Rules

The Ancients were here. Chadstone felt panic - all these emotions were new and terrifying on their own. He lunged, caught Dakshana around the waist, and pushed her toward the portal.

“Go,” he said. He glanced over his shoulder. The whispers were rising, turning into that fatalistic-melodic laughter he’d known his entire existence.

“What about --” Dakshana began, for she had seen the Ancients’ eyes.

“Go,” he said again, but he couldn’t push, couldn’t force her. Magic and its damned rules!

She must have seen something in his eyes, for she nodded once, tightly, and stepped through the portal.

It closed.

Another Trick

Dakshana stared, awed and a little afraid, at the snatch of familiar world that opened in the air before her. She could see it, the mouth of the cave where she’d last stood on mortal earth. She took a step forward and faltered. She glanced over her shoulder at Chadstone, but his expression was unreadable.

“Go,” he said. “It’s your way home.”

She started forward again, paused once more. What if he was lying, if this was some other trick? She started to speak, but then a hissing chorus of whispers crept into the edges of her awareness.

The eyes.

Amazing

Chadstone wondered what it meant, that Dakshana positively purred with pleasure when she used the magic he’d shown her, but his own use of the same magic hurt her.

Her expression was languid, pleased as she invoked each rune. One by one her lips shaped the sounds, as if kissing the air, and he had to force himself to focus, ready his wits.

The rush of wind - cool, mortal, fragrant - that met him when the portal opened was divine.

“I did it,” Dakshana said, her voice low and awed.

Chadstone smiled to himself. She was as amazing as he’d imagined.

Feeling Buzzed

Chadstone rose to his feet, and Dakshana watched him, momentarily mesmerized by the perfectly pained expression on his face. Then she stood up as well, testing the strength of her legs once more, and was proud when she stood straight and tall.


“I’m ready,” she said, just to make sure he understood.

He nodded and stepped back - to give her space to work, she realized.

She began to trace lines in the air with sure hands, drawing runes in a neat circle. And she could feel it crackling beneath her skin, warm buzzing, buzzing she got when he kissed her.

Earthquake

Chadstone pulled back before he did something he’d regret, before he unspooled more of his soul for her to tangle and knot in her own delicate web. Even if he was no human, had no heart, he must have had a soul, because stone and shadow could not hurt as he did then, with the core-wracking heaves of an earthquake.

Dakshana’s eyes opened slowly, and she gazed at him as if drunken on his touch. He ached to hold her forever, but he had to work fast if he wanted to save her.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Heartbroken

Dakshana smiled faintly. It was perhaps the most true thing he’d said. Her mind was still spinning, trying to understand it all - that he loved her, was a shadow-creature and not a human, that she could wield all his magic and more. But what he’d said to her just then struck a chord deep within her, filled her soul with song.

“You can,” he said again, and he kissed her.

Her eyes fluttered closed, and she let him hold her, kiss her. It was like no kiss she’d ever known, slow and deep and soft like a whisper.

Heartbroken.

Really Can

He studied her expression, searched her eyes for comprehension, but she looked dazed, confused. He cursed himself. She was still hurt, still tired, needed time to heal --

But then the haze in her eyes vanished and she nodded once, sharply. “I understand.”

“Then you know what you must do,” he said.

“I do.”

She sat back, considering his words, and he let her, knew that what he’d asked her might be untenable.

“Can I really do this?” she asked finally.

He met her gaze. “What? Of course you can! I --” wouldn’t love you if you were that weak. “You can.”

Truths and Forces

Dakshana was shocked still by his words, listening as he whispered them to her, twenty-four eternal truths and forces that would allow her to shape the world. She closed her eyes, buried her face against his neck, felt his crystal pulse as the urgency in his voice - soft, deadly beautiful - rose to fever-pitch. His fingertips on her flesh were unnaturally cool, but they sparked fire in her veins as he traced the runes, one by one, up her spine for her to know.

