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Studying him as he throws himself up onto the back of a large white stallion, I let down the gates in my mind and reach for him. In the past, it hasn’t worked. But something tells me that now, it might.
Next to me, Briony watches as if she knows I am attempting something I shouldn’t be.
At first, an overwhelming sense of adrenaline washes over me. It settles on my skin, burning with its intensity.
I try to move past it and see what lies beneath. But it hardens and solidifies in front of me.
“I might have lost my shadow magic,” Eldrion says, staring down at me from his horse, “but my mind magic is intact, Alana. You can’t read me. You never could.”
I press my lips together and swallow forcefully. How did he know? Did he feel me reaching into his mind?
“What about your other magic?” I ask, choosing not to defend myself but to, instead, jump up onto my own horse’s back and take hold of her reins, waiting for Briony to climb up behind me and loop her arms around my waist.
Eldrion shakes his head. “Everything else I possessed was powered by the shadows.” He looks up at the sky, dark and brooding, thunderclouds gathered above the castle as if they are preparing to unleash the most almighty storm on us. “And now the shadows belong to Finn.”
“And you don’t think we can get them back?” I ask him.
“We?”
“You.”
“Maybe.” He takes hold of his horse’s reins. “But I doubt it’s something I could do without your assistance.”
I let that idea settle in my head for a moment. Eldrion can only get his magic back if I help him? Why would I do that? Why would I give him back the power that allowed him to be so cruel for so long?
“Shadowkind...” I mutter, stroking my horse’s mane. I glance back at Briony, but she lowers her head as if she doesn’t want to confront what I’m thinking.
When I turn my head to meet Eldrion’s eyes, I realise they are the same as mine: scared, ashamed, but also determined. “I suppose it makes sense. Perhaps this is what they used to be. Perhaps this is why their wings were bound?”
Eldrion nods slowly. “Perhaps.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose and try to centre my thoughts. “How did you notknow? You are the oldest fae in the kingdom, Eldrion. How did you not know what he was?”
Eldrion rests one hand on his horse’s neck and bites the inside of his cheek. After staring at me for a moment, he laughs. The sound surprises me. He shakes his head and laughs again. “Don’t you see, Alana?”
A shudder grips my shoulders and forces me to hunch forward a little, as if the movement might shrug off whatever haunts me.
“My visions were meaningless. All this time, I was exactly as weak as my parents and my brother always told me I was. I did not see what Finn was. I misread every sign that was sent to me. I failed.”
He speaks without an ounce of self-pity in his voice, and yet the rawness of his words takes me by complete surprise.
I want to tell him he didn’t fail, and that his parents were wrong about him, but I have no idea why I feel the need to offer him comfort.
So, instead, I remain silent.
Eldrion watches me for a moment. Then turns his gaze forward. “We are wasting time.” He clicks his tongue and taps the horse’s flank. “To the woods,” he commands.
I wait a beat, then follow him, Briony holding on tightly behind me.
Should I be following him?
Have I simply stopped believing in one monster and turned to another instead?
The castle looms behind us, silhouetted against the dark thunderous sky. I can’t help looking back at it. Once a prison, it now feels strangely like a sanctuary. And the desire to lock myself away there, away from all of this, is almost too much to ignore.
Eldrion, however, keeps his gaze fixed ahead. We leave the citadel, enter the city, and follow the same path we took the night he made me accompany him to the inn.
When we pass through the streets, they are eerily quiet. I have no idea if the inhabitants of Luminael saw what happened above the castle. Did they see Finn’s transformation? The shadows swirling in the sky? Did they feel something shift in the air?
