Chapter 16 Find What You’ve Lost #2
Kazimir didn’t look at me, his gaze still fixed on the treacherous path ahead.
“It’s the tongue of the island I grew up on with my mother.
It’s what my shadows respond to.” He hesitated for a fraction of a second.
“And I don’t need to speak it aloud. But conversing with them in my head doesn’t come as naturally to me as it does to you. ”
I exhaled in relief. At least it wasn’t related to the Shadow King—just a piece of Kazimir’s past he could name and understand.
Then I stopped dead. “Are you telling me there’s a type of shadow magic that I’m better at than you?”
A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Don’t look so smug.”
“I am absolutely going to look smug.” A wide, triumphant grin spread across my face. “The great and terrible Kazimir Blackrose has to mumble sweet nothings to his shadow puppets, while I can hold entire silent conversations with mine. I am a prodigy.”
“They aren’t puppets,” he growled, though there was no real heat behind it. “And you aren’t a prodigy.”
“Admit it. You’re impressed. Maybe even a little turned on.”
His smirk was a slow, crooked smile. “I’m always a little turned on when it comes to you, or hadn’t you noticed?”
Before I could come up with a suitably flippant reply, a guttural snarl ripped through the air.
A creature burst from the overgrown reeds to our right.
It might have been a boar once, but now it was a lurching horror of knotted muscle and overlapping tusks, with patches of sickly green crystal growing out of its hide.
It charged.
I didn’t even have to think. I threw out a hand, and a wall of thick, tar-like shadow erupted from the ground, slick and impassable.
The beast hit it with a wet smack and stumbled, its hooves sliding in the mud.
In that split second of confusion, a spear of solidified darkness launched from Kazimir’s side and buried itself in the creature’s thick skull. It dropped without another sound.
Just as the adrenaline began to fade, more rustling came from the trees. Two more of the mutated boars emerged, followed by a pack of skeletal, six-legged wolves with glowing red eyes and a fluttering of overgrown bats above.
“The welcoming party,” Kazimir muttered, shadows coiling around him. “I thought we would have encountered them before now.”
This time, I stepped forward and let my power surge.
The shadows at my feet swelled, growing into monstrous parodies of the creatures before us.
A towering wolf of living darkness, its teeth impossibly long and sharp, rose beside me.
Shadowy serpents bigger than trees uncoiled from the ground, their eyeless heads weaving through the air.
I didn’t send them to attack. I just let them exist—a silent, overwhelming promise of annihilation.
The mutated creatures skidded to a halt. They stared at my horrors, then at each other, a primal intelligence warring with their aggression. After a tense moment, the lead boar snorted, backed away, and the entire nightmarish menagerie melted back into the swamp.
My constructs dissolved into ordinary shadows.
“They’ll just come back,” Kazimir noted drily.
I shrugged, wiping a splash of mud from my cheek. “There was no reason to kill them. They’re just defending their territory.”
He shot me an incredulous look. “You have no trouble killing your enemies in battle, but you spare the rabid swamp beasts?”
“I’m complicated,” I shot back, “or hadn’t you noticed?”
Shaking his head once again, he stepped around the dead boar. “I suppose the mutant beasts are good security for the swamp. With any luck, they’ve already devoured Evenfall and Lightbringer.”
My stomach twisted. How would I feel if something had already happened to my father?
“So what’s the plan when we find them?” I asked, sidestepping something smelly and purple. “Assuming they’re even together.”
“Kill them.”
“Kaz—”
“What?”
“My father knows things. About what happened when my mother died, about Auremar’s plans—” The words tumbled out, desperate justification for something I hadn’t even decided yet.
“Your father is a lying sack of shit.”
I ducked under a low-hanging branch. “And Lightbringer could be leverage.”
“I’m not in the mood to entertain Lightbringer any longer.” Kazimir stopped walking and turned to face me, his expression one of barely contained irritation. “You want to keep the man who led an assault on our home as a pet?”
“I want to be smart about this. You’re the one always going on about thinking three moves ahead.”
His jaw tightened. “That’s different.”
“How?”
He took a step closer, shadows darkening the path. “Because I’m not emotionally compromised by familial connections to manipulative bastards.”
My hands clenched at my sides. “That’s rich coming from the man who literally beheaded his father at dinner.”
“Exactly my point.” Kazimir’s eyes flashed silver. “I didn’t keep Vargus around to chat about his motivations.”
“Well I want my memories back.” The admission burst out of me, raw and desperate. All those blank spaces in my mind, all those stolen moments with my mother—they haunted me more than any tower ever could.
“Congratulations.” He leaned down until we were nearly nose to nose, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper. “Now your father’s free to create new traumatic memories for you.”
We glared at each other, magic crackling between us. His shadows writhed. My own power hummed beneath my skin, ready to match him if necessary. The swamp around us had gone silent—even the insects were smart enough to avoid two powerful mages having a domestic dispute.
But underneath my anger, some part of me listened. Emotionally compromised. Was that what I was?
“You think I’m being weak?” My voice cracked. “If that’s what this is about, I locked him in a cell just like he locked me in a tower.”
Kazimir’s expression shifted, some of the anger bleeding away. “Arabella—”
“This is Griffin’s fault,” I said, needing to deflect before he could finish that thought. “He thinks ‘oops’ is an acceptable response to catastrophic failure—”
“Griffin’s an idiot,” Kaz allowed, letting me change the subject. “But he’s my idiot. Your”—he bit the word out—“friend is the one who encouraged him.”
“Sebastian was curious! It’s not his fault Griffin has the impulse control of a toddler with fire magic!”
A scream cut through our argument. High, terrified, and definitely human.
We looked at each other.
“Apparently, your father’s found something worse than us,” Kaz said.
Another scream, this one cut short. My heart hammered against my ribs. Despite everything, despite the tower and the lies and the stolen memories, hearing him scream still made something in my chest twist.
“We should probably hurry,” I said.
“Probably.” But neither of us moved, both caught in that strange space between our fight and whatever came next.
Kaz’s hand found mine. A third scream, followed by maniacal laughter, reminded me that I didn’t want the decision taken away from me.
My father’s fate, whatever it may be, needed to remain in my hands.
I sighed. “Let’s save my horrible father from whatever’s trying to eat him.”
“The romance never ends with us, does it?”
We started toward the screaming, hands still linked. Kazimir’s strong presence grounded me, reminded me that I wasn’t that helpless girl in the tower anymore. I had power now. I had choices.
“Next time,” Kazimir muttered, “we’re executing prisoners immediately.”
The screaming got louder. We walked faster, then ran toward the sound, splashing through puddles and leaping over roots. The screams were accompanied by another voice—harsh, demanding, slightly unhinged.
We burst through a wall of hanging moss into another clearing where Sir Darian Lightbringer had my father pinned against a tree. The knight-commander looked even worse than when I’d last seen him—his hair wild, eyes bloodshot and desperate, hands wrapped around my father’s throat.
“I know you have it!” Lightbringer was screaming. “Give me some!”
My father’s face was turning an alarming shade of purple.
For a moment, I froze. There he was—Lord Atticus Evenfall, the man who’d controlled my entire life. Now he was the one gasping for air, helpless and terrified. The girl he’d locked in a tower would have found poetic justice in it. Would have wanted to watch.
That girl was still in there, I realized. Still angry. Still helpless. Still checking the tower door, hoping today would be different.
But now I had power.
“Enough,” I called out, stepping into the clearing.
Lightbringer spun, dropping my father, who crumpled into the mud. The knight’s eyes were wide and frantic. Whatever Auremar had been giving him, the withdrawal had driven him past madness.
“You,” he spat. “Corrupted bitch. You should be—”
Kazimir’s shadows surged forward, but I held up a hand. “Mine.”
Lightbringer laughed. “You think you can take me, little girl? I’m a knight-commander of the—”
“You know,” I said conversationally, stalking toward him, “I didn’t get a proper chance to fight you before.”
He lunged at me with his bare hands. I sidestepped easily, letting him stumble past. He spun, swinging wildly. I ducked under his arm and drove my knee into his stomach. He doubled over, wheezing.
“The great Sir Darian Lightbringer,” I mused, conjuring a shadow spear. “Terror of dark mages everywhere. Reduced to attacking old men in swamps. Pity you’re not even fit to fight me now.”
“Whore—” he gasped.
I heaved the spear through his shoulder. He screamed, stumbling back against a slime-covered cypress, his hand flying to where the bolt of shadow jutted from his flesh.
Before he could recover, more shadows surged from the ground at my command—thick, coiling serpents of solid darkness.
They hissed silently as they wrapped around his limbs, constricting with crushing force.
With a flick of my wrist, they lifted him, kicking and sputtering, until he dangled a foot above the swampy ground, utterly helpless.