Chapter Seventy-Six
Kade
Kade roared, beating against the interlocked trees separating him from Evelyn.
Her turmoil rushed down their bond. When he closed his eyes, his tracking ability flared to life of its own accord, her emotions vivid. They bled copper, rust, and black. He’d never experienced his mate so wild, so . . . fragile.
Kade’s chest heaved, and he backed away from the wall.
Rain pelted against his fighting leathers. Soaked his hair and beard. Trailed the bridge of his nose. Thunder boomed above, mocking him.
Moons, he had to get to her. He had to assure Evelyn it’d be alright. They’d get through this. They were partners. They loved one another.
Evelyn, can you hear me? he asked down the bond.
But the wall ahead separated them physically and mentally.
His words ricocheted off the enchantment.
Kade snarled with frustration, his inner beast rising to the surface.
The words he’d said weren’t enough. Moons, he was a fool.
Fate was so hel-bent on pulling them apart, why hadn’t he prepared to lose her again so soon?
A branch snapped behind him, and the scent of anise tickled underneath his nose. Kade reached for his sword only to find it missing from behind his back, discarded fifteen yards away. Stars above, he must’ve dropped it during the chaos.
Across the clearing, steam rose from a tree.
The birch-like bark furled back and bubbled, as if the trunk boiled from the inside out.
Knots smoothed into fingers. Knees pressed outward.
A figure peeled themselves free of the bark, sap pulling webs behind them.
With shoulders hunched forward, the humanoid figure cracked its neck side to side.
Steam rose from its rounded head and pale shoulders.
Hair sprouted, growing thicker as bark shifted to skin.
Like the delicate billow of a sheer curtain, a cloak fell across thin, pale shoulders.
The figure smiled in greeting, and Kade’s knuckles popped as he fisted his hands at his sides, the familiar face riling him and his wolf.
Tenebris, the witch from his nightmares, stood in the Gray Wood.
“It’s lovely to see you in the flesh,” the dark witch said.
Kade shook his head, not bothered by the rail-thin witch. He turned his back, refocusing on the wall and getting back to Evelyn. If he was visited by such foes, who and what did Evelyn face?
Tenebris chuckled behind him. “You can’t save your mate from her fate. Both of you must pass these tests apart.”
The next days ahead are a test, Uzoma had said.
The word blew through the forest like a stormy wind. An ancientness clung to it, and for a moment, Kade considered that perhaps Kade and Evelyn’s journey started and ended here, in a place where they’d fought side by side as Cyrus and Saige.
Tenebris sucked his lips between his teeth, ruddy and milky eye pinning Kade in place. “No longer trapped in the confines of your own mind, I see. Such a strong, promising king.”
Kade bared his teeth. “If this is a test, then what the fuck are you doing here?”
Tenebris raised a bony finger, nails gnarled and yellowish with neglect. “I am here to ask: Are you worthy, Kade Drengr?”
Hearing the question that haunted his thoughts was like a punch to his gut.
Kade rocked back from the rawness and truth, the air peppering with his rancid fear.
Yet, he’d accepted his power, and as a reminder to himself and the Blood Goddess, he drew it up.
His fists glowed, lighting the overcast forest in a shimmering blue.
“Yes,” Kade bit out, despite how doubt ringed his wrists and ankles.
“Let us see, shall we?”
Tenebris morphed into something anew for the second time. He grew taller, wider. His limbs ballooned with muscle. Dark stubble turned blondish and filled out. The same-colored hair overtook his dark strands, pulling back into a bun tied away from his face—
Not Tenebris’s, Kade’s.
His own face stared back it him. He stood yards away from himself. Frighteningly similar, and yet jarringly different. Sharper jaw, a smirk etched with mirth, and golden eyes darkened with a stomach-churning edge.
“Hello, Kade,” he crooned, a throatiness to his voice like he’d swallowed smoke.
“You’re not real,” Kade said through gritted teeth.
His other self laughed, throwing out his arms wide. Fangs, not like a vampyr’s, but similar to a god’s, glinted.
“I am your shadow self. Your potential. The part that you fear the most but perhaps also want.”
A growl rumbled through Kade’s chest. “We are nothing alike.”
“Are you so sure?” His stare skidded over the sword of ancients laying between them. “Have you wondered why it won’t answer to you?”
A chill crawled up Kade’s spine. The hair on his forearms rose, and his inner wolf paced, snarling at his shadow self.
Across the way, his twin amber stare narrowed, and they both dashed for the blade. They reached it at the same time. Kade’s fingers brushed against for the hilt, but his shadow self backhanded him across the face.
Stars above, he didn’t realize how strong he was. How hard he hit. Fuck. He wiped blood from his spit lip, tasting iron on his tongue. Vines reached across the ground and drew back the sword, curling it into the roots and away from either of them.
His shadow self laughed, and the sound cut across Kade’s back like a lashing. He couldn’t outrun the horrific realization that this lived inside his soul. That this was a part of him.
“Are you frightened of darkness in me or the promise? Becoming me would be so easy. The world would bow at your feet. A god king amongst mortals.”
“I have no desire to rule,” Kade whispered. “I wish to break the curse.”
“The Blood Curse or your own?” he tilted his head.
Kade darted towards the sword, something in his soul and power chanting for him to possess it. To wield it. His hand wrapped around the hilt, and it burned. Kade reared back, holding out his injured hand.
“Pity.” His shadow self prowled closer. “Maybe you need me after all.”
He reached down and grasped the hilt. The vines loosened, and his shadow self pulled the blade free. It sang through the air, the black metal reflecting Kade’s wide-eyed stare.
