Page 123 of Shackled By Shadows

He doesn’t answer.

Zander lies a few yards away, still and pale but breathing. Relief settles uneasily in my chest as I kneel beside him. I brush the loose strands of hair back from his face, a small, grounding gesture after so much violence.

That’s when I see it. A dark feather, half-buried in the leaves. My hand closes around it before I can stop myself.

The scent hits me instantly, familiar and unmistakable. “Fucking Keagan!” I growl. Understanding crashes into place all at once, cold and furious. I know exactly what happened here.

My grip tightens, nails biting into my palms as anger surges, sharp enough to drown out everything else.

I look back at Zander. “I have to go,” I say, my voice low and final. “They’ll need you. Watch over them. Protect her.”

Ash groans softly behind me, beginning to stir as I step back toward the tree line. That sound is enough to reassure me. They’ll make it. They’ll survive.

But someone else won’t, if I have anything to say about it.

I disappear into the shadows with a singular purpose burning in my chest.

I have a score to settle with the man who tried to kill the one person in this gods-forsaken world who holds my heart with hers.

Chapter forty-seven

Fucking Keagan

Oberon

I know where I will find Keagan. It isn’t hard, not really. He is a predictable creature, despite how clever he likes to believe himself. Crafty. Smart. Absolutely ruthless.

What I didn’t anticipate was this.

But I should have.

I always should have.

My body materializes from shadow inside the forge near the castle, heat slamming into me while the flames roar in the hearth and soot coats every surface. I never understood why he favors this place.

He is a shit blacksmith. Perhaps it is the proximity to the training grounds, where he delights in humiliating soldiers, or perhaps it is the heat itself, the inferno that mirrors the rot in his soul, making the demon that lives inside him feel at home.

When he sees me, a slow, deliberate smile curves across his face.

I hide nothing. The calm, controlled mask I wear for the rest of the world is gone, obliterated by the fury burning through my veins. Rage fills me, sharpens me, hollows me out until there is room for only one thought—her.

I can’t suppress it even if I want to. And by all the gods, I do not want to.

“Hello, cousin,” he croons.

My shadows answer before I do. They slam him into the far stone wall of the forge, pinning him there with crushing force. Sparks burst into the air. The heat rises.

There is no surprise in his eyes. No resistance.

“What have you done?” I seethe, my voice low, feral, something other worldly.

Keagan only smiles wider. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about, dear cousin.”

I bare my canines and growl, the sound tearing straight from my chest. “She is mine.”

Recognition flickers across his face, and his smile stretches into something knowing, something pleased. “Oh,” he says lightly. “You mean the little group of traitors I found wandering the woods?” He tilts his head as if considering me for a moment.

My shadows tighten. Stone cracks beneath them. “She is mine,” I repeat, slower this time. Deliberate. A vow. “I will make you feel every ounce of pain she felt,” I continue, stepping closer. “When I end your miserable existence, you will leave this world knowing she still draws breath and that together, we will burn this fucking place to the ground.”