It might have been a moment or an eternity before he pulled back and asked,

"Do you understand?"

The Last Time

She lunged at him, hands balled into fists. He caught her, wrapped his arms around her, trapped her against him, his inhuman strength immovable against her struggles. He lowered his head, lips beside her ear, and began to speak rapidly.

"I am the youngest of my kind and the most inexperienced in my machinations. Whatever game I might have played with your life is ended - we are both butterflies trapped in the same capricious spiderweb. Listen to me, and you will survive."

He tightened his arms around her. This would be the last time he would get to hold her.

Un-Light

"I am not alone," Chadstone said. He wasn't looking at her, and though his expression was carefully blank, his hands were shaking again, fine tremors. As if every word pained him.

But he wasn't human. She didn't understand, but he wasn't human. Could he even feel pain?

"There are others like you?"

"You've seen them."

"I've never seen anyone who looks like you."

"They don't look like me anymore - the hunger, the games change them. But we have the same un-light in our eyes."

Horror washed over Dakshana. The eyes. Horror became fury.

"You did this to me!"

Ever Hungry

Chadstone studied her expression, but his own hesitation drove the action; he knew she would understand what he had to say.

"I am a shadow," he said. He eased closer, lowered his voice, stared at his hands. "Born of stone and magic and doomed to die in the light of the sun. Fed on terror and malice and greed, and ever-hungry for that which we cannot have."

"What can't you have? You have magic for everything."

"Light. Life. True color." Love. Everything in his world was a pale imitation.

Shadows.

"Then your body is --"

"A shadow."

"You said we."

Cast a Shadow

Dakshana shivered, burrowed down into the fur. The fire was dying. Chadstone must have noticed, for he traced a few lines in the air, and the flames flared.

He turned his vivid blue gaze back on her, and for a moment Dakshana imagined that if she leaned in closer she would see in his eyes the dawn sky and morning star.

"You called yourself a shadow," she said.

The blandness of his expression never wavered.

"How? You have a body, cast a shadow --"

He turned his head to glance at the cave wall, and Dakshana realized he didn't cast a shadow.

Never Said

"You haven't aged a day," Dakshana said.

Chadstone met her gaze and allowed her scrutiny. He had two things left, and he was willing to give both of them up. It seemed his dignity - identity, pride - would be first to go.

"It's a wonder I didn't recognize you at the fires." She drew the furs closed, continued to study him. "All my life, the pale man in the shadows was the most beautiful person I'd ever seen." She tilted her head to the side, watched.

Chadston was still.

"You really aren't human."

"I never said I was." He almost smiled.

Memory, Unbidden and Clear

The memory rose, unbidden, startlingly clear. It was her last taint-free memory from before Ashoken: children playing catch-me; the man in the shadows with the old-white hair, the young-handsome face, the ancient-sad eyes. She'd seen him and felt intensely sad for him, and the answer to sad was a hug, like her mother had given her, a hug and words.

I'll love you forever.

Revulsion swept through her. "You were in love with a child?"

"No. I watched you grow, become strong and beautiful and --"

Dakshana studied his face. She had seen that expression before.

Realize

Chadstone watched her and waited. it wouldn't matter if she passed judgment on him or his feelings - if he could even have feelings. He'd watched the myriad of emotions cross her face and tried to ignore them, failed, but he had one thing left, and he refused to relinquish it too.

Dakshana looked away from him, stared at her hands. He could be patient for prey, lethally so, and he hadn't moved an iota when she finally looked up.

"Years?" she asked, wary. "How many --"

"You were five or six. Playing a game. Running."

And realization dawned in her eyes.

A List

Dakshana couldn't breathe. "You --"

"Did you want a list?"

A list? He had a --

"The colour of your eyes, golden and bright, fierce with intelligence and strength of will." His voice was flat, dispassionate. "The way you fought and survived all these years when everyone around you feared and shunned you. The way you help others without question."

