Chapter 7
Imust sleep, because sometime later, my aching body sinks into something soft, the shift propelling me into consciousness.
I open my eyes to find the Shadow hovering, his brow creased in concern. Iridescent blue light shimmers from somewhere behind him, highlighting the points of his ears, turning his pale hair turquoise. I grind the sleep from my eyes and allow myself a moment to marvel at the effect.
Good goddess. I know he’s dangerous, that he should repel me, but for some reason, my gaze insists on clinging to him.
“Where are we?” I say softly. “And what time is it?”
“We’re in your room. It’s almost sunrise.”
I blink up at him, the words tangling in my head. “Almost sunrise? But didn’t we just come from the garbage chute?”
“Well…” His expression turns guarded. “I may have let you sleep for a while before bringing you to bed.”
I stare, trying to make sense of that. “You let me sleep? You mean you carried me around?”
He says nothing, the guilt on his face answer enough.
“For how long?” I demand.
He retreats, scrubbing a hand against the back of his neck. “Most of the night,” he admits.
I gawk. Most of the night? I try to imagine that—me curled in his arms, him cradling me close, maybe even watching my face as I slept. But where outrage should fill me, something warm swoops in my belly, instead. Which isn’t helpful in the slightest.
“Goddess,” I say, for lack of anything else. “That’s…alarming.”
He drops a sheepish glance to the floor, and I prop myself up on my elbows, eager to leave this unsettling revelation behind. Luckily, the room provides plenty of distraction. I look around and, for what feels like the hundredth time today, do a double take at my surroundings.
The Shadow has taken me somewhere private—another fusion between forest and castle, where pink light flows along the branches forking across the walls.
A luxurious bed spreads beneath me, draped in silvery linens that cushion my battered limbs.
Across the room, a wide, paneless window opens to the night, but it’s the hollowed-out tree trunk in the center of the floor that commands my attention.
The trunk is as wide as I am tall, brimming with glowing water in crystalline hues of aqua and silver and blue. Steam rises from the water’s surface, wisps curling toward the ceiling before floating out the window. “What is that?” I whisper.
“A bathtub,” the Shadow says. “One that’s always full and always hot.”
“A bathtub,” I repeat dumbly.
“Yes.”
I succumb to the demands of my curiosity and swing my feet to the floor, then drift toward the tub as if pulled by invisible strings. The water swirls in welcome, more inviting than any bath I’ve ever seen.
When I draw close, I spot some kind of metal apparatus embedded at the base of the trunk—a nest of wheels and cogs, reminiscent of the wayfarer’s gyre. I lean down to inspect it. Gears whirr within a boxlike contraption of metal and glass.
I reach out, but hesitate to touch anything. “Is this…technology? Or magic?”
Long moments trickle by in which the Shadow doesn’t answer.
When I glance back, I find him perched on the edge of the bed, exactly as before.
Only something is wrong, now. One massive hand curls around the headboard, his claws embedded deeply enough to score furrows in the wood.
The rest of him strains toward me, held in check only by his grip on the bed.
Fangs poke from beneath a peeled-back lip while his chest heaves on a pant.
Then I realize. I’ve just done the one thing he asked me not to.
I whirl to face him, straightening as I go. “Sorry. Ishanna’s blood, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to turn my back on you.”
“You can’t…” His voice splinters around the edges, breaking into equal parts husk and heat. With a lick of his lips, he swallows and tries again. “You can’t do that, Princess. You can’t. Not unless you’re giving me permission.”
“I’m not.” A harsh swallow scrapes down my throat, but I keep my words measured, masking the horror underneath. “Of course I’m not. I just forgot.”
A few fraught heartbeats measure out the silence. The Shadow masters himself with obvious effort, his claws retracting from the headboard, the heaving lines of his body forced into submission. “You need to understand,” he says roughly, “that I have very little control, in this form. Almost none.”
I absorb that. “Why not use your fae form, then?”
He holds my eyes for an overlong beat before directing his attention toward the floor. “Because I can’t.”
I frown at that, but he apparently has no intention of elaborating, because he rises from the bed, his movements stark. When he unfolds to his full height, I swear he expands to fill the entire room.
I stem an inhale. Goddess, he’s so…improbable.
