Chapter 5
KAIDEN
The blanket had been tossed somewhere below our bodies, her leg tangled with mine.
Even with the necklace that Lyra had given her, the warmth that Morrigan radiated was enough to keep me warm through the coldest winter.
She twisted, peering up at me as she rested her chin on my chest. With her lips pressed together, her finger traced over my markings, sending a shiver down my spine as my shadows pleaded to be released.
I still had yet to understand why they reacted so strongly to her.
She called to them in a way that even I couldn’t manage.
For me, they felt wild, unruly—a cursed extension of my soul that I couldn’t rid myself of.
But to her? They calmed. They weren’t quiet, but their intentions felt clearer, more harnessed.
Like I was myself again—like I had control.
Through Morrigan’s silence, I could still see her mind working through something. There was a question on her lips that she seemed to be holding back.
“What is it?” I asked her, rubbing a hand down the middle of her back and feeling her skin tremble in response.
She let out a long sigh before speaking. “Is there any… update on…” Her eyes remained downturned, staring at the black swirls as she avoided my gaze. But I knew exactly who she was referencing.
“There isn’t,” I answered softly. “I’m sorry.”
After Guinevere’s execution, and Harley’s subsequent disappearance, I had sent a few of my guards to investigate.
It just wasn’t like Harley to disappear like that.
I could understand the shock of it all to some extent…
but Harley? He had yearned for a family.
He wanted nothing more than to fall in love and have a child of his own, after basically raising the seven of us.
But, with his immortality, he couldn’t bear the idea of watching his loved ones die.
The idea of outliving your own children…
I thought, with Morrigan, he would have been happy.
Morrigan may have appeared mortal on the surface, but the true prophecy guaranteed that, once bonded to all seven of us, she would live the life of an immortal.
Another reason I was so against it. Why condemn an innocent girl to an eternal life of servitude like that?
I had been on this earth for three hundred and twenty-one years.
It was enough time to make friends, and lose them in the blink of an eye.
I had watched too many people I cared for die from old age, while I remained frozen in time.
I felt my shadows slide across my chest, wrapping around one of Morrigan’s fingers. “We’ll find him,” I assured her, because we would. He couldn’t hide forever, and I didn’t believe for a second that he would want to.
Morrigan turned her head to lay back down, huffing before mumbling under her breath. “Maybe it’s best that we don’t…”
I couldn’t seem to move as I stared at him, like none of this was real.
His entire face appeared swollen, bruises beginning to blacken beneath his eyes, and cuts along his lips that covered them in blood. He was… here. Why was Harley—
“Kaiden!” Naaz yelled, shoving past me. “Don’t just fucking stand there!”
I had to shake my head to pull me from my own trance just as Naaz fell to his knees, slowly cradling Harley’s head. “Shit, alright… Just… Let’s get him to the bed.”
“Harley?” Naaz called quietly, shaking him slightly to get any form of reaction. The groaning had stopped, and Harley didn’t look to be breathing either. Fuck. “Harley, it’s Naaz. We’re here. We’re going to help.”
“We need to keep going,” Eris said behind me, standing in the doorway as I joined Harley and Naaz on the floor. “We need to find—”
“It’s Harley!” Naaz yelled at him. “I will not leave him here!” Picking up his body, we laid Harley down carefully onto the bed, and Naaz quickly bit his wrist before placing it over his mouth. “It’s alright, Harley. You’re going to be alright.”
As Naaz worked on him, my eyes scaled the room, taking in the stiff bed that Harley lay upon.
On the other side of the cell stood another bed.
It was smaller, with a single blanket on top of it.
What made my stomach churn was the lack of a mattress.
It was practically a board, covered in a thin fabric.
I took in a deep breath, and a very specific scent wafted from that area. A scent that made my shadows stir.
Morrigan.
Morrigan had been in this room… on that bed.
“Stay here with Harley,” I instructed Naaz.
If Harley looked this bad, had Morrigan been hurt this badly, too?
Did they do something to her? I recalled Dez screaming that he couldn’t feel her anymore.
Did that mean… No. I couldn’t allow myself to think that for even a second.
The need to find her only intensified now to a burning rage that made my skin physically hurt.
“Eris,” I turned to leave the cell, “we need to find Cain. Now.”
I no longer cared if anyone saw us, but I knew better than to kill the very people who had the answers I wanted.
It was only a couple of minutes before we encountered the occupants of the other cells.
One by one, I used my shadows to knock them unconscious on the ground.
I could retrieve them after I found Morrigan—and let her tell me which ones deserved a quick death, and which ones would be a treat for the darkness that continued to build within me.
Because every one of them would die.
“You need to breathe, Kaiden,” Eris said somewhere behind me. “I know you’re angry. We all are. But you’re going to need to center yourself before we find her. If she sees you like this—”
“She’ll understand,” I hissed back at him. “If he’s done anything to her… If he so much as touched her… I swear to the gods, I’ll—”
My voice came to a halt as muffled voices began to rise.
Throwing my hand up, I stopped, as did Eris, quickly pressing my back into the wall. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but I recognized one of the voices. It came from him.
Before I knew it, my shadows tickled my ankles as they swirled down my legs and misted the floor. I could feel my vision fading, distorting as my darkness begged to take over.
“Breathe, Kaiden,” Eris reminded me. “He could be bonded to her.”
Bonded. “He wouldn’t have…” I tried convincing myself.
“He would.”
You know he did.
It took everything in me not to black out from the thought alone. But I wrangled in my shadows and stepped away from the wall. “If he isn’t bonded to her, I’m killing him,” I tossed over my shoulder, walking quickly as the voices grew louder.