All these years? He had been watching her for that long? And she helped people because it was right, not because --

"The way you looked upon a single, cold shadow and told him, without question, judgment, or knowledge, you would love him forever."

Because

Chadstone bowed his head once more.

Dakshana's voice lashed at him. "I deserve to know."

He could feel himself beginning to shake, couldn't stop himself, couldn't stop the tremors from his very core. This was it, the burning the Ancients had warned of. The crystal at his throat blazed with energy, seared his flesh. It took all his willpower not to tear it away from his skin and fling it across the chamber, make the burning stop.

"Tell me!"

"Because I love you."

Dakshana recoiled sharply. Her expression was stark with horror. Chadstone refused to shy away from her gaze.

Chance to Consider

Chadstone was unnaturally still and small. Dakshana wondered where he'd gone, the boy who'd slain a dire wolf and brazenly staked her friends' lives on a kiss.

She asked again. "Why?"

"Why what?" His tone was clipped, sullen. Hurt. He was avoiding her gaze.

"Why me? Why all this?" Dakshana hadn't had a chance to consider how she'd ended up in this situation; she'd only had to concentrate on keeping her friends alive. "Did you just come to the midsummer fires looking for some - some stupid girl who was easy prey?"

His head came up sharply. "No."

"Then why? Tell me."

Into the Core

Relief flooded through his limbs when she let him lift the bowl to her lips. She drank deeply, and he knew the magic was working, soothing her throat, speeding her healing. he was pleased when he saw the bruises at her throat fade.

When the elixir was gone, he set the bowl aside and sat back. She studied him, and he didn't like it. Women stared, but all in their eyes was lust. He'd never been looked at like this before, where a person, with only her eyes, could see into his core.

Core. He had no soul.

She said, "Why?"

Never Before

Dakshana had heard what happened to girls who ate food in the underworld. Where she'd been in a forest before - if she'd been in a forest at all - she was in a large, shadowed cave now.

"What is it?"

Chadstone held the bowl out, head bowed, like a servant to his queen. "It'll do you no harm. Ease some of the pain."

And Dakshana did hurt - all over. She remembered suffocating, choking, the trees coming alive. Because of the eyes. She shuddered.

"What were those eyes?"

Chadstone flinched, ever so slightly. "Please. Drink."

Please. He'd never said that before.

Safe and Cold

She let him lower her back onto the bed of furs. He had to step back, get away from her warmth, the way she was looking at him.

She said, "The fire is warm."

It made him warm too. If he stayed away long enough - from the fire, from her - he would be cold again. Rational. He tried to collect himself, regain his composure, but he couldn't. He'd almost lost her. She started coughing. He was beside her instantly. A quick glide of his fingers and he held out a steaming red elixir in a bowl.

"Drink."

Being a Name

Dakshana dragged her gaze upward, studied Chadstone's face. His expression was sick, pained, but so very human. She'd been dazzled at first by his ice-bright beauty, for she had never seen anyone like him, but there were rumours of people to the north, people who rode giant white bears and cast strange magic. He must have been one of them.

"Then," she said, carefully testing her legs, "what are you?"

Her knees failed. She sank against him again; his arms around her tightened.

He said, "Chadstone."

"That's just your name," she said.

He shook his head. "You should rest."

Just an Illusion

That she allowed herself to lean against him so meant she was still weak. He couldn't let her go through the rest of the maze alone, not without knowing what the Ancients were doing. The suspicions in the back of his mind, a chorus of gale howls, wouldn't go away.

"You're not strong enough yet," he said, and tensed, waiting for her to fight.

Instead she said, "You have a beating heart."

He looked down. She stared at his crystal.

"That," he said, "is just an illusion."

"You're just a human, aren't you? A human with lots of magic."

The longing in her voice made him ache. "No, I'm not."

Mortals, Not Shadows

Dakshana’s feet hit solid ground and her knees buckled. She swayed and pitched forward, arms flailing for balance, but the ground rushed toward her, and then --

And then there were arms around her waist again, pulling her up, steadying her against a man’s chest. Warm. Solid. With a heartbeat fluttering like a frightened bird.

