Reign of Shadows (4 page)

T
HE EXACT MOMENT
of the eclipse, as darkness descended on the land, I entered the world. No one was paying much attention to my arrival in that moment except, of course, my mother, and the servants attending her. Even my father didn't know, already off fighting the mad crowds banging for entry at the gates, unaware that there was nothing he could do to stop the dark tide from rolling in.

But beyond that night, beyond my birth, the people ushering me into this world did not know that I lacked sight. There would have been no way for them to know then. Especially not with the distraction of thousands of dark dwellers breaking through the
ground and swarming like ants over the land. Such a distraction made it easy to ignore the birth of a princess.

Perla, the wet nurse standing by at my birth, fled with me before I, too, was slaughtered. Sivo, one of my father's royal guards, found us in a corridor. A mercenary in his earlier years, a warrior at heart, he reacted quickly, leading Perla from the castle. Together, they escaped through the melee of the capital and made it across the country to the secluded tower Sivo had discovered with my father all those years ago.

My father had turned the tower into his private retreat, stocking it with supplies, enjoying its isolation and that no one knew of its existence. According to Sivo, he didn't believe in cursed woods in the same way that he had not believed in the legends of monsters living beneath the ground, waiting for darkness so that they could emerge. Those tales had been part of childhood. Adults knew better than to believe in such fantasies. My father would bring my mother to the tower occasionally to enjoy the solitude and life away from court. It was hard to fathom wanting solitude. I had more of it than I could stand.

I was almost two years old before Sivo and Perla realized my condition. I was already walking, running, and talking. I behaved as a normal toddler in the confines of our tower, if not too active for Perla's tastes. She would laugh and say that I needed a leash—a fact that almost came to pass when she caught me scaling the wall tapestry in my bedchamber. I was almost to the domed ceiling. She was overwhelmed in
those days. With my lack of caution, life was just as dangerous within the tower as it was out of it.

I behaved as though I possessed sight, recklessly barreling full speed ahead. They only discovered the truth because Perla asked me to pick out the blue ribbon for my hair one morning and I handed her the green. I didn't understand blue. Upon further investigation, she realized I didn't understand the difference between porridge and stew until I tasted them. I couldn't understand because I couldn't see.

And apparently I couldn't identify when a boy stood before me naked either. Strangely enough, this was both a relief and a disappointment.

I bit my lip, my teeth sinking in and clinging deep to the sensitive flesh until I tasted the copper tang of blood. Fowler was naked in front of me. I released my lip and inhaled a raw breath that expanded my lungs.

I lifted my chin as though I wasn't completely unnerved. My lack of vision had never felt like a handicap before. Not as it did in this moment.

He was naked.

I inhaled his scent and it was stronger, proof that not a stitch of clothing covered his body. The salt and musk of his skin hit me sharper than before—and something else. Another scent that was indecipherable to me. I felt it as much as I smelled it. It was raw and deep and visceral. My skin almost ached from the presence of it, pulling tight and breaking out into gooseflesh. My stomach knotted like a thousand
butterflies were rioting inside me.

“What d-did you say?” I demanded as though I hadn't heard. As though “you can't see” wasn't running over and over in my mind.

“You heard me,” he replied evenly, his voice without inflection.

“Of course I can see.” I channeled all my feelings, outrage, shock, fear—other unidentifiable things—into a reaction that I hoped translated into bemusement. Not panic. “Of course I can see.”

He took his time responding. “You're lying.”

I shook my head.

He continued, “Your face burns red right now, but not before. Not when you first walked in here.”

“You're wrong,” I insisted.

“No. Not about this I'm not.”

I turned then, managing a shrug.

“Why don't you admit it? You think I'll see it as a weakness? Is that it?”

That was exactly what Perla and Sivo thought, but everything in me rebelled at this.

“I'm not weak.” My voice shook out of me, a tremor on the air that seemed to belie my words.

He stepped closer. The air grew thicker and I felt the subtle ripple in its flow as he shook his head. “I know you're not weak.”

I inhaled. My chest felt too tight. He was close enough for me to touch and the memory of his skin, smooth and hard under my fingers, roped with sinew like one of the rangy wolves
that hunted the woods, plagued me. Touching, feeling another human, someone who wasn't Sivo and Perla, who wasn't family, was as strange to me as the idea of sunlight that lasted half the day every day.

His voice hit me like sparks popping and flying from a fire. “I won't hurt you,” he murmured, like he was coaxing a wild animal closer—in this case, me. He was the stranger here. The interloper. It was he who should tiptoe around me.

“I'll leave tomorrow, and what you are . . . blind or not.” He uttered “not” with heavy skepticism. “It won't matter.”

“Then why do you care what I am?” I demanded, trying not to reveal how much he had just shaken me. He was leaving tomorrow.

Leaving us to care for the boy and girl, I presumed. Dusting his hands clean and abandoning them both to us. I wasn't sure if I was bothered more for Madoc and Dagne or simply because he was removing himself from my sphere. He'd filled what had been empty only to remove his presence just as suddenly.

Except I would remember he had been here. In the tomb of my tower, in dark silence, I would remember his voice, his smell, and the way he handled himself on the Outside. His vital energy. His animal intensity. He was what it meant to be alive.

He made the urge to experience life outside these walls pound deeper inside me—stronger than before. I pressed my fingers to my pulse thrumming wildly at my neck.

“Call it curiosity,” he replied.

“You'll just leave Madoc and Dagne? Abandon them—”

“They're not my responsibility.”

“They were with you. You were together. How can you be that . . . selfish?”