His opponent attacked, swift and deliberate. Kade deflected left, but his shadow self didn’t fight his finesse. It was all brawl. He tackled Kade to the muddy ground and pressed the blade closer to his throat.
“You aren’t good enough for her anymore. She craves something different. Evelyn doesn’t want a protector, she wants a destroyer. A king to rule this world with!”
Kade’s growl turned louder as he shifted. He planted his elongated feet onto his shadow self’s chest and kicked him off. In his werewolf form, the breeze snaking through the forest seemed to say, Yes, yes, yes.
He charged on all fours, tackling his opponent to the ground. They wrestled, and Kade knocked the sword from his hand. The blade clattered over sprawling roots, and his shadow self bared his teeth and shifted, too.
Kade’s shadow self possessed the same burly build and gold-streaked fur, but scars lined his limbs and dotted his muscles.
He flicked his ears back, the left missing the tip.
He bared his canines at Kade, the two larger ones, thinner and sharper, jutted far past his bottom jaw.
He circled Kade, dragging his crimson-stained paws through the dirt.
Lightening streaked above the canopy. Thunder shook the forest floor. Rain worsened, soaking Kade’s fur.
He matched his shadow self step for step and no longer stared into a reflection. Shifted and in his beast form, he witnessed the least resemblance. It fueled his resolve to dart left.
There you are, an ancient voice said.
His shadow self roared, but Kade shifted mid-jump. Lighter, Kade flew through the air and grasped the blade.
It answered, the power within the ancient metal singing on contact. He skidded to a halt, planting his legs in a sturdy, defensive stance. Kade lit his blade blue. Embers popped around the black metal, and as his shadow self snarled with rage, he braced.
He was Kade Drengr. He was a third born and a protector to his core. He was good and kind. His heart was full of love and his life abundant with friends and family, and until his dying breath, he’d fight for a future full of peace.
Even if he had to kill a part of himself.
His shadow self launched, and at close range, Kade grabbed his shoulder and drove the sword of ancients into his exposed belly.
The sickening, wet sound of tearing flesh echoed in his ears.
His own stomach lanced with pain. It was his own demons he destroyed, slaughtered like a foe on the battlefield.
Tears fell down Kade’s face, and he cried at the weight of what the test had caused him.
Doubt evaporated like a summer’s mist off his shoulders. An internal click rushed through his strong body. The power of the moon, his inner wolf, his unique tracking ability, the sword of ancients. It all wove in his soul.
Kade drove his sword further into his shadow self, watching the life leech from his shock-riddled gaze. Blue shimmered across the dead body in his arms, and behind him, the trees crawled to their original places.
The Gray Wood returned anew.
The rain stopped, and across the way, Evelyn stood, a newly made staff in hand, and her magnificent steely eyes, her stare and nothing more, met his.
Kade breathed her name, and then he was running.
She met him halfway, launching into his arms.
“I’m back,” she whispered through thick tears. “It’s me. I’m whole again.”
“Stars above,” Kade said, dragging her closer and resting his forehead against hers.
And for the first time in weeks, Evelyn’s magic and Kade’s power caressed the other.
“Let me see! Let me take a look!” a tiny voice said, breaking Evelyn and Kade apart.
“Blasted books,” Blair said from the other side of the clearing. “Faeries.”
Sprites and brownies, the first Kade had encountered outside of storybooks, wedged themselves out of the trees.
“She’s prettier than I imagined,” one with a branch for a nose said, peering at Evelyn with a bashful stare.
Kade drew her closer under his arm, and she fit so perfectly at his side, it made him hold her tighter.
A seam split down the trunk of a stout tree, and a male, one unlike Kade had ever encountered before, wedged himself free. Too sharp and delicate to be a mortal, but there was no magic to speak of, at least not of the kind witches or werewolves possessed.
An ancient kind, like the one buzzing through the Gray Wood.
A simple crown ringed his head, holding back his hair and revealing thin, pointed ears. He was equally alluring as he was alarming
“Who are you?” Evelyn whispered, peeling free of Kade’s hold and striding towards the newcomer.
“The King of Elsewhere,” he said, brushing debris from his shoulders. He leveled his gaze between Evelyn and Kade.
Kade didn’t find the male threatening, but he was at least on guard and healthily cautious. “Your tests created quite a ruckus in my world.”
“We have no desire to disturb your realm,” Kade said. “We only wish to save our own from the Blood Goddess’s curse.”
The king’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know a deity of that name.”
Blair stepped forward. “But you and the faerie were successful in sealing away the One, right?”
He frowned, a distant look clouding across his eyes. “No. She proved too powerful, so we escaped the wrath of the One by creating a new realm for ourselves. Though it came at a cost.”
“What exactly?”
“Abandoning those of this world. It wasn’t a decision taken lightly, but we knew of an era that would set this realm free, so we’ve waited.” He reached inside his pocket and withdrew a glowing seed. “Which is why I have come to bring you a gift from Elsewhere.”
“An ever seed,” Blair breathed.
The king nodded. “I believe the Gray Wood also granted you a gift, and I feel the power of life coursing through you and” —he turned his attention to Kade— “the balance of light and dark within you. You have all you need to break the curse.”
With a tentative, slow hand, Evelyn grasped the ever seed from the king.
She let it rest within her palm, and the winds, land, and sky sang.
Flowers—yellow, purple, and white—sprang around her muddied boots.
A beautiful beaming smile brightened her features.
She faced Kade, tears welling in her eyes.
“We can do this,” she whispered. “We can defeat the darkness.”
Kade nodded, his own words thick with emotion. “I know, love, and I believe in us more than anything in this world.”