Beautiful and horrifying all at the same time, and for the briefest of moments, I wonder what he looks like when not encased in armor.
From what I can tell, he wears dark linens beneath those leather plates—a navy shirt and pants, maybe, though it’s hard to tell in this ethereal light.
“To answer your question,” he says, not looking at me, “the bathtub is powered by technology and magic. Here in Velindra, they’re almost the same thing.
Beyond the ability to shift, most fae don’t have intrinsic magic, so we harness what power we do possess, then focus it using machinery.
It’s a complicated art, one only the most skilled masters can manage, but it makes magic accessible to everyone.
Because magic isn’t a birthright for us, like it is for you. ”
I glance away, my bottom lip folding between my teeth. He has no idea, does he? “Actually…I don’t have magic, either. Ishanna hasn’t seen fit to bless me yet.”
His head swings around, the hunger in his eyes replaced by confusion. “I thought all Aethrolian royalty had magic.”
The words land like a blade against my throat. I must flinch, because his stance softens, his eyebrows drawing together.
“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean—”
“No,” I say, not wanting his pity. “It’s fine. I should be used to it. I’ve been the odd one out for years now. The useless one. The failure.”
The divot between his brows deepens. “You’re anything but a failure, Princess. Anything but. For me, you’re nothing short of a miracle.”
The declaration sparks a fiery ember in my chest, but I twine my hands together until the warmth flickers out.
I won’t let this heathen endear himself to me.
“I’m no one’s miracle. I’m just a magicless human.
Which is probably why my father didn’t fight for me, back at the Claiming.
Because I haven’t earned my place, like my sisters have.
I haven’t proven myself. But…” I trail off, swallowing hard enough to smooth out the shakiness in my voice.
“That’ll change, once I get home. Once I pledge myself to Ishanna. She’ll bless me then, I know it.”
The Shadow considers me with new eyes, his look softer than I would have thought him capable of. “You shouldn’t need magic for them to accept you,” he says quietly.
I chuckle, dry and humorless. “Maybe not. But I want it, more than anything. I need my magic so I can accept myself.”
He nods. “Is that why you’re so dead set on going home?”
“Well, no. It’s because I belong there, not here. I mean…look at this place.” I sweep out a hand to indicate the foreign room. “I don’t even know what any of this is. I’ve never been anywhere like this before. You seem to think I should stay, but what would I even do here, if I did?”
“Anything you want.”
Another bitter laugh jets from my nose. “That’s the thing, though.
What I want is to devote myself. I want the temple, and the priestesshood, and Ishanna.
I’ll never want to be chased, or laid out on a dinner table for dessert.
This is a world I want no part of. One I can’t even begin to understand. ”
A muttered curse escapes him as he turns away, the great lines of his back bunching beneath his armor. “I should’ve stayed, shouldn’t I? At dinner. I’ll kill Amriel for letting them have dessert right in front of you.”
“Kill him?” A tired scoff drops from my lips. “Somehow, I think that’s exactly what he wants.”
The Shadow pauses, turns back. “You caught that?”
“Of course. He asked you to stab him through the heart at dinner. It wasn’t exactly subtle.”
He pinches between his eyebrows and sighs. “He wasn’t always like this, you know. He wasn’t always so broken.”
I think back to my conversation with Calen in the hallway, just before the Claiming. “But he is now, because of…what? His curse?”
“Yes.”
“And what is this curse, exactly?”
The Shadow shoots me a sidelong glance before approaching the bathtub and staring down.
He dips a hand in, absently. Bioluminescence clings to his skin, which he inspects for a moment before wiping away.
“The curse affects so much. The Wildwood, the hourglass, everything. For Amriel, it means pain. Physical pain, all the time. His is a kind of pain I can’t really explain, because it’s outside the limits of human experience, but think of your body being bent out of shape.
A shoulder torn from its joint, maybe, or a hip.
It’s the kind of all-consuming agony that won’t let him think about anything else.
Except for Amriel, it’s his whole self, all the time, and he can’t do anything to fix it. All he can do is endure.”
A pang of sympathy twists inside me, but I snuff it from existence. I refuse to feel sorry for someone who stole me from my family, who has no qualms about sending me into a lethal forest for the sake of his cause.