Shine & Shadow (The Second Fate of Elodie Devine #2)

Chapter 1

One

Elodie

Damp seeps into my shirt from the rain-soaked grass. The breeze licking my skin wavers between the night’s chill and biting wafts from the fire.

But the only thing I care about is my fated mate’s mouth sliding hot down the side of my neck, his hand stroking over my hip, his thick hair soft against my clutching fingers. The need to consummate our bond surges through my veins—

The clearing of a throat shatters the moment. A curt voice cuts through the air.

“Someone had better start explaining what the hell is going on.”

I tense up, but Salvatore simply glowers at the three other men who’ve arrived. He keeps his massive frame braced over me as if he might dismiss them and go right back to making out with me.

The four spires on our bond marks gave away that I’d have three other matches, so he should be able to guess that’s who’s turned up. Then again, he’s already declared that he’s going to be the best of the four.

When it comes to the brazen mafia heir, it’s difficult to know how he might define “best.”

I can’t say I’m particularly interested in getting back to getting busy, though. The rush of the newly formed bond and our near-death experience overwhelmed me for a few minutes, but seeing Byron, Cole, and Asher in the hazy moonlight has shocked all the desire from my body.

I stare up at them as if seeing double, an after-image of the corresponding moment from my old life playing out behind my eyes.

“What are you— Fuck, what happened to him?”

“Something crazy is going down here.”

“Is that— Asher!”

The first time I sparked with my matches, a few years and an alternate reality ago, it was Asher on the ground next to me—limp and vacant in a puddle of blood. That world’s Salvatore laughed and postured without coming close to me, obviously thrown by the unexpected matching.

Cole has no one to sprint to, not when his younger brother is standing right beside him rather than sprawled slack and bloody. He glares at us from beneath the shadow of his chestnut hair like our existence offends him.

Considering the way he’s treated me since I was dragged into this parallel universe, that might actually be true. Too bad, so sad.

For all of us. Because despite the animosity radiating off the professor, the tug in my chest wants to propel me into his arms.

I nudge Salvatore to ease off me—which he does with obvious reluctance—and push to my feet. My joints twinge with exhaustion from all the energy, both physical and magical, I’ve expended in the past couple of hours.

Asher’s bright green eyes widen. He steps toward me, his arm rising as if to steady me.

I motion him away with a jerk of my hand and a yank of my gaze away, against the thump of my pulse urging me toward him.

There was a time when I’d have celebrated this fate, but now… I can’t look at him. My memories of his death are too raw, too close to the surface.

I killed that other version of him.

Salvatore tucks a possessive arm around my waist, his brawny form enveloping me. His affectionate gesture mollifies the blaring thrum of the awoken bond a little.

He answers Cole’s accusing question in a languid drawl. “‘What the hell is going on’ is we’ve sparked our match. And with fucking good timing, considering our mate almost died along the way. She saved my life.”

A note of awe colors his voice with his last words. He dips his head to press a kiss to my forehead.

While this Salvatore’s reaction is totally different from the original’s, Byron’s looks awfully familiar. His well-built frame has stiffened with surprise as his mouth sets at an uneasy angle.

He likes to be in control. This development will have ransacked his expectations like a manic poltergeist.

As my stomach flips over, he tugs off one glove and glances down at his right hand. At the four-pointed bond mark emblazoned dark pink on his rich brown skin.

His expression softens with far more understanding than the other him offered me.

That mark and the bond it represents led him here, solidifying the fractured tug we’ve all been feeling over the past few weeks. It may not be what he expected, but it might reassure him about other missteps he thought he’d made.

When he meets my eyes again, his dark brown gaze is still pensive… but I think there’s something like hope in it too. The sight sends a flutter through my chest.

The hope clouds over with worry as Salvatore’s words must sink in. Byron frowns. “You—you fell in the river? What even happened?”

Salvatore sucks in a breath to speak, but I squeeze his forearm to stop him. Even if my stomach is still churning and my mind feels like it’s been spun around in Charybdis’s whirlpool, I have to take control of the situation.

I never meant to spark my matches in this reality—not ever. I’ve spent the past few weeks doing everything I can to avoid them.

Because I don’t belong to this world. This reality’s version of Elodie is already dead. I’m just a metaphorical butterfly yanked across dimensions, spreading chaos and disrupting lives with every inadvertent flap of my wings.

I set out tonight intending to expose my doppelganger’s murderer and then vanish. To let my matches go forward much more happily than they could ever be with me.

Activating our bond was an act of pure desperation, the only chance I had at saving Salvatore from a worse fate.

So it’s my responsibility to do this right.

Or, as right as possible when the power in me could slaughter all four of these men as easily as breathing.

My original mates never knew that. These ones don’t have to find out either.

In this reality, I have no Uncle Nik to step in and spin the story while I crouch in a traumatized daze. There’s so much I’ve been keeping hidden… and most of it should stay that way for their own sakes. I can’t let this union drag my matches down the way it did in the world I came from.

But I can’t gloss over anything Salvatore saw. I have to give them a coherent enough account that they won’t dig deeper.

First things first. I should explain why I was wandering around in the middle of the night to begin with.

I rake my fingers through my damp hair, pushing the purple-streaked strands back from my face.

“I snuck out of my house—it was getting so suffocating with my dad in over-protective mode. I wanted to stretch my legs and have room to breathe. I didn’t think I needed to worry about anything so close to home.

But when I was walking through the park upriver… Kenneth Hearst attacked me.”

All three of the men listening with their very different demeanors blink with nearly identical expressions of befuddlement.

“Kenneth Hearst?” Cole bites out, as if there might be some other Kenneth I meant who’d be more inclined to committing murder than the meek, skinny guy we went to school with.

Salvatore can’t keep quiet any longer. “The prick could really fight too, if you can believe it. Swinging his knife around and tossing magical explosives like he thought he was in an action movie.”

Byron’s dark brown eyes shift to the man beside me, narrowing slightly. “What were you doing there?”

Salvatore flexes his broad shoulders. He and Byron are about the same height, but the mafia heir has the advantage of bulk if he wants to intimidate. “Looking out for Elodie. Someone had to after that fucker messed her up in the cafeteria, don’t you think?”

Asher speaks for the first time, his normally warm voice gone taut. “Do you think it was Kenneth who poisoned your food too?”

He’s addressed the question to me, so I jump back in, even if my gaze still ticks away from Asher’s face with a jitter through my nerves.

I look vaguely over his shoulder instead, tamping down on the peal of our bond. “It must have been. He very obviously wanted me dead. And he seemed pretty upset that I wasn’t already.”

An echo of Kenneth’s frustrated voice rises up in the back of my head. “Why won’t you just die?”

Wincing inwardly, I focus on Byron and Cole instead.

“Salvatore’s right—Kenneth was more prepared for a fight than makes any sense.

His knife and the other weapons seemed like something a professional would carry…

and I think he had an enchantment on his clothes too, stronger than I’d have thought he could manage. He said…”

That last comment he made haunts me. “She was right about you.”

Who was right? Right how?

And whoever it was, is that who told him to murder me? Who set him up with the means to see that murder through?

Cole folds his arms over his chest. He’s slimmer than both Salvatore and Byron but the tallest of them all and plenty intimidating with his penetrating stare. “He said what?”

I balk instinctively. Do I really want to drag my matches into an even more complicated mystery? If my suspicions are right, then they’ll be in danger just because of their association with me.

On the other hand, how can I leave them completely in the dark with no way to protect themselves? They need to know the threat isn’t gone.

I lift my chin. “I think someone put him up to the attack or was at least supporting him. He mentioned a ‘she’ who’d told him things about me.”

Salvatore’s head jerks toward me. His voice comes out in a growl. “What? There’s more of these assholes—”

Cole cuts in, as brusque as before. “This is an incredible story, but it doesn’t explain how you ended up looking like a half-drowned kitten on the side of the river.”

I manage to will the edge out of my voice.

“During the fight, we ran onto one of the footbridges up near my neighborhood. Kenneth pushed Salvatore into the river. I waded in to help pull him out and ended up swept up in the current too. I—I lost my glove. I was trying to keep his head above water and touched his face, and the bond sparked.”