Chapter Forty-Two Dominic
Chapter Forty-Two
Dominic
I sense her before I see her and dismount my horse to run the rest of the way.
Sloth howls, tugging at me as he races ahead.
The sky has darkened with the last rays of sunset, and panic sears my chest. It took me too long to get here, even on the stablemaster’s fastest horse.
Why the fuck did I leave her alone? Why didn’t I bring her with me when I made my report to the mayor?
I don’t know what happened to her, but it can’t be good.
Not if Henderson is involved.
Fury has my legs flying faster, a sure sign that she’s close.
Her absence gave me a slight respite from my emotions, a blanketing numbness despite the logical frenzy in my mind. But now that I can feel her, my emotions rise like a tidal wave, crashing over me and sending my heart colliding with my rib cage.
“There,” Sloth, Pride, and Lust say all at once.
I see her now, but I don’t understand all that I’m witnessing.
She’s folded over in the middle of the abandoned road, blood and gore splattered all around her.
Severed limbs and bits of flesh are scattered about.
My eyes fall on a glint of silver, a Shadowbane’s sword, and I sure as fuck hope it’s Henderson’s, and that it’s his body parts that litter the road.
But I can’t concern myself with his fate now.
It’s Inana who absorbs all my attention with every step I draw closer.
As she sobs into her hands, shadows writhe all around her, but they’re shapeless, undulating with her overflowing emotions.
How can this be? How can Shades be surrounding her when night has yet to fully fall?
Then I realize I’m not seeing them with my eyes but sensing them through my Shades.
These ones are invisible in the daylight.
Just like mine.
And that makes even less sense.
Dozens more Shades creep between buildings, safe in the long stretches of shadow left by the waning sun. As soon as darkness falls completely, these wild Shades will pile on Inana too.
No. This can’t be happening. I can’t lose her. I can’t fucking lose her.
I close the distance between us. “Inana!”
She stiffens, and a tendril of shadow slices out at me. I dodge back, avoiding a deep cut, but pain sears my skin in a line from my abdomen to my thigh.
Inana whirls around, and the shadows disappear. Her eyes are wide, her face and hair coated in blood, but she scrambles to her feet with a sob. “Dominic.”
I start toward her, still not understanding what the fuck just happened, but I don’t care.
She’s whole.
She’s safe.
She’s alive.
Inana takes one step forward before she launches back, her voice pitched with sudden rage. “What is that?”
I pull up short. Gods, she’s so close. Just three paces away. Why is she suddenly angry? Or is she…terrified?
Her chest heaves with panting breaths as her eyes lock on my thigh. I follow her line of sight and find blood coursing down my dark trousers. But it isn’t mine. Not most of it, anyway. The cut is shallow; the Shade merely nicked my—
Dread carves a hollow in my gut as I stare at my holster of vials. Three were cracked open by the attack. Two bearing Calvin’s blood.
The third…
No. No. No.
Not the king’s blood. Any vial but that.
“What the fuck is that smell?” Inana says, voice ragged. She shakes her head, backing away from me. Her gaze won’t leave the leaking blood. “I won’t. I won’t go back. I won’t go back.”
I assess her, my mind scrambling to make sense of this.
Inana stands at her full height and the cloak of Shades returns, wavering around her like a pitch-black aura.
They’re still invisible to my body’s eyes, but my Shades can see them.
Yet mine don’t react. Sloth doesn’t growl.
Pride doesn’t shout. They just…watch. Entranced.
“I’ll never go back,” she says through her teeth, her voice pitched low.
“He cut me away, he doesn’t deserve me, he—”
“Inana,” I say, making her jump.
She relaxes the slightest bit. The shadows disappear, but her voice maintains its haunted edge. “That blood. It belongs to…”
“King Kaelum,” I say, the words cold on my tongue. “Why did you react to it?”
“The smell,” she says, hugging her arms around herself and shrinking back. “I can’t stand it, and yet…I want to devour it, claw at it, kill it, become it.”
Shadows dance over her shoulders, humming, vibrating, growing more and more visible in the waning light. My heart falls to my feet. Suddenly everything I’m seeing makes such cruel sense. “How long?” I swallow the lump in my throat. “How long…have you been Incarnate?”
She shudders at the word, and so do I.
