung his head and sighed. He reached out and patted the dragon’s side, speaking in that same language. The dragon exhaled wearily. Daemon braced his hands on his knees and stood.

  “What’s going to happen to her?” I asked.

  “They’ll execute her,” Daemon said.

  He said it in such a matter of fact way that the gravity of his words took a moment or two to sink in. By the time they did, he had already turned away. “Wait! No! There must be something we can do.”

  “There’s nothing,” Daemon said. “Her fate is sealed.”

  “Why? Because Brialla created her?”

  “No. Dragons aren’t created by the nobles. They’re a race of their own, but this one has the misfortune of belonging to Brialla. She’s a youngling, probably born to one of Brialla’s older Sentinels. Aside from the Aether, the dragons are Inferna’s second advantage over the Tri-realms. They ride the skies, protect Inferna from outside threats, and guard the mines and all the lumps of golden rock that can be found in abundance there. It’s what the Infernans pay the dragons with.” He smiled dryly. “You see, the Aether mines are essential for more than one reason. The Shadows’ hold over them means that the dragons aren’t getting paid, which means they could revolt at any time. With the dragons gone, Inferna would be vulnerable to a takeover.”

  So I’d been right about the leverage the mines had over the other realms.

  “So she pays the dragons to work for her, that doesn’t give her the right to execute them! What about the dragon’s mother? Doesn’t she get a say?”

  Daemon sighed. “No. If Brialla doesn’t do it, the mother will. Dragons don’t tolerate weakness either. They kill the weak and the deformed. In truth, this youngling is lucky to have survived this long.”

  I didn’t care what the status quo was. No one deserved to be killed because they didn’t measure up to another’s ideals. I approached the dragon carefully, my hands raised, palms facing outward. I couldn’t speak the Infernan language, but I figured any words spoken in the correct tone could convey the right message.

  “Hi, I’m Ash. I’m not going to hurt you.” I moved round to its injured leg and crouched, as Daemon had done, to study the shackle. It was a huge, heavy thing attached to a chain that was, in turn, attached to an iron peg hammered into a concrete block. There’d be no flying off for this beast, but the shackle itself, the mechanism that held it closed, that was pretty simple to undo. All I had to do was pull out the thick iron pin.

  So I did.

  “What are you doing?” Fen asked.

  I could feel them approaching. I needed to act fast. The shackle was pressed into the dragon’s flesh and was crusted in blood. I was going to have to pull it away to release the dragon.

  “I’m sorry, hun, this is gonna hurt a little.” I yanked. The dragon roared. The shackle tumbled to the ground, and I fell back as the dragon thrashed its head from side to side, probably shaking off the pain. She lifted her front leg and then pressed it back to the ground gingerly. I scrambled to my feet as she turned her attention on me. A youngling, Daemon had said, but she was huge. I wondered how large a fully grown Sentinel was. The thing that I’d seen fly past the balcony earlier, had that been a Sentinel? This youngling lowered her head toward me, ruffling my hair with her breath. I stared in awe into those amber eyes so full of meaning.

  She inclined her head once, then stepped back, flapped her wings, and launched herself in to the night sky.

  ***

  I thought Fen was going to have a heart attack as we made our way back to the mansion. His lips were pressed together so hard that the skin around them had gone pale. Daemon didn’t say a word. I guess that was the plan. Keep our mouths shut and hope no one connected us to the youngling’s disappearance. Hopefully they’d just assume that she’d managed to free herself.

  Fen led us through the twisting corridors back to the room were Daemon had been tortured. I noted that while we’d been gone, someone had cleaned up the blood on the floor and wall. Daemon didn’t seem to notice. He walked right past it and took a stand by the drapes.

  Fen moved to stand by the door and fixed his eyes on the blank wall ahead.

  I studied Daemon from beneath my lashes, and then thought, what the hell, it wasn’t like he could see me studying him. His expression was impassive, almost bored. I wondered how he managed to move so fluidly when he couldn’t see properly. I wondered what he saw when he looked at the world. I was so caught up in my meandering thoughts that I couldn’t help but jump when he spoke.

  “Stop it.” Daemon turned his head in my direction.

  “Sorry, are you talking to me?”

  His jaw ticked. “I can feel you staring at me.”

  Is that how he saw? With his other senses, like some kind of sixth sense?

  He sighed. I dropped my gaze.

  The door opened and Bastion emerged.

  I didn’t need to look in Daemon’s direction to know he’d gone into alert mode. I could feel the air thrumming with his energy.

  Bastion inclined his head in my direction. “Ash, we accept your trade.”

  That was good news, so why was there a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach all of a sudden?

  Bastion continued. “However . . .”

  Ah, that’s why.

  “If you fail, then your life and that of the abomination shall be forfeit.”

  Huh? Was he saying what I thought he was saying? I glanced at Daemon to see the vein in his jaw going crazy.

  Yep, the noble meant what I thought he meant.

  “Do we have a trade?” Bastion stared levelly at me, and I made sure to keep my expression neutral, not wanting him to see any evidence of the terror that was doing a jig in m
y bowels.

  “We have a trade.”

  ASH

  It was half a day’s ride to the mines, or so they told me. I took their word on it because I slept all the way there. I was knackered. They didn’t even offer to wait till the dawn for us to set off. No. Once it was agreed that I would clear the mines, we were packed off in a carriage with a retinue of Hellion guards.

  I’d planned on using this time alone in the carriage with Daemon to get some answers about what he was, about what I was, about how exactly this Shadow-consuming power I seemed to possess worked, and why it had chosen me. Until now, I’d just gone along with it all. The ability, the responsibility. Using it to my advantage, yes, but not really questioning it. But this sudden threat to my life had me sobering up, had me asking the real questions. Except I didn’t do any asking. I fell asleep, the steady rocking motion of the carriage tugging at my eyes while I formulated my first question.

  Next thing I knew, I was being shaken awake, none to gently I might add, and told we’d arrived.

  The inside of the carriage was stifling, and I was coated in sweat. Daemon peered down at me with those amazing, unfocused eyes of his and pressed a bundle to my abdomen.

  “Put it on, quickly. The heat will rise rapidly, and your human body will dehydrate in seconds.”

  I looked down to see Coralee’s suit neatly wrapped with ribbon. Bernie, thoughtful as ever—although he’d been nowhere in sight when they’d sent us off. I frowned and sat up.

  “Turn around so I can get changed.”

  He snorted. “I can’t see, remember.”

  I quirked a brow. “Please! You may not see like the rest of us, but I have a feeling you see plenty just the same.”

  He let out a surprised laugh that lit a spark in those amazing eyes of his and sent a warm tingle of satisfaction through me.

  “Fine, I’ll wait outside.” He unbolted the door and pushed it open. A gust of hot air rushed in, hitting me full force. I gasped for breath, my eyes sizzling in my head.

  “Be quick!” He stepped out.

  The carriage rocked with the loss of his weight, and then the door was closed, offering me little relief. I stripped down to my bra and knickers and quickly slipped into the bodysuit, pulling the hood over my head. A ripple ran over my skin, and the temperature dropped steadily until I was cool and comfortable.