“I’ll help you,” he promised.
The tunnel began to brighten as we approached a room lit by torches.
I took one more staggering breath before turning and stopping still at the entrance.
My breath caught in my lungs as I stared into the large, cavernous room with a small throne at the head of it.
Near that throne, the voices halted, and I locked eyes with a tall, green-eyed monster that caused the shadows to hiss beneath my skin.
Beside him stood a blonde man, hair a little longer than Dez’s, staring in shock as he took in both me and Eris.
“Shit…” Cain breathed.
Just as the two turned to run, I threw a hand up, sending my shadows toward them.
They wrapped around the blonde one like black, poisonous vines, locking his feet in place and binding him to the ground.
Cain had already made it a few feet when my darkness reached him, slamming his body against the wall and curling around his neck.
“You look surprised, Cain!” I yelled into the empty space, my voice bellowing against the hollow room. “Were you not expecting us?”
Eris and I walked toward them. He made a beeline to Cain, most likely to make sure I didn’t kill him right then and there. But I stopped in front of the blonde man, who stared at me with eyes that held far too little fear for my liking.
“How did… you…” Cain gargled against my shadows as they choked him, leaving just enough room for little gasps of air.
“We found Rosina’s diary.” Eris began explaining to him what we read—how we realized exactly where to look for him. Then, about the seer that led us here.
But as he spoke, I couldn’t stop staring at the man who stood before me, wondering why he looked so much better off than the rest we had encountered. “What’s your name?” I asked him.
With a smug smirk that didn’t belong on his face, he answered, “Aamon.”
Aamon.
I could sense power from him; it radiated off of his body in deep waves. It took a few seconds for me to pinpoint what it was. A mind renderer. As I opened my mouth to speak, a strange sound stopped me. It was a… creaking of sorts. Quick and quiet, but just enough to distract me from my thoughts.
“Where is she?” Eris demanded.
“I don’t… I don’t… know…”
My shadows trembled as he struggled in my grasp, trying to break free.
But there was that damned creaking again. What is that sound?
Aamon’s smirk grew a little, the corner of his lips quirking up. “She was here, My Lord,” he said quietly, “in this very room at one point, actually.”
Darkness slid up his body, curling around his neck, but not constricting quite yet. “Where. Is. She?”
Aamon didn’t move—didn’t even recoil from my power. “We’ve been searching for her, too. She disappeared just a few hours ago.”
I allowed the darkness to tighten slightly, a sliver of unease shining in Aamon’s eyes in response, but he didn’t drop the cocky act just yet.
“I get it, you know.”
Creak.
“Get what?”
I could hear Eris and Cain arguing back and forth but didn’t pay attention to what was being said. Something about Aamon had my stomach tying itself into a strange knot. The look in his gaze… It was too calm. Too… deranged.
“The reason that all of you are so obsessed with her,” he continued.
His voice sounded a little more strangled now as my shadows slowly coiled like a snake.
Then, with a choked laugh, his hands shot up to his neck, unable to withstand the dark mist. “I mean, her beauty… Gods, she’s unlike any woman I’ve ever seen… ”
“I would stop speaking if I were you,” I warned him.
Creak.
“But her blood… Fuck. It’s riddled with power. The first time I tasted it, I swear I almost—”
Rage blazed within me, and my shadows tightened until he couldn’t breathe. “I’m going to fucking kill you. I’ll kill every person in these tunnels that laid even a finger on Morrigan.” My voice came out in a growl that was barely my own as I lifted him from the ground.
Creak.
They didn’t deserve her. No one in this fucking world deserved her. Not Cain.
Creak.
Not Aamon.
Creak.
Not even me. I would kill—
Everything stopped. Because as I lifted Aamon, something else came into view.
Something I couldn’t quite convince myself was real.
It couldn’t be. I cocked my head to the side as I stared above him, finally seeing the origin of the sound.
Aamon caught my stare and lifted his own head, no longer struggling within my shadows.
As I finally realized what I was looking at, my darkness slipped, and Aamon’s body dropped to the ground. He began to laugh. He was laughing and choking as he tried to catch his breath. But now I couldn’t breathe.
It was a… a cage.
A bird cage.
He put her in a…
“Kaiden,” Eris called behind me, his voice cautious and worried.
But it sounded so far away, and my vision had already begun to fade. My shadows were taking control, and I couldn’t stop them if I wanted to.
“A pretty… little… cage…” Aamon panted, his laughter like nails digging into my ears and scraping the skin from my body, “… for a pretty… little… dove.”
Everything went black.
The only sound I could hear were screams. They might have been Aamon’s screams… Eris’s… or perhaps they were mine. I couldn’t see anything but darkness, and I felt the loss of my control, my shadows whipping around, blood coating my skin.
He put her in a fucking cage. It was my fault. I had called her that. I kept calling her that stupid fucking nickname, and he put her in a fucking cage. I would kill them. I would kill Cain, Aamon… I’d kill everyone in the tunnels.
“Kaiden!” someone yelled behind me. I couldn’t make out whose voice it was.
Suddenly, arms wrapped around my chest, but my shadows fought to shove them off. Whoever lay beneath me, I knew that they were gone. Warm, thick liquid pooled at my knees and splashed as my body was dragged backward.
“Kaiden! You have to stop!”
I couldn’t. I wouldn’t stop.
I continued slashing and swinging at, what I assumed to be, the dead body until an arm wrapped around my neck. With one swift twist, and a sharp snap, I fell to the ground.