Chapter 25
My legs tremble. My shoulders burn. The tips of my fingers scrape against rough rock as I haul myself up, a race against the rising sun.
Minutes. I have only minutes before dawn breaks and the Shadow changes. The tendons in my shoulder scream as I find a handhold above. My feet find a new ledge to cling to, and I dare to glance down.
The ground wavers below, the whole world tilting. I flatten myself against the rock, my eyes squeezed shut. When everything settles, I glance up to find the sun’s first rays painting the cliff overhead.
I start upward again, my hands finding fissures, my boots wedging into every nook and cranny I can find. My body screams for relief, but I can’t grant it, can only climb higher while my breath runs short and my limbs tremble.
Go. Faster. Up up up.
Sunlight trickles down the cliff face. Somewhere below, the Shadow lets out a roar, and my breath comes in choppy heaves as I power upward. Dawn’s rays touch my fingertips, then flow downward, warming my still-wet skin.
“The gyre,” the Shadow shouts. “Use your gyre.”
I grit my teeth. The gyre will only take me back to the castle, not to the hourglass. But if I don’t at least pretend to consider it, the Shadow will probably throw himself into the abyss, just to keep me safe.
I can’t let him. I can’t. If he dies…
I wince, unable to complete the thought, then do the only thing I can do. I pull my gyre from my pocket just as sunlight spears into my eyes.
“All right!” I shout, with a glance over my shoulder. “I’m going!”
On the far side of the ravine, the Shadow collapses in the dirt, his shoulders heaving with relief. Sunlight flows over my boots, lighting the tufts of grass that sprout from the crevices below. It reaches the base of the cliff and crawls across the beam, making its way toward him. Closer, closer…
The Shadow raises his head just as dawn claims him. Just as I jam the gyre back into my pocket.
Because I’m not going anywhere but up.
A pained roar pours from him as he dissolves into thin air. The sound doesn’t break off, but shifts, coming from above me, now. It echoes over the treetops, a hymn of hunger and pain and punishment.
I search the cliff face above, my throat aching. I probably have only seconds before he comes charging over the top. Before he follows my scent to this exact spot.
Oh, goddess.
Panic claws at my chest, but I have to finish this. Find some way to buy myself another few minutes. To reach the hourglass and break the curse.
A breeze arises, and the dress at my belt drags against my thigh, almost as if it’s calling attention to itself. My mind complies, catching there and holding.
My dress. My blood-soaked dress. The one still saturated in my scent.
Oh, goddess. Of course.
I pull it free before my plan has fully formed. But this dress smells of me, and the Shadow hunts by scent. Meanwhile, I have his scent all over me, smeared across my skin, slicking the inside of my thighs.
If he’s going to chase anything, it will be this dress. Assuming I can hide myself.
A quick survey of the cliff yields a shallow cleft to my left, and I inch toward it. If I press myself into the hollow, conceal myself from the Shadow as he comes barreling over the cliff, then let go of my dress at that precise moment…
It will work. It has to.
I shuffle sideways, the laces of my shirt catching against the stone. The Shadow’s roar comes closer, and goddess help me, he’s fast, already cresting the cliff as I reach the cleft and press myself beneath a shallow ledge.
Dirt and pebbles rain down from above. I cling to the rock, motionless, my pulse slamming painfully in my veins.
The roaring cuts off abruptly, replaced by a sniff. Claws scrape over stone. Something massive moves overhead, making its way downward. Closer, closer…
A shadow falls over me. His.
I fling the dress. It billows outward like a sail and plummets.
The Shadow’s roar rips through the morning as he tears past my hiding place, clinging to the rock like an impossible spider.
I shrink when he passes, but he doesn’t so much as look at me. Doesn’t turn his head. Just scrambles after the dress, bellowing in mindless rage.
I don’t waste a second. I swing out from under the ledge and scramble upward, muscles and tendons pulling in sync. I have minutes, maybe moments. My vision narrows, locked on the clifftop. The world shrinks to the bite of rock against my fingers, the flood of adrenaline propelling me upward.
Sounds erupt from below—snarling, then the tearing of fabric, but the Shadow’s fury only fuels my ascent. I go hand over hand, foot over foot. I’ll make it. Up the cliff and across the land bridge, all the way to the hourglass. I will.
An enraged bellow darkens the air. The Shadow realizing my deception, probably, but I’m already gripping the last rock, dragging myself up and over the edge.
But a downward glance has my stomach plummeting, because the Shadow is fast. Faster than I want him to be, a blur of purple and blue as he abandons the shredded dress and comes barreling up the cliff face.
I spin away and surge to my feet, making for the land bridge stretching before me.
On the far side, the hourglass awaits, sparkling in the morning sun.
So little sand remains, but I dig my soles in and—
Go flying backward, my spine slamming into cold ground, my scalp burning as the Shadow yanks me backward by my braid.
Somehow, I flip to my front as I skid to the lip of the cliff. I end up hanging over the edge, staring down into glazed yellow eyes. The Shadow clings to the rocks, my braid wrapped around his fist.
A choked sob bursts from my throat. One hard pull, and he’ll send me flying over. Plummeting to my doom.
Goddess, no. I’m so close. So close.
He bares his teeth and I brace for him to yank. Only he doesn’t. His whole body trembles, his fangs glinting as he stares up. A growled rasp emerges, one that sounds as if it’s been pried from his chest by force. “Kill…”
I lean down, straining to hear his twisted words.
“Kill…” My braid pulls tighter, his claws tangling with brown strands. “Me…”
Kill me?
His meaning filters through my panic. Somehow, in defiance of the curse, in defiance of everything Alanna has burdened him with, he’s battled for control and won. At least for the moment.
“Kill me,” he spits, clearer this time. “Dagger. Now.”
The tension on my braid mounts, the pressure bringing tears to my eyes. Without thinking, I find my weapon, the blade sliding free. I raise it overhead, my shoulder trembling.
The Shadow’s gaze follows its path, shudders wracking his body. Rage still swims in his eyes, but beneath it, satisfaction glints, like a star piercing through mist.
“Do it,” he manages. “Be… Before…”
The moment crystallizes. Purpose flowers inside me, coursing toward my center, feeding the blaze gathering there. The realization spinning within me.
All my life, I’ve played things safe. I’ve obeyed and hoped, begged and pleaded. Tried to be enough. Followed the rules, believing it would make me worthy.
But I don’t need a goddess to tell me I matter. I can forge my own path.
And make my own fucking rules.
“No.” I bring the blade whistling downward, hooking the edge beneath my braid and sawing upward. Strands burst apart, snapping one by one, the sound of my future solidifying.
My hair parts like butter, the knife pulling free. Chin-length strands whip around my face as I scramble away from the cliff.
The Shadow tips backward, thrown off-balance, my braid dangling from his fist.
I pause and stare down, waiting for him to correct. To sink his claws into the cliff.
But he doesn’t. He tilts backward, then backward some more. He does nothing at all to save himself.
A wave of cold panic rushes up my throat, my vocal cords turning to ice. I would scream, but I can’t. My whole body freezes over as the Shadow gives me a regretful smile and lets himself fall.
It’s the longest moment of life. The shortest eternity I’ve ever lived through.
He plummets into nothing, his hair whipping wildly. His parting smile cuts deep, a naked admission that doesn’t need words—a vow of love and devotion, of willing self-sacrifice.
He falls and falls and falls. Somehow, my soul shatters before his body does. Before he hits the earth with a sound that will haunt my dreams forever. Before the snap of his body breaking sears into my bones and shears me clean in two.
White hot agony fills my skull. I stare down at his broken form, and someone is screaming, only I can’t hear it, can only feel the burn pouring from my chest, the strain in my throat as I come unmoored from my body.
The Shadow lies on the cold earth below, bent and ruined, my braid still clutched in his fist.
My mate, screams something inside me. My mate my mate my mate…
I scarcely know what happens next, who makes the decision to steer me toward the hourglass, to send me sprinting across the land bridge.
I only know that I exist for one purpose now. To unite Amriel’s two bodies before the Shadow takes his last breath. If I do, then maybe…
Maybe…
Air streams past my face, chilling the tears that smear my cheeks. The hourglass looms through hazy vision, its sand falling and falling, only a few handfuls left.
I have only seconds to save my mate.
I hurtle across the bridge, my feet barely touching ground. The drop on either side means nothing. The risk means nothing. In the hourglass, the last inch of sand swishes and swirls.
Instinct has me gripping my dagger by the blade. My arm pulls back, then snaps forward, my throw fueled by desperation.
The dagger sails end over end, a flash of silver. The last grains of sand slide free, a door slamming closed, right before my eyes.
But the dagger finds home, its hilt hitting the glass full force. The hourglass explodes outward in a shower of glittering fragments. Sand pours across the grass, a cascade of white, and a wave of light comes with it, spreading outward.
Magic. The curse breaking.