Chapter 29
A Side Effect
Cedar
Sleep evaded me once my eyes finally opened from the nightmare that seemed to be Cora’s subconscious. We’d laid back in the grass beneath the sun, the silence comfortable without Keres’s voice echoing between us.
Rubbing my eyes, I pushed myself up into a seated position, my feet hitting the bare floor as my arms rested on my knees.
“Can’t sleep, Feathers?” Bastian asked. He was seated in a chair across the room from me, a knife in his hand along with a chunk of dark wood, small pieces of it carved out.
We’d found a single room at an inn in the town below Oren’s castle. It had two small beds, a window, a side table, and two small chairs in the far corner. But the door locked and the privy was across the hall, so it was perfect for the two of us.
I weighed my options, but at the end of the day, I knew I could trust Bastian with my life.
“What do you know of blood magic?”
A dark brow rose as he stared at me.
“I know it’s addicting and staying away from it is typically best practice. With that being said, in your case, I, uh, think it may be slightly beyond my scope of knowledge.”
Groaning, I ran a hand through my hair. “Yeah, figured as much.”
“What’s going on in that head of yours?”
“We’ve been… dream sharing? I’m not sure. We seem to pop up within each other's nightmares. She thinks it's a side effect of the blood magic.” I shook my head, my eyes on the floor. “I’m hoping the space will help it fade, be less powerful at least. But it happened again today, the worst one yet.”
I paused, weighing my words carefully before continuing. “I’m torn between hating her, hating everything she stands for, Bastian. Everything I’ve seen her do, while simultaneously understanding every move she’s ever made.”
He was quiet for a moment before speaking, the silence permeating the room.
“What are the nightmares about?”
I shook my head. “The past. The night I was turned, the first time she killed someone, Keres being himself…” My voice trailed off as the image of her in the corner of the room, her eyes squeezed shut as she tried to shut it all out, entered my mind once more.
How many times had she been there? Forced to stand by his side while he preached about a future that would be the end of us all?
“Must be hard. Not only hearing about those things, but truly seeing them. Experiencing them with her.”
I found myself nodding. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.”
“It also must make it hard to hate someone when you do understand them like that.”
My eyes finally rose to meet his and he cleared his throat, leaning forward on his forearms, setting the dagger and chunk of wood he’d been carving onto the floor in front of him.
“There have been a great many people in this life that I’ve met, Cedar, but only a few I’ve honestly misunderstood from the beginning.
Micah is a good example.” His hands clasped together as he stared at them.
“Raiden and I hit it off from the moment we met. Our magic and personalities worked together almost immediately. I knew I could trust him. But, Micah? He was different. I’ve always been wary of mind magic.
I don’t want others to tell me how I’m feeling or the future my life holds ahead.
I want to work through my own thoughts and speak on them when I’m ready, and with Micah in the room… well, that’s a task.”
He let out a chuckle. “But the broody attitude he exuded interested me, and I couldn’t stay away from him.
Over the many years we’ve spent together, he’s grown from someone I didn’t trust, to someone I’d give my life for without a second thought.
I love him, Cedar. More than I’ve ever loved another person in this long life I’ve lived.
But we never would’ve gotten here if I hadn’t let down the walls I’d fully enforced around my heart. ”
I felt myself nodding, emotions I wasn’t accustomed to swelling in my chest.
“But how did you know? How did you know it was worth the leap, Bastian? Because I hate her. I hate her as much as I hate the goddamn need for blood coursing through my body every moment of every day. That’s what this feels akin to—the need for blood.
I feel like I can’t breathe without her, and that isn’t… natural.”
He smirked. “There’s a fine line between love and hate, Cedar. Despair and lust. Desire and revulsion. And to me, it sounds like you’ve been riding that line for a while now.”
His words sank into my subconscious and I couldn’t come up with a single thing to say back.
Was he right? Had I been riding that line for a while?
“I don’t love her,” I found myself saying. Something I’d been saying a lot lately to quite a few of those close to me.
Bastian nodded. “Okay.”
“It’s just the—”
“Blood magic, I know,” he interrupted with a knowing smirk.
I sighed, the heels of my palms rubbing against my eyes as I tried to push the frustration from my head.
