Chapter 16 #2
I laughed. It came out broken. “You wanted to see it.”
“I wanted you to summon it. Not give it control.”
“I’m not giving it anything.”
“You are giving it everything.” The shadows screamed toward him again.
This time, Kieran had to lift both hands.
Darkness poured from his palms, spilling over the ring in a controlled tide.
It met mine with a sound like thunder underwater.
The old containment runes circling the stones flickered once beneath the force of it—black, then silver, then gone.
My breath came out too fast.
The world narrowed to darkness and silver-blue fire. To smoke. To screaming. To every face I’d failed to save. Another tendril snapped toward him. This one was thinner. Less controlled. More desperate, and this time, Kieran didn’t block it.
He caught it. Barehanded. The silver-blue shadow wrapped around his wrist, and the runes along his forearm flared black in answer.
Pain flashed across his face. There and gone. But I saw it. The rage drained so fast my knees nearly followed. The shadows faltered.
Kieran saw it. “Stay there.”
“What?”
“Stay with the part of you that knows you don’t want to hurt me.”
I laughed. Or tried to. It came out broken. “I do want to hurt you.”
“If you wanted to hurt me, you wouldn’t be looking at my wrist.”
“Let go,” I whispered.
His fingers tightened around the strand. “You let go.”
“I don’t know how.”
“You’re afraid.” The shadow tightened around his wrist. His jaw clenched.
“Kieran—”
“Breathe.”
“I am fucking breathing.”
“You’re enduring.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
He shook his head. “One keeps you alive. The other lets you live.”
I shook my head. “I can’t.”
“You can.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“How?”
His gaze held mine through the veil of shadow between us. “Because it’s still listening to you.” The strand around his wrist pulsed once. Like a heartbeat. Mine.
I forced air into my lungs. It shuddered on the way in. Kieran’s voice softened. “Again.”
I breathed again. The ring seemed too large. Too old. Too full of things waiting to watch me fail. “Look at me.”
“I am.”
“No.” His gaze sharpened. “Not the magic. Not my hands. Me.”
My eyes lifted to his.
Moonlight had turned them pale, green-grey shadowed by black lashes, but there was nothing soft in them. Nothing gentle. They were steady, and that was worse.
Gentleness could break. Steadiness asked me to believe there was ground beneath my feet when all I felt was falling. The tendrils trembled.
“Again,” he said.
I breathed.
In.
Out.
The shadows recoiled an inch from the pillars. “In,” Kieran murmured. I obeyed. “Out.”
The silver-blue glow dimmed. The darkness at the edge of the ring drew back slowly, reluctantly, as if some starving part of me resented being denied. The strand around Kieran’s wrist loosened but he did not release it. “Now pull it back.”
I couldn’t stop looking at the silver-blue strand wrapped around his wrist. “How?”
“It’s yours.”
“I know.”
“Then act like it.” A thin line of red had appeared beneath the shadow where it bit into his skin. My stomach turned. I had done that. The strand tightened.
Kieran’s breath caught. “Lyra.”
“I’m trying.”
“I know.” His voice stayed maddeningly calm. “Try differently.” The words stopped me colder than if he’d shouted.
The shadows shuddered. I couldn’t tear my attention away from the mark on his wrist. “Look at me.” I didn’t. “Lyra.”
The way his voice sounded made me lift my head. He was already watching me. “Decide.”
The word settled somewhere deep inside me. Not a command. A choice.
Decide.
Not beg. Not fight. Not pretend it belonged to something else. Mine. The thought sickened me. But the shadow pulsed around his wrist, waiting. Listening. I drew another breath, and this time, I did not reach for Edenlo.
I did not reach for anger or grief or the part of me that still wanted to make him regret every cruel word.
I reached for the strand itself. For the strange cold threaded through my veins.
It was not a beast waiting to lunge. Not darkness whispering for blood.
It was a hand I had clenched so tightly I had forgotten how to open.
Release him.
The command formed without sound. The shadow loosened. Only slightly. Kieran did not move. “Again,” he said.
Release him.
The silver-blue strand uncoiled from his wrist.
It hovered between us for one impossible heartbeat, narrow and trembling beneath the starlight. Then it slid back across the ring, toward me. Cold brushed over my fingers, climbed my arms, and sank beneath my skin.
Every remaining tendril followed. The black withdrew from the pillars. The silver-blue light vanished from the cracks. The old ring returned piece by piece until there was only moonlight over broken stone and the sound of my breathing.
The adrenaline left my body all at once.
My knees gave out.
Kieran caught me before I hit the ground.
One arm locked around my waist, the other bracing my shoulder. The force of it pulled me against him, my palms landing against the hard plane of his chest.
For a second, neither of us moved. His heart beat hard beneath my hand.
Too fast for someone who had acted so calm.
For the first time since we’d met, Kieran Nyxara felt startlingly human.
And somehow, that was infinitely more dangerous than the version of him I’d been afraid of.
He was very close. Close enough to feel his breath against my cheek.
His grip tightened once at my waist. Then he released me. The night air rushed into the space between us. I straightened, pretending my legs were steadier than they were. Kieran looked down at his wrist. An angry red mark circled it where my shadow had held too tightly.
Guilt twisted beneath my ribs. “I hurt you.”
“Yes.” The single word landed harder than reassurance ever could.
I looked from his wrist to the bare stone around us. The shadows rested quietly in the cracks, as if they had never erupted at all. “I…” My voice caught. “I controlled it.”
“For three breaths.” I glared at him. The corner of his mouth twitched.
This time, I knew I hadn’t imagined it. “Arrogant bastard.”
“Unstable menace.”
A startled laugh escaped me. It sounded wrong in a place this old and abandoned. Kieran went still, as though the sound had surprised him as much as it had me. For just a heartbeat, his eyes softened. Then it was gone. He tugged his sleeve over the mark on his wrist. “That’s enough for tonight.”
I glanced toward the path. “That was a lesson?”
“That was you nearly breaking the containment wards and strangling me with your own shadow.”
“So… successful?”
“By your standards, apparently.”
I pulled my cloak tighter, though I no longer felt the cold. “When do we do this again?”
“You said you wanted to get rid of it.”
“I still do.”
“Then why ask?”
Because for three breaths, it had listened. Because for three breaths, I hadn’t been helpless beneath it. Because, for the first time, control had felt possible.
I shrugged. “I’d rather not murder the next piece of furniture that annoys me.”
Silence stretched. Long enough for the excuse to fall apart between us. “Two nights,” he said at last. “Same place. After the final bell.”
I nodded.
He turned toward the far edge of the ring “Kieran.” He stopped. “You won’t tell anyone?”
His face was half-shadowed beneath the ruined pillars. “No.”
There wasn’t a trace of hesitation. I should not have believed him. I barely knew him. Knew nothing of what he wanted, what loyalties he carried, or why he’d chosen to protect a secret dangerous enough to destroy us both.
But standing beneath the broken pillars, with my magic finally quiet beneath my skin, I did. Not because he’d convinced me, but because, for the first time since Edenlo burned, someone had looked at the worst part of me and hadn’t turned away.
That frightened me more than the light or the shadow ever could.