Page 153 of Shadowface
She swallows hard. “Yes.”
“Who is that?”
“That’s Lincoln Kennedy, our TA.”
I grip her chin, keeping my blade tight in my fist.
“Wrong. This man is Mikael Peters.”
She catches her breath, darting her gaze to Lincoln, who plays the role of villain so perfectly. He merely picks at his nails as we discuss the matters at hand.
“Say his name…”
She trembles, but finally coughs out, “Mikael Peters.” She’s catching on.
“Good,” I tell her. “Because he is capable of ripping your throat out so you can’t scream or tell anyone what happened here tonight. He killed Grant because Grant tried to take advantage of me. He silenced that girl Cali to get my attention. He took you to make me jealous. You’re not special, Misty. You’re basic. And I want to help you go back to your basic life, okay?”
She shakes violently.
I press the blade harder into her throat. “Okay?”
She sniffles, wipes her nose, and finally says, “What do you need me to do?”
I pull the blade off and help her up to her feet. “It’s not going to be very fun, but I need you to trust me. And I need you to cooperate like your life depends on it.”
“What are you planning, Summer?” Lincoln asks, walking up to me and wrapping his arms around my midsection.
I grab his hand and interlace my fingers with his and peer up at him, then back down at her. “They want a blonde, so we give them a blonde.”
CHAPTER
FORTY-TWO
LINCOLN
Approximately two hundred and eighty years ago, deep in a forest cave, four cloaked men gathered in a circle surrounded by torches, in what would then become the Order of the Shadows.
The clergyman, the mason, the burgess, and the scribe.
After years of hardship, famine, and disease, they believed that darkness was the only way to find light. The scribe stole a codex from a historical archive in a small town by the sea in Italy and brought it with him across the ocean in search of a better life.
Before he left, he slipped an ancient text into his satchel—its paper brittle with age and smelled faintly of dust and time—believing its origins lay in the lost city of Babylon. The scribe believed in miracles; he believed history had a way of repeating itself and by following the steps of our ancestors, it could lead to a path of enlightenment
He spent years learning to decode the ancient book, then finally read it cover to cover. Within the confines of these pages, he found solace in the divine words that bestowed upon him a resolute and magnificent pathway forward.
He spent months rewriting these words in English and scribbled them in his journal. That journal would then become the one and only copy of The Shadow Codex.
The scribe was tired of his friends’ suffering. One day, a particularly cold and dreadful day, he walked into a candlelit cavern and placed a tin on the wooden table. It was a dreadful year with scarce crops and dangerous townspeople in constant feud with their neighbors. People were poor and were dying of sickness and starvation.
Grasping his codex in one hand, the scribe told his friends to put all their coppers into a tin.
The clergyman, renowned for his fondness for whiskey and attraction to the younger girls in town, chuckled, his cheeks rosy from ale. “Why would I do that, you fool?” He slammed his mug on the ground, shaking the table. “What are you up to, Matteo?” The pin-nosed burgess and the soot-faced Mason both laughed along with him.
Matteo calmly placed the book on the table and said in his thick accent, “I have found a new path forward.”
The clergyman picked up the journal and flipped through its pages, his face growing dark. “What is this, Matteo?” He looked up at his friend. “This is blasphemy. Your soul will be damned to hell by writing such heathen words.”
The scribe Matteo, although not as revered as his friend the priest, was gradually gaining prominence in the town after building a library, which would soon become Kinsmen College, and eventually Kinsmen University. He would later be the most prominent figure in town history.