“Careful,” Chadstone said, and his voice was wrong, all softness, no mocking.

Dakshana leaned against him, dazed from the sudden mishap of equilibrium, and wondered at the sensation of his beating heart. Mortals had hearts, not shadows.


Then she noticed the pulsing crystal at his throat.

Questions and Answers

He had no answers for what had happened to her, if she had the energy to ask, and he only had more questions himself, myriad little voices that whispered in the back of his mind, in the back of the shadows, voices like the Ancients’ who taunted him.

“Where is Minka?”

He had an answer for that, at least. “Back in your world.”

“But I paid you nothing.”

He closed his eyes at that, unable to look at her. He had to tell her. “Not my doing. Can you walk?”

“Walk? I --yes.” And she pushed herself to her feet.

Pain, Longing, Fear

Chadstone took a deep, shuddering breath, and for one dazed, callous moment, Dakshana wondered that his kind even needed to breathe at all. With his arm around her waist, her body pressed against his chest - he was strangely warm. And still shuddering. No. Shaking.

Dakshana stared down at his trembling hand where it hovered next to hers, as if unsure whether or not to touch, and then she looked up at him. Her next words died on her throat. No one had ever looked at her like that before, so pained and longing and afraid.

“You’re alive now,” he said.

Thought and Did

Dakshana’s eyes opened, and Chadstone felt something leap in his chest. He swiped a hand across his eyes and was horrified to see inky blackness - like his blood - dripping down his skin. Another quick swipe and all the evidence was gone. But when she looked at him, everything he had hoped to say vanished in an instant.

“Chadstone,” she said, and her brow furrowed, as if she were confused. She cast a glance at her surroundings, tried to sit up. He was there, sliding an arm around her waist to support her.

“I thought I died.”

He thought, You did.

Wake Up

“Dakshana...”

She tried to open her eyes, failed.

“Dakshana, please.”

Someone was talking to her. A hand at her shoulder, cool breath across her lips - someone was kneeling beside her, trying to wake her up. Was it time to work?

She didn’t want to wake up. She was comfortable in her nest of furs. It was warm and soft and -- Dakshana moaned, stirred. Her bed wasn’t this soft, was it? She didn’t have soft furs like this - she’d only ever heard fur could be this soft.

“Please, open your eyes.”

Whoever the stranger was, he sounded like he was - crying.

Fear and Terror

Chadstone clawed his way through the darkness. He felt his chest rise and fall with short, panicked breaths, and realized that this was what humans felt the first time they stepped into one of his snares.

This was fear.

No, it was sheer terror, because he couldn’t see a thing, could only feel the thick bindings of magic, and he didn’t know where Dakshana was - or what they’d done to her.

Chadstone wrenched his name-shard off his neck, broke the cord, drove it into the palm of his hand to spill as much blood as possible.

Then he cast.

Dark Worse Than Shadow

Chadstone tore through the walls of his plane, uncaring of how the little world shattered behind him, stepped into the third chamber of his game. Minka was gone. A complicated smattering of runes, tripping off his tongue like a curse or a love song, birthed a spell to find her and make sure she was alive. But she didn’t matter. Dakshana mattered, and he had to find her.


Right now.

A wall of shadow had engulfed that perfect forest, and no number of runes brought light. Chadstone realized, for the first time, that there was a dark worse than shadow.

Calling

Dakshana had the strangest notion that she was dying. Death was a most curious dichotomy of sensations - the burning at her throat as her air was slowly, gently, viciously cut off, the iciness creeping along her limbs and settling in the pit of her stomach until she could no longer feel. It was soft, like powder-sand sifting over her body as she sank low, low, deep into death’s embrace. It was rough, like tree-branches, wild vines, and roots scraping across her skin to make her bleed.

It was peaceful, and she could hear a man calling her name.