“The sun will set soon. Let’s get this night over with,” I muttered as I rose from the side of my bed.
Bastian chuckled. “Yes. Let’s get you home to your female, Feathers.”
We were back within the trees, ensuring the counts were still the same. They were. Nothing like predictability to help aid our insanity.
“So, do you want to fly above and we’ll meet in the middle? Or do you want to charge in together?” Bastian asked, his eyes tracking the few guards they had placed at the gate.
I shrugged, watching the few guards around the top wall.
“Both have merit. If we go in together, we lose the opportunity of surprise, but if I go up alone, who the fuck knows what they have inside the castle?” I paused, thinking for a moment. “Could you mask both our scents?”
His eyes focused on me and a slow smile grew across his face. “You know, Feathers? I like the way you think.”
Bastian turned, leaning his back against a tree and thinking for a moment.
“We go in quietly. I can’t mask your scent when you’re shifted.
You won’t be close enough, so you’ll have to stay with me.
But once we’re inside, you should be able to shift and take a look around,” he explained with a shrug.
“Sounds good to me, let’s do it.” I smiled as a thought crossed my mind. “Want to see who can kill more of them?”
Bastian chuckled. “Unfair advantage with my magic, but why not? Maybe you’ll surprise us with all that pent-up rage you have.”
Choosing to ignore his comment—because he wasn’t far off—I pulled out two daggers, Bastian pulled out one, and we made our way towards the front gate. A comfortable calm finally settling over my raw nerves.
I’d fought next to Bastian multiple times now, but it never ceased to amaze me the way the male was able to do so much in such little time.
So it shouldn’t have shocked me when two daggers made of pure shadows sped out from the tree line we hid in and took down the two front gate guards.
Their bodies crumbled to the ground as they clutched their throats, and we approached to finish them off.
His shadow magic wasn’t rare within the Court of Shadows, but it was powerful and relentless.
Raiden had explained that they’d trained aggressively together over the years, Bastian honing his abilities to a level Raiden had never witnessed prior.
He was disciplined in a way that making him the general of the Shadow Brigade just made sense.
His ability to fully craft weapons and shields of unwavering shadow, unmatched.
I glanced over at the male next to me, the same sense of calm I felt across his face as well.
We worked through the front gate guards, along with the few in rotating shifts before they finally noticed us from above. A bell in the distance began ringing and Bastian threw a shield of shadows above us, blocking stray arrows they were beginning to gather.
“Well, that took longer than I expected, if I’m being honest,” he muttered with a playful chuckle. “Okay, Feathers. We aren’t scent blocked anymore. Feel free to go feral.”
A smirk lit up my face as I nodded. “You good here?” I asked before shifting.
“Oh, lovely, actually,” he replied with an eye roll as he glanced above us at the six or seven soldiers raining arrows down on us, the pointed tips disintegrating when they hit the shield of shadow. “Do you think you can deal with them? I’d like to continue on.”
Nodding, I tugged on my magic. Shifting, I was in the sky and above the tower in less than a single breath. While Bastian was adept at wielding shadows like it was as easy as breathing his next inhale, I took a great deal of pride in my ability to shift almost as quickly.
At the top of the wall, I was back in my full form, a dagger ripped across the throat of the soldier on the far-left end of the wall, a second dagger in his heart.
By the time the one next to him realized what happened, turning his arrows towards me, I was shifted.
My raven darted and spiraled into the sky away from him and towards the far-right end of the wall, doing the same to the next male in my grasp. Again and again.
I’d hoped to be able to end all of them, but I knew better than to hope in a situation like this.
The bell sounding through the dilapidated keep brought out a whole new drove of them, and the eight I’d taken down were quickly replaced by six more. Shifting back to full form, my back against one wall, I couldn’t help the smirk that overtook my face.
They came, two at a time, swords now drawn, towards me—the space too tight for their arrows.
“Are you ready to surrender?” one of them muttered, his words soft, the terror seeping through his pores.
“Are you?” I quipped in return.
The male next to him laughed, as if it were an outrageous question. Annoyed by the sound, I tossed one dagger at him, the metal landing solidly in his throat as I rushed the first male.