27. Penumbra
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
PENUMbrA
Saya Claymore
I wake with a heavy smog thick in my mind. Sitting up in bed, I blink slowly to take in the room. A familiar harp sits in the centre, and the faint glow of lanterns moving through the city streams in through the window, lighting the hardwood flooring. Everything else is in shadow.
After another slow blink, I snap my focus to the darkest corner of the room. The light should reach it, but the blackness there is thick, dripping with shadows. Inside, two red eyes observe me. “Evening,” Serun says.
The shadows thin, clinging to his body until he is more than a creature born from twilight. He holds an empty blood bag in one hand, and the canned fruit in the other. Setting the fruit on the dresser, he raises the drained blood bag in offering. “I assume you want answers?”
My hands tighten on the luxurious bedsheets. With a simple nod, I say, “I have a few.”
A hint of a smile emerges for a moment before he becomes serious and inclines his head.
“Your blood has been entering the Undercity for a while. Most of the blood from the feeding grounds do.” Serun pushes off from the wall and enters the light.
“However, I found out about you four months ago—your blood, that is.” Pearly red eyes narrow as he says, “Tasted it. Or, I suppose, I tasted something similar.”
“And that’s why you entered Darkovish Feeding Ground, because you wanted to learn why I tasted different?”
“It was vegodian blood. So, yes.”
“Keep going.”
Serun sits on the edge of the bed, and I tuck my legs up as he places the blood bag between us. “To keep others from learning of you, Maeve ensured all of your blood was sent to my manor.”
“And do you…drink it?”
“Not since I left the Undercity to learn more about you.” Crimson eyes settle on the blood bag before lifting to connect with mine. “I haven’t touched it since returning. I will throw it out, so you know I’m not taking anything you don’t freely offer.”
My fingers curl around the hem of the dress. “You aren’t bothered that I took one and gave it to Olivia?”
Serun tilts his head and smirks. “I didn’t know…”
Fuck.
“But indulge me a little. Why would I be mad?”
“Because I took from you.”
He leans in, a hint of floral decay on his breath. “Anger over this would not be justified.” Serun’s focus shifts to my mouth, then away as he rises. “I’ve learned a lot from books since your arrival. Humans enjoy communication, so I am doing my best to do just that.”
So that’s what he was reading.
“Well, sadly, you’re already doing better than most…”
“You mean your not-lover.”
“Among others,” I say, my thumb running up and down the palm of my hand. “The other night, before we were interrupted…Did you want that with me? Or did you do it out of obligation because of the situation I was in with my magik?”
He shrugs his right shoulder. “You needed something to pull you back from the fear.”
“Right,” I breathe with a defeated exhale. It was situational. Just the heat of the moment, like all the other times we kissed or nearly kissed.
“But I could have pulled you out without kissing you. Without touching you,” he admits, his voice silky, running over me like a tranquil river. When I look up, he is glaring at the door, his hand on his chest, scratching at his shirt. “Do you have anything else to divulge to me, kamai?”
I bite my lip. All the quivering tension in my abdomen sinks at what I have to say next. But I saw it. Still, the last time I told someone something like this, I was made to seem foolish. Like the creature in the vent that Jax tried to convince me was a figment of my imagination.
Serun’s ear flicks. “Does it have something to do with you passing out in the office?”
“Yeah…” I choke out, rubbing my palms up and down my thighs. “When I was in the kitchen, my shadow moved without me.”
Saying it aloud, I sound unhinged.
“Penumbra?”
I slow blink. “Pardon?”
Serun’s eyes crinkle when his smile broadens. Lowering his hand, his fingers inch towards mine. “Do you trust me?”
No, I want to say. Instead, lulled by desire, I take his hand, and he guides me to my feet. My head spins, a hazy mess since using my powers. Still, I hold on tight and allow his weight to carry mine.
I want to ask where he is taking me as he leads me out of the room. His shirt is rolled up over his elbow, and as I grab onto his exposed arm, electricity sparks between us.
Instead of being wholly consumed by this moment, my thoughts slip to Cole, who is never far from my mind. My fingers burrow into Serun’s flesh as we make our way down the corridor. “Have you heard anything?”
“Reyes has reached the Woods of Mire,” Serun answers.
“Close?”
“Yes. Close.”
A wave of tension releases from my heart. “I wish I was doing more.”
“Once Reyes finds him, you will. Think of it this way. If you were to travel with them, his scent would become clouded. Same blood.”
“Cole and I? Is that how it works?”
“Somewhat. The scent Reyes follows creates a thread. If you were there, it might tangle since you and Cole are siblings.”
Such strange magik.
Serun takes me down the stairs, and as we reach the dining room, my heart speeds up rapidly.
We stop, and the shadows across Serun’s shoulders drip away from him, snuffing out some of the light and dimming the main hall until we’re burning in shadows.
My breath sharpens like a shard of glass in my throat.
I take in my shadow drawn up the wall beside the door.
I take a shaky breath in and step back, but Serun’s hand tightens on mine. “Saya, this is Penumbra. Is this who you saw?”
He says it so casually, like an introduction among peers.
“What is it?” My throat dries up as I struggle to speak.
“A guardian. They protect my manor when I’m not here.”
“They?”
Serun nods. “They don’t know what they are, but they are not an object, nor do they have a gender. They prefer to be called Penumbra, they/them.” He looks back towards the wall. “Did you frighten my consort, Penumbra?”
The shadow nods, hanging their head low like a puppy scolded for being naughty. Then, the shadow looks at me and raises their hand. Shadows break away and form letters. “Forgive me, Saya Claymore. I did not mean to scare you.”
“They can’t talk?”
Serun breathes a laugh. “They are a shadow.”
“But…they spoke to me,” I murmur.
The shadow shrugs their shoulders.
“Interesting. What did they say?”
“Pir avacen,” I say, and Serun’s eyes narrow slightly.
“I know it’s vegodian, but I never learned enough of the language to know what it means.
Most words I use are those I saw in your memories, as well as what my mum said in front of me—like the magik I used earlier.
” I nod once, firm. “Whenever there was no electricity, she would say, fink hon, and the light fed the candles. I’m not strong enough to do that. Mine just made my entire body glow.”
“You are fascinating.” Shadows slip over Serun’s body, and Penumbra fades, jumping back into my true shadow and making it my own again. “They cannot speak. Perhaps the voice was in your head.”
My brow twitches and my ear flicks. With another slow blink, I contemplate smothering him with a pillow, before turning around and making my way back up the stairs.
He follows. And Serun’s presence is impossible to ignore.
“Leave me be, nightwalker. If I wanted someone to doubt me, I’d have gone to Jax. ”
His shadow grows until I am stepping on it. “Doubt? I am a little lost as to why you just looked at me as if you wanted to hold my dead heart in your hands. It is yours if you want it, but I’d at least like to know the reason first.”
I make it to the office door and spin around to face him. “Jax said the same thing to me about the creature in the air shaft. He tried to convince me it was all in my head. I saw what I saw. And here, I heard what I heard.”
Serun’s eyes crinkle, and then he is laughing deeply. I jump at the sound, caught off guard. He saunters towards me, broad muscles and a smirk I should be glaring at, but my heart skips a beat, and my breathing becomes shallow.
“Saya,” he sighs, light and filled to the brim with amusement. Serun raises his hand, only to hesitate when I cringe away. “You’re vegodian. Magik surrounds you. It would not surprise me if something were trying to communicate with you, but only you can hear it.”
Huh?
“You weren’t doubting me?”
“Never. I would believe anything you say, even if your words were laced with unyielding hate for me.”
My hands clench at my sides, and I look away, glaring at the vervain wallpaper.
“You control us to keep yourselves from starving. You lie as quickly as I breathe when I am around you.” Heat burns my cheeks at the sudden admission, and my voice drops low.
“Even now, in your presence, all I can think about is what you taste like.”
“My kamai…” He cups his hands on either side of my face, thumbs brushing along my cheekbones. “Stay with me in the Undercity after you revisit your home. I can protect you and your brother. He will like it here. It’s safe, and far away from the slayers.”
I step into him, my hands resting against his chest over his dead heart. There’s nothing there. No heartbeat to explore, no rise and fall of his chest. But the way his hands move tenderly on my face, the shimmer in those deep crimson eyes, and the way they lower to my mouth…This is more than want.
It’s a damn yearning—suffering at its finest.
I shouldn’t feel anything for someone without a heartbeat, but here I am, a breath away from our mouths colliding once more. From losing myself to temptation.
Serun touches my temple, smoothing the hair back and tucking it behind my ear.
“You’re like a parasite in my bloodstream.
I could remove you, but I am fond of the way it hurts.
” His hand brushes down my jaw, across the veins thickening along the nape of my neck, and rests on my moonflower tattoo.
“Oh, how I crave you. To see you devoured by shadow.”
I tilt my head up, our noses brushing when I force him to follow. “For something dead, you talk too damn much, nightwalker.”
His mouth curves into a smirk against my lips. “Look at you, Saya Claymore, so mighty when we both know where you want this mouth buried.”
A tingling sensation stirs between my legs, swelling with arousal.
“Goodnight, kamai…” Serun steps away, and I am left against the door, heated and flushed.
Temptation fades with every heavy breath, becoming distance.
Serun is calculating. He wants me to admit that I am wholly his before he allows himself to indulge, while I want him on his knees, crawling to me.
I click my tongue and mutter, “Goodnight, nightwalker.”
He gives a crooked smile before I turn and enter the office. He doesn’t follow, but I glimpse back at him. Serun is leaning against the doorframe, arms raised high and a wicked grin on his face as he suffocates the space.
“Goodnight, Saya.”