Chapter 6
Chapter
Six
AZRAEL
She is insufferable.
Three hours into our first training session, Morgana has called me a “cryptic bastard,” a “control freak with a god complex,” and, my personal favorite, “the world’s most pretentious drama queen.”
The last one earns her a shadow tendril wrapping around her ankle and yanking her flat onto her ass.
She bounces back up, swearing and tries again as if she is not learning that the arena has opinions about her attitude.
The atmosphere around us feels colder this morning; the polished black floor is still damp from whatever enchantment cleans blood and ash from the stone overnight. Above us, the tiered seats vanish into shadow, empty and watchful.
I stand at the edge of the training grounds and watch her attempt to summon shadows for the fortieth time.
Her face is scrunched in concentration, hands extended as if she is trying to physically drag darkness out of the air.
Nothing answers her.
“You are thinking too hard,” I say.
“Oh, thank you, oh wise one.” She does not open her eyes. “That’s incredibly helpful. Let me just stop thinking. Problem solved.”
“Your sarcasm is noted.”
“Your uselessness is noted.”
I should be irritated. I should correct her tone. I should remind her exactly what she is and what I am.
Instead, I find myself fighting the urge to smile.
Most people around me choose their words as if they are walking across thin ice. Carefully. Quietly. They grovel without realizing it. After so long, I had almost forgotten what unfiltered honesty sounds like.
She is refreshing in the most aggravating way possible.
“Again,” I say. “Do not force it. Feel the darkness inside you. Coax it.”
“I’m not a dog whisperer.”
“Clearly. A dog whisperer would be more effective.”
Her eyes snap open. “Did you just–did the Shadow King just make a joke?”
“Focus.”
“No, that was definitely–”
“Morgana.”
She huffs but closes her eyes again. Extends her hands.
For a moment, nothing changes.
Then I see it.
A flicker. A thin wisp of shadow curls from her fingertips before dissolving like smoke in daylight.
Progress.
Painfully small progress, but progress nonetheless.
“There.” I step closer. “You felt that, yes?”
“Felt what?”
“The pull. Right before it surfaced.”
She frowns slightly. “Maybe? It was like—I don’t know. Pressure. In my chest.”
“That is your power trying to surface. Next time it happens, do not resist it. Breathe into it. Let it move through you.”
She tries again. Fails. Then again.
By the time we break for water, she has managed three weak shadow wisps and has nearly set her own hair on fire.
“I didn’t know shadow magic could catch fire,” she says between breaths, gulping water.
“It should not.” I watch her closely. “You managed to combine it with latent heat energy.”
“That sounds like a problem.”
“It is not supposed to be possible.”
“Story of my life,” she mutters, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Doing impossible things that anger powerful men.”
“Is that your life philosophy?”
“Might put it on my gravestone.” She looks at me then, something quieter threading through her expression. “If I survive the next five years.”
The reminder settles between us.
Five years.
The binding.
Everything she has lost because of my decision.
I look away first.
“We are not finished,” I say. “Shadow manipulation is useless if you cannot maintain control. We will continue.”
She groans but does not argue.
The second session requires contact.
There is no alternative. Shadow magic at this level does not respond to observation alone. It responds to guidance. One practitioner’s power shaping another’s until instinct replaces thought.
I have trained others this way for centuries. It has never been complicated.
With her, everything feels complicated.
“Stand here,” I say, guiding her to the center of the arena. “Feet shoulder-width apart.”
She complies, watching me with those storm-colored eyes that see too much and miss nothing at all.
I move behind her.
Every instinct in me demands distance.
There should be distance.
But there is no time for gentler methods. Not before tomorrow. Not before Earth.
I place my hands on her shoulders.
She goes rigid.
“Relax,” I say.
“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one being manhandled by a centuries-old dictator.”
“You do not know how old I am.”
“You have a throne, ancient doorways, and the emotional warmth of a haunted cathedral. I’m making an educated guess.”
“An imprecise one.”
“Oh, well, that makes it so much better.”
I can feel her pulse through the thin fabric of her training clothes. Too fast. Unsteady.
Good. It should be.
But something in me registers it too sharply.
“We are going to shape shadows together,” I say, forcing my voice into something controlled. “I will guide your movements. Your magic will follow mine. Pay attention to how it feels.”
“This is weird.”
“This is necessary.”
I slide my hands down her arms.
Her skin is warm beneath my palms. Warmer than it should be. Human warmth, steady and alive, cutting through the cold discipline I have built myself from.