I hold my breath for the answer. Did it happen here? Just now? Because I was too late?
Was this…my fault?
“Since the day I killed Henry Berkham,” she says, voice empty. Slowly, she drags her eyes away from the blood leaking down my thigh to my face. She tenses as soon as our eyes meet, her own widening. She hugs her arms tighter around herself and takes a step back. “What are you going to do to me?”
Only then do I realize my automatic response. One hand is already on the hilt of my sword, the other hovering over my vials.
“You’re going to kill me,” she says.
I open my mouth, but I don’t know what to say.
Nor can I force my hands to move. I may not be the most devout Shadowbane, but killing Incarnates is what I’ve been trained to do.
Incarnates are inarguably dangerous. They consume their victims. Slaughter those who once were their victims’ friends and lovers.
Incarnates can’t live like real people. They can only act out an imitation of the life they stole.
The only fate for an Incarnate is death, and I’ve never balked at that. Never been tempted to let one live.
But if what she says is true, it…she…Inana has been Incarnate since the day I met her. Living. Breathing. Smiling.
How is that possible? She showed no sign of being like the Incarnates I’ve slain.
None are as sensitive to sunlight as Shades are, but it never occurred to me an Incarnate could walk past silver gates or be surrounded by silver walls without so much as flinching.
And she’s so much more than just an Incarnate.
She’s one of the king’s elusive Shades. Her reaction to his blood makes that plain, though why is she reacting like this now?
She’s been near when I’ve held the open vial—no, I suppose that isn’t true.
She’s never been this close to it, and never for this long.
The closest she ever came to it was on the rooftop in Thornfal, which was only for a moment before I capped the vial.
Ever since, I’ve kept my Summoners at a distance when I test the blood.
The amount that drips down my thigh is prolonging her exposure.
Even I can smell it, clouding the air with its sickly-sweet aroma.
Still, how did I not know what she was? How did my shadows not know? Sloth whines beside me while Lust and Pride are as dumbstruck as I am.
My own voice echoes in my mind, words I relayed to my Summoners.
Shades don’t see Incarnates as one of their kind anymore, nor are they interested in them like they are in humans.
Then why…how…
I shift my attention to the wild Shades drawing closer, closer in the fading light. They watch Inana with hunger and fascination.
My mind fills with the memory of her voice weaving stories. The anatomical hearts she crafted with her own hands. She isn’t like any Incarnate I’ve seen. She isn’t like the ones that try so desperately to feel alive by copying human art.
Instead, she succeeded at it.
No wonder Shades are so attracted to her.
Because her very existence is a lie. Art. A replica of life.
She blows out a sigh, shoulders slumping as if her very soul has deflated. Her lower lip wobbles and she drags it between her teeth. “Okay,” she whispers, her voice cracking. Lowering her arms to her sides, she gives me a sad smile. “Do it. I want it to be you.”
My heart shatters like it’s been severed in two. Three. A thousand tiny fragments.
Everything in my rent-open chest screams No, while my mind says, Yes, this is what you must do.
You cannot let an Incarnate live, no matter how human it seems. Kill this thing and be done with it.
King Kaelum’s vial of blood is no more and one of his Shades has become Incarnate.
This monster has ruined decades of planning. Decades of work by the rebellion.
There was always a chance that some of the king’s Shades had already become Incarnate and been killed. But I was determined to try anyway. And I got close. So fucking close. I only had two Shades left to find.
Inana was one of them all along.
She’s the reason the rebellion will fail. The reason the king will never be made mortal again.
She gives me a knowing nod, tears streaming down her cheeks, carving rivulets in the blood that paints her face, then slowly turns around. “Please, Dominic,” she says, pulling her hair over her shoulder to bare her nape, as if to aid me in beheading her. “Let it be you.”
I hate the sound of the word please on her lips, so sorrowful, when last time it was uttered in pleasure.
My feet move before my mind knows what I’m doing, squelching in the gore on the road.
Then I’m behind her, the scent of blood and flesh and something intoxicatingly her filling my lungs.
I wrap my arms around her, pinning hers to her sides, and crush her back against my chest in a fierce embrace.
“Don’t be gentle,” she says, relaxing in my grip. “I’m ready to go. I don’t deserve to live. I remember what I did now. I remember it all.”