Chapter 48 Kane
One moment, her fingers were brushing my wrist—
The next, I’m gone.
Flitting too fast, too far, that even the shadows can’t keep up.
Not with the chaos roaring through me, emotions that don’t belong to me, can’t belong to me.
Not just hers. Theirs.
All of them, crawling beneath my skin. Want. Guilt. Hope. Fear. Too much—it’s too much.
I don’t know how far I flit. I only stop when I hit something solid. A tree. Stone. I don’t know, but I let it take my weight.
My chest heaves, I can’t breathe.
Not like this. Not with their emotions inside me. Not with her light still laced through my shadows like a silk-threaded elixir. Warm. Soft. Addictive.
I left her.
I press my palms to the ground, trying to anchor myself physically to this realm. The forest is quiet. The kind of quiet that should calm me, but it doesn’t. It just makes everything louder.
Her voice. Her skin. The bond.
Mine.
I said it like a weapon. Threw it like a curse.
And worse, they felt it. All of them.
My rage. My want. My terror.
The rune is weakened, the bond’s been altered. Jasmine’s more open to me than ever before, and I felt everything. Her fear. Her longing. Her trust.
She gave herself to me, and I reacted by trying to own her.
Control her.
What is wrong with me?
I punch the ground hard enough to crack the stone beneath my knuckles. The pain doesn’t help.
I want to go back. I want to hold her. Apologise. Pretend none of this happened.
But it did.
I can’t go back to her like this.
I flit somewhere else, somewhere safer, even quieter.
I emerge from the dark in the bedroom where I claimed her as mine, where her rune altered, where her breath was steady and her fingers warm against my chest as I watched her sleeping form in anxious wait.
The shadows still remember, curling around the edge of the mattress like they’re waiting for her to come back. I stand there, motionless, letting the silence wrap around me, feeling the ghost of her warmth brushing my skin.
I’m not built for this. To be someone’s bond.
I’m not Julien, elegant and patient.
I’m not Ezekial, calm even when the world’s on fire.
And I’m sure as hell not Sai—joking, charming, always knowing what she needs, what to say.
I’m just... a creature built from ruin.
She said she needed me, and I behaved like an animal. A monster.
I let the darkness swirl around me, inky slivers curling around my form as if in comfort.
But it’s not the dark I crave.
It’s her. It will always be her.
Her touch. Her voice. Her warmth. Her whisper in the quiet: “You have me.”
I had her. And I left. Like the coward I am.
The floor splits beneath me, spidering out in a jagged ring of black vines as the room starts to shift into the Dark Realm—
I feel Ezekial before he steps out of the shadows, halting to change, because I can feel him now more than I ever have.
He doesn’t speak, just stands behind me as his light battles my dark, I see the shadows dancing in combat before his light overrules.
I hear his footsteps before he murmurs, “She passed out.”
That gets me. I turn sharply.
He’s watching me carefully, eyes warily studying me like I’m some wounded beast that might lash out.
“She’s fine,” he adds. “Crashing from the rune shift, but she asked us to find you before she went under.”
His words hit like a reopened wound, and then he shows me. Not the whole moment, but enough. Her eyes, heavy with exhaustion, her voice barely a breath. “Please find him.”
I slump down hard on the ground, the image of her burning behind my eyes. “I wanted to stay. But I couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. It was too much, Ezekial. Too many emotions. Things I haven’t felt in—” I cut myself off, teeth clenched.
“I know, brother,” he says simply, crouching beside me. “I’ve been there, you know I have.”
Then I realise it’s not pity in his tone, because I can feel his emotions now. No, not pity, it’s grief. Remembrance. Anchored to something heavy.
“After Sheridan…” He pauses. “The loss of her, the need for revenge, the rage. I’d never felt rage like it, Kane.
” He shakes his head. “I thought I would explode, but I remember the shadows embracing me, and I remember how they all moulded into him.” He nods over his shoulder, and I glance at the faint silhouette of an animal lingering behind him.
“And the other one,” Ezekial’s voice quietens. “I never remembered when or how I created him, I assumed he’d already been there because I could never quite remember. Until Prospero’s memory.”
I follow his gaze to the second shadowy creature pacing nearby, now more formed than the first.
“The second creature was for you, Kane.” My brows furrow.
“I realise now when I made him, what emotions caused it. It formed after I thought I’d lost you in The Divide.
The grief I felt then, the anguish…” He exhales slowly, swallowing.
“And maybe…” His hand drifts to the fully-formed creatures as they settle beside him, his fingers brushing over their shadowy heads.
“Maybe I made him for Jasmine too. Even then, when I didn’t know what she was to us, something in me did. ”
His two shadowed-forged, Dobermann-shaped creatures sit loyally at his side.
Small metallic horns curve from their skulls as he scratches gently between them.
Their fur glints with a faint sheen, like oil in moonlight, with leathery wings folded against their backs.