It’s distracting in a way I do not permit myself to name.
The binding marks on both our wrists flare the moment I reach her hands.
She gasps.
I should step back.
I do not.
“Ignore it,” I say, though my voice is rougher than intended.
“Ignore it? Are you insane? That felt like?—”
“I know what it felt like.”
I take her hands in mine, forcing alignment, fingers interlacing so I can guide her movements properly.
The contact makes the marks pulse harder.
So does something else I refuse to acknowledge.
“The binding reacts to contact,” I say. “You will adjust.”
“Will I?”
I do not answer that.
Because neither of us will.
Not easily.
Not cleanly.
And admitting that would make this far more dangerous than it already is.
“Summon your shadows,” I say instead. “Like before.”
She tries. I feel the pressure building in her, that same sensation she described, her magic rising to meet the command.
I call my own power and let it flow through our joined hands.
The shadows respond. They pour from our interlaced fingers like liquid night, pooling in the air before us. Morgana gives a choked sound.
“Don’t panic,” I say. “Feel how they move, how they respond to intention rather than force.”
“They’re… they’re alive.”
“They’re magic. Your magic. You are just learning to speak its language.”
I shape the shadows into a sphere. She is not doing anything, just standing frozen while I work through her, but her power is present, accessible. “Now. Tell it what you want.”
“Tell it?”
“In your mind. Form the intention clearly.”
She is quiet for a moment, concentrating.
The sphere wobbles, shifts, collapses.
“Steady,” I murmur. “Do not let go. Hold the image in your mind.”
She does, and the sphere stabilizes.
We stand like that, my body pressed against her back, our hands joined, shadows dancing between our fingers, and something in my chest pulls tight.
This is dangerous.
Not the magic. Not the training.
This. The way she fits against me. The way her power tangles with mine as if they recognize each other. The way every breath she takes makes me hyperaware of everywhere we are touching.
I should step back but I do not.
“Make it bigger,” I say.
She does. The sphere grows to the size of a watermelon, then a boulder.
“Good. Now shape it. Give it form.”
The sphere elongates, stretches. She is thinking of something specific; I can feel her intention through the connection.
It becomes a bird, wings spread, head raised.
Crude. Imperfect. But unmistakably a bird.
“I did it.” Her voice is breathless, awed. “I actually?—”
The bird explodes.
Shadow shrapnel sprays everywhere. I throw up a shield on instinct, my power wrapping around us both. The fragments dissolve against the barrier.
“Sorry!” Morgana’s laugh is startled, delighted. “I got excited and?—”
“Lost concentration. Yes.” I lower the shield. “That is why control matters. Excitement, fear, rage, they all destabilize your magic until you learn to separate emotion from execution.”
She turns in my arms.
I should have released her when the bird exploded. Should have stepped back immediately.
I did not and now she is facing me, still inside the circle of my arms, close enough that I can count the flecks of green in her grey eyes. No one has looked at my magic like that in a very long time. Not with wonder. Not without fear.
“That was amazing,” she says.
“That was basic.”
“For you, maybe. For me?” She is grinning, actual joy lighting her face. “I just made shadow into something real. That’s?—”
She stops. The grin fades.
“You’re staring.”
I am.
At the curve of her mouth. The way her pupils are blown wide from adrenalin and magic use. The pulse hammering in her throat that I could reach out and touch if I?—
I step back fast enough that she stumbles slightly.
“We are done for today,” I say.
The light in her eyes gutters. “What? But I was just getting?—”
“You are getting tired. Magic exhaustion will set in soon.” I turn away before I can do something catastrophic, like keep staring. “Rest. We train again tonight.”
“Tonight? I thought we were leaving for?—”
“We are. After one more session.” I am already walking toward the arena exit, putting distance between us. “You need to be able to summon shadows on command before we go. Not just when I am guiding you.”
I do not wait for her response.
The corridor outside the arena is blessedly empty. I lean against the wall, eyes closed, and wrestle my breathing back under control.
I have had centuries to master myself. I have never once lost composure over a woman.
She is human. Bound. My prisoner in all but name.
And I cannot stop thinking about how she felt pressed against me, how her power moved with mine like we were dancing.
This is going to be a problem.
The evening session is worse.
She is rested. Fed. Wearing different training clothes that somehow manage to be more distracting than the last set.
I force myself to focus.
“Tonight we work on shadow-walking,” I say. “Moving through darkness instead of around it.”