Chapter 34
RAANA
Raana whipped her head southward as her shadows bit along her skin, buzzing with an energy she’d never felt from them before.
She’d been in the final ascent of the mountain, just about to reach her cottage door, when she felt the pull.
Not what she’d felt with Adrien on the night of the Equinox, but something… different.
Strange.
She spun back, focusing on her task: get her grimoire and get out.
It had been her own personal mission, her own small escape.
After she’d snapped in the greenhouse, something had shifted in her and Nerissa’s relationship—if it could even be called that.
Nerissa had wanted her to embrace her true self, to get a taste for the breadth of her power. Perhaps, it was time for Raana to do just that. To brace herself to fight. And for that, she wanted all the weapons in her arsenal.
Her greatest?
Her mother’s grimoire. Her family’s secrets.
Sneaking away hadn’t been difficult with Nerissa somewhere Raana couldn’t trace her, busy working on the spell with Kai and Isla’s blood.
Jumping between the shadows, it had only taken half a day’s travel and rest to make it to her mountain home.
When she’d walked these passes with Adrien only a few weeks ago, she’d been so weak, so slow.
Back then, he kept telling her to remove her iron ring and embrace her fae body, but she refused.
Now, with only the lesser enchantment in place, she could see he had been right.
Not only had it been easier to move through the darkness, but her body had been stronger, faster, and her senses were keener.
Now she could avoid the paths that swarmed with Io’s guards.
Her cottage appeared just as ghostly as Phobos’s Pack Hall. A shell of itself, a remnant of a life once lived—her prison and her sanctuary. She hadn’t been back since she’d learned of Helene’s betrayal.
The potted flowers near the front door had died without her care. She sifted around their dried periwinkle buds and cracked stems until she found her rusty house key. It rasped as it slid into the keyhole and clicked as it turned.
A swirl of dust kicked up in the soft spill of moonlight that trailed in behind her after she shoved the door open.
The cottage had never been a grand space, but it felt even smaller now after spending so long in the crumbling palace.
From where she stood in the entry hall, she could see everything—the living room, dining area, washroom, and her bedroom.
Her heart clenched, morose homesickness wrapping around her throat.
This silence—she liked this silence. This bittersweet nothing.
Perhaps a few hours by the fire with a good book wouldn’t hurt. Maybe, for once, she could forget. She could escape this world into the black-and-white pages, in this cage that felt like home.
The fire in the hearth roared to life after she struck it, its heat washing over her. Raana embraced it, her fingers playing in the light and shadows it cast, though she hated that being here tugged at a memory.
Adrien.
“Spirits,” she grumbled, hanging her head.
Get over this. Get over him.
She swore she could feel him behind her, watching as he had been the last time they’d been here together. All his handsomeness, bravado, and aggravating—
Wait.
With her eyes wide and shadows swirling around her, Raana gently rose to her feet. Her hand slowly reached for the steel fire poker perched against the hearth’s stone outlay.
Not possible.
But still, she moved on instinct, shadow to shadow, her body colliding with something hard, firm, and warm. She got her footing, one of her hands finding a shoulder while the other positioned the sharp end of the poker against the soft, delicate skin of a throat.
Raana’s chest heaved as she stared into the golden-green eyes that had been the subject of every dream and nightmare. “Adrien?”
His gentle smile obliterated her while the firelight danced divinely across his face. “You’re getting better with that,” the prince said, tipping his head to the poker, his raven locks shifting.
This had to be a dream. She hadn’t traveled here at all. She was back in the hall, corrupted by dark magic. Sleeping.
“Are you real?” She hadn’t meant to whisper the question aloud.
But then she watched, wide-eyed, as Adrien’s hand rose to feel along his own chest. “I feel real.”
He certainly did.
The muscles of his arm tensed and relaxed beneath her touch in a way she’d come to know well, and her shadows didn’t seem to protest his presence.
In fact, they began weaving around their legs, drawing them together.
The back of her eyes stung, and her heart galloped.
“What are you—what are you doing here? How are you here?”
“Waiting for you. And I walked. Unlike some people, I don’t have shadows to carry me across the world.”
Smartass.
Raana’s laugh was edged with a sob, and she squeezed his shoulder again.
Real.
She dipped into her magic, using it to get a sense of that aura of summer storms and living embers.
Real.
Him. This was him.
Waiting for her.
Still, she didn’t drop the poker. “How—how did you know I’d come here?”
Adrien didn’t flinch at the weapon still pressed to his throat. He nodded to the side. “You left me a friend.”
Raana watched as a writhing sliver of darkness crept over his shoulder. Hers. But not from this cottage, not the ones that gravitated towards her. It dripped with her essence. This was one of her own making. Her brows twitched towards each other, her jaw slackening.
It slid over his shoulder to her hand, down her arm, and up her neck to her ear, where she felt it like a kiss against her skin. His kiss—that had been burned into her memory, burned into every intimate part of her body.
And then, she heard his voice—an unheard question. Tell me you’re okay. Please.
Her features falling, Raana met Adrien’s eyes, his tight smile as if, somehow, he’d known what it said to her. “I’ve been going out of my mind trying to figure out what happened to you.”
The poker faltered, and Raana let it fall to her side. She tried to wrap her mind around it. All of this. “It told you where I was going?”
Had the shadow always been connected to her, connecting them?
“I get a feeling—I got a feeling, and I trusted my gut. It led me to you. Always does,” he said. “I figured you were coming here and knew where you hid the key. So, I waited.”
Raana could barely swallow as her eyes slid over his face.
Darkness smudged beneath his eyes, and there was something more sunken and sadder about his features.
She wanted to kiss away the bitterness, wrap herself up in him and use him, let him use her, and forget the world existed—their horrible coping mechanism.
But the past, all she’d done, slammed down between them, separating them like a great wave. She stepped back, moving from where they’d ended up by the dining table, and headed for the potion’s cabinet to retrieve her grimoire.
Staying wasn’t an option anymore.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said, then cursed. No, that wasn’t the right thing to say. There were too many apologies she owed. Raana paused at the kitchen counter and turned. She squared her shoulders and looked him dead in the eyes. “I’m sorry.”
It didn’t make her feel much better; it hadn’t mended everything perfectly as she imagined.
Adrien had remained in his place, and for a moment, she feared again that he’d been an illusion. “For?”
Raana let out a breath. “Everything.”
Silence.
Adrien’s footsteps were heavy as he approached, punctuating every hard beat of her heart. He halted a few feet away. “Did you kill that man I saw you with at the river?”
His gaze was pleading, and though she understood why he’d think it, the hurt cleaved her chest. “You think I could?”
“No, I don’t.” Another step, and he leaned against the countertop, looming over her. So close again. Spirits, his mouth was perfect. “Which is why I’m confused.”
Raana mastered herself and that traitorous organ in her chest. There was no reason to hide the truth from him. She looked away, searching for a knife to cut her hand, an offer of blood to open the cabinet. “It wasn’t me. It was another of Nerissa’s soldiers.”
“Nerissa?”
“That’s the witch’s name.” Raana tensed, realizing she’d never actually told Adrien where she’d gone. “She’s the witch who—”
His features darkened. “I know.”
“Oh.” When the counter yielded nothing, she moved to the altar, their tribute to the Mother and Spirits. “The soldier’s name was Callan.”
More silence. One beat. Two.
“Oh, Goddess.”
Raana turned to find Adrien had braced himself on the countertop. “You know him?”
“I—I grew up with him,” Adrien breathed. “He’s a warrior, and he dated Isla for a while.”
“He knew Isla?” Raana’s whispered question had been more for herself. It seemed Nerissa had taken so many wolves of Io into her clutches.
Adrien nodded, a grimace sliding across his face, his voice hollow. “I just had to talk to his family, Sandrine’s family, and apologize for bringing her into the Wilds.”
Raana’s chest cracked, her mouth falling open. “I… I’m so sorry.”
But was she?
She’d done this. She’d cost that woman her life. She’d chosen him—and she’d choose him again.
How had his father reacted? Adrien was alive, still standing, at least?
Save for the tired look on his face, he appeared unscathed, though shadows danced in his eyes, a haunting of memories he hadn’t wanted to share.
She couldn’t help but notice he took a step back from her, and her heart cleaved further.
“Why were you both in Deimos?” he asked softly, suspiciously. “What were you doing?”
Shame clawed its way up her throat. “I needed to do something—for her.” His face blanched, and he took another step back. Heat flared her cheeks, and she wished the shadows would gather and whisk her away. “She would’ve done it with or without me, and if I hadn’t done it, people could’ve died.”