Their eyes are pure silver, the only colour they carry, the rest is pure shadow.
Loyal, protective companions. Born from the dark. Created from emotions felt so intensely they become beings.
“And I know you’ve felt emotions like this before, brother,” Ezekial says, ignoring my dismissive gaze.
“But you try hard not to remember, your mind is full of walls, blocking out memories connected to those feelings.” His gaze shifts then, dropping to a sliver of shadow gliding towards us.
“But you made him for me. When Sherida and I were suffering in The Divide. When you were forced to witness our torture, you couldn’t intervene, you couldn’t protect us, so you made him. ”
The shadow snake slithers up Ezekial’s side, resting along his shoulders, small, empty eyes seeking out mine
And I remember, faintly, but I do. Centuries ago, when I carved something vicious and fanged from my own darkness, because I wasn’t strong enough to stop my father, I couldn’t protect Ezekial or his sister. And the guilt, the pain, it created him.
“And now…” Ezekial’s voice softens as the snake nudges his cheek. “You’re making another.”
His gaze flicks to a corner of the room, and I follow, noting a smaller strand of darkness, slender and delicate in form.
And this one…
This one is for her.
“Only the deepest emotions take shape in shadow,” Ezekial says. “You taught me that, brother. Pain, grief, love—feelings felt so fiercely, it reshapes the dark.”
He nods towards the new shadow. “And Kane, the creature you’re making for Jasmine, it moves like mine.”
I say nothing, but I stare at the wispy being not quite yet formed.
“It’s time to stop blocking everything out, brother. You’re not used to feeling, and especially not feeling everything from everyone all at once.” His eyes, hard as steel, glimmer with something warm. “She understands, Kane. We all do. You don’t need to push us away anymore. Not now, not ever.”
I slowly inhale the darkness, using the cold to ease the bubbling sensation in my gut. I can’t quite name it, not sure I’ve learnt this emotion yet, but I want to. I want to learn, to master this, to stop pushing for them—for her.
“I will,” I say, simple and blunt, but it’s enough to make my brother smile, a warm hand landing on my shoulder. “But there’s something else.”
His gaze turns wary, fingers falling away.
Because when Jasmine fell asleep, after I’d convinced my unit she was safe, I spent the remaining hours indulging in the feel of our connection. How the bond felt so much stronger, impenetrable, older…
Much older than the five years we had lost with her.
“Our bond is stronger now, so much stronger,” I murmur. “I can feel both her powers, her empath abilities, her darkness—they’re strong, Ezekial.” Our eyes meet. “Almost as strong as ours.”
Shadows creep around us, Ezekial’s shoulders tensing under the realisation I’ve yet to voice.
“How old, Kane?” he asks, voice low as his snake slithers across his shoulder and onto mine.
I’d spent all night trying to approximate that exactly, comparing the strength of her powers to mine, allowing me to estimate…
“A century.”
He curses, clenching his jaw as he shakes his head. “How? How can she be a hundred years old, Kane?” We stare at each other, his concern and bitterness bleeding into the shadows as they grow. “But she isn’t immortal, we would feel it…”
“You know it can take many centuries to reach immortality,” I remind him, and our eyes darken with the same unspoken memory.
It took us two. “Her darkness has overpowered the light enough to stop her ageing, like it did for you. Maybe the rune is also interfering somehow. But now that I can feel her, there’s no doubt in my mind. She’s a hundred years old. At least.”
Ezekial winces, and his snake hisses in kind. “I erased her memories, hundreds of years’ worth of memories.” He stares into the distance. “I’ve taken so much—”
“No, brother.” I wait for him to face me again. “Whatever life she was living during that time, she suffered. We may not know how or with who, but we know that. She understands that. Whether it was decades or a century, you removed that past of pain.”
He shakes his head, struggling to accept my words. The burden of his act, erasing her memories and in effect, erasing us, too difficult to ignore.
“We cannot change the past, but we have her now,” I say, feeding from his previous strength. “Out of all the beings in this damned universe, she has us. Now and always.”
His gaze locks with mine, one eye silver fire, the other granite and storm. “And Goddess help anyone that tries to take her.”
“Even Gods can’t save them.”
He smirks, and I try to match it.
His snake, the one I formed for him centuries ago, curls around my throat before dissolving like mist.
Then we feel it. That quiet, impossible thread though the bond. The pull. The call to our bonded.
Ezekial gasps on a laugh of shock, edged with pleasure as his eyes close. “Even now, unconscious, she senses us and knows we need grounding.”
I hum, no longer fighting, but indulging in the sensation I’ve refused for too long. Accepting it, completely.
Finally accepting that I may be possessive, controlling, dark to the bone. But I am also hers.
Always.
The small, serpentine shadow curls at my side, and this time, I won’t ignore it. I brush my fingers over its scales, letting it sink into me.