The air stretched thin, and I felt his stare on my face, harder than before. “This world demands it. Only the selfish survive.”

“I don't believe that—”

“What do you know of the world? How often do you even step outside these walls? The way Sivo reacted when you returned with me, I don't imagine very often. You're blind. You can't know.”

I hissed a stinging breath. Not only was he selfish, but he was cruel and narrow-minded and he saw too much of the truth. “I left these walls long enough to save your life. Fortunate for you, I was not struck with a surge of selfishness then.”

“I didn't ask it of you.”

“No, but you took my help, didn't you?” I swung back around. “My mistake. I wish I hadn't bothered.” I paused with my hand on the latch. Swallowing, my voice came out thankfully stronger. “Next time I won't.”

A lie on both counts.

If the same circumstances presented themselves, I would react the same way. I knew that much about me.

“Don't worry. There won't be a next time.”

Turning, I stepped from the room, closing the door with a dull thud behind me.

It was a long day.

Perla emerged a few times from my bedchamber for fresh linens and water. I lifted my head in her direction at the first sound of her tread, as though she might reveal something in manner or speech about Fowler. Had he mentioned to her that he knew I was sightless? Had he said anything about me at all?

Perla frequently accused me of being quick to provoke. She always pointed to my bloodlines. Apparently, my father had been hot tempered. I punched the dough I was kneading and flipped it over.

Fowler had emerged fully clothed shortly after I left him. His scent had been less potent, and I knew I would never make the mistake of failing to recognize him unclothed again. He'd walked a hard line for my chamber. I didn't even feel his gaze upon me. He would be leaving tomorrow. Unless he changed his mind and intended to leave this very day. I didn't know and, of course, I couldn't inquire. That would call too much attention to the fact that he affected me.

“How's the boy?” I asked Perla as I set the dough in a bowl and draped a linen over it.

Her response was a grunt. Madoc still lived, and she was frustrated that I had made him our problem, that I brought him here and threatened our sanctuary.

I didn't press for more. Perla was in no mood for it. The air felt strained and tenuous enough, brittle like the ancient parchment of the few books we possessed.

I held silent as Perla gathered what she needed. Sivo hummed lightly from the chair where he sat. She banged through the cupboards, searching for something.

“What are you looking for?” I asked tentatively.

“The large bowl with the chip in it.”

I automatically reached for it behind the basket of root truffles Sivo had gathered yesterday.

She grunted again as I handed it to her, her chapped fingers brushing mine. This grunt translated to: “thank you but I'm still angry with you.”

She returned to the chamber, her tread heavier than usual.

“She's not happy with me,” I murmured.

Sivo stopped humming. “What makes you think that?”

He was teasing. I smiled and shook my head. “Oh, just a feeling.”

“She's scared. She loves you more than herself. We both do. We worry about what will happen to you when we are . . .”

My smile slipped as his words faded, but the rest was there. I heard it even if unspoken.

I thought of Fowler's words.
Only the selfish survive this world.

They rang ominously, an echo that I couldn't banish. If that were true, then Sivo and Perla had long outlived their life expectancies. That should disprove his statement and not make me feel like their demise was an impending fate chasing them like a bloodhound. It shouldn't make me feel like my own time was slipping through my fingers like water through a sieve. My throat
tightened at the notion. It wasn't so much that I could die. Everyone died. I wasn't afraid of death.

It's that I would die with so little to show for my life. A long stretch of days spent trapped in a tower.

I was afraid that was all I would ever have.

T
HAT EVENING
I ventured into my bedchamber. Slinked really, pressing flat against the wall, hugging a fresh pitcher of water to my chest—my excuse for entering the room.

Madoc was awake, thrashing and pleading for relief in a voice that cracked. I could smell the earthy bite of sweat beading his skin. The copper of his blood tainted the room.

Dagne sniffed softly from beside the bed and adjusted her weight in the chair. “What's your name again?”

“Luna.”

We were both quiet for a long while until her chair creaked again and she said, “You're lucky to have this place. I don't think
I've ever been anywhere so clean and warm. So safe. I didn't know places like this exist.”

A sudden laugh had my head whipping around.

“No place is safe.” Fowler sat in the corner. He had been there all along. His body was utterly still in a chair near the balcony. I'd occupied that seat for countless hours with the balcony doors open to the outside world, listening to the winds and drone of insects and the distant sounds of dark dwellers. Occasionally, I could hear the death of some poor animal as it fell victim to their ravenous appetites. We weren't the only things they fed upon.

The seat cushion bore a permanent indentation from my weight, and now he filled it, altering its shape so that the next time I sat in it I would only think of him and remember the boy—man—who wore his selfishness like a badge of honor.

My awareness of him burned a path through me. I brushed a stray strand of hair back from my cheek and tried to pretend I didn't feel his stare. And yet, like an animal aware of something else in its orbit, I knew he was there, watching me, thinking about our last encounter and the truth of my existence. A girl without sight in a world where we lived as prey.

I could feel him thinking about me, the knowledge whispering in the space between us like a ghost's breath. Sivo and Perla would panic when they learned this vulnerability had been exposed. And then they would only worry that he might discover the rest. That he would figure out who I was.

But he would be leaving tomorrow.

A desperate breath welled up inside me as though I was on
the verge of losing something, a chance . . . an opportunity for something new and strange and exciting. A short time ago I stood alone in a room with him. The air churning from cold to hot, thin to thick, in a way I had never felt before.

He rose and left the room without a word.

I exhaled, feeling like I was balancing on a knife's edge, anxious with the knowledge that