Bound to the Shadow Prince
Chapter Two: Whispers in the Dark
The palace did not sleep.
Even when the firelight died and silence fell, the shadows moved.
I lay on the massive bed alone, the silk sheets too smooth, too cold, my breath fogging in the air though no window was open. Outside the heavy curtains, wind howled like something wounded. Every now and then, I swore I heard voices murmuring just outside the room.
Do not open any doors not yours.
Do not speak to the shadows.
Kaelith's words were a constant echo in my skull.
But how could I sleep, knowing the walls themselves might be alive?
I sat up, wrapping the fur throw tighter around me. The room was beautiful in a cruel way vaulted ceilings painted with constellations I didn't recognize, a marble hearth carved with beasts and angels, and a mirror that didn't reflect my image clearly.
I stepped toward it cautiously.
The air grew heavier.
In the glass, I saw myself. Pale. Haunted. But behind me nothing.
Until a flicker.
There.
A figure, shadowed in the far corner of the room, unmoving.
I spun around.
Empty.
I backed away, heart galloping, and stumbled into the velvet drapes. They peeled away with a hiss of fabric and revealed the tall, arching window and him.
Kaelith.
Standing on the terrace just beyond the glass.
His eyes locked to mine through the frost-covered pane, arms crossed, face unreadable. The blue moonlight bathed his features in an almost ethereal glow, but there was nothing soft about him.
He wasn't a man of light.
He was carved from night itself.
I opened the window slowly.
The cold bit into my skin, but his presence burned hotter than fire.
"You shouldn't be here," I said, breathless.
He tilted his head. "Neither should you."
I blinked. "Then why bring me?"
He didn't answer. Instead, his gaze dropped to the hollow of my throat. My pulse fluttered. The fur wrap slipped from my shoulders.
His nostrils flared. His voice, when he spoke, was lower rougher.
"There's a light in you that calls to the wrong things."
I swallowed. "You mean you."
He stepped closer, a whisper of shadow, and I had to clutch the windowframe to stay upright. He didn't touch me. Still, my skin ached like he had.
"You know nothing about what I am," he said softly.
"Then tell me."
His jaw clenched, and I saw it that flicker of pain again, the chain holding back whatever storm brewed beneath his calm.
"If I told you," he said, "you'd run."
"Maybe I should."
He stared at me like a man who'd lived lifetimes without being seen.
"I would catch you."
Then he turned, cloak swirling, and vanished into the darkness.
That night, I dreamt of him.
Of cold halls and burning touches. Of hands that never truly touched, but scorched me anyway. Of Kaelith standing at the edge of my bed, looking down at me with that unreadable gaze.
And then he spoke.
"If you knew the truth of your blood, little light... you would beg me to ruin you."
I woke gasping, throat dry, heart pounding.
And on my skin between my breasts a mark had bloomed.
Small. Glowing faintly.
A silver crescent moon cradling a black flame.
I touched it.
It pulsed.
In the morning, the mark was gone.
But the hunger it left inside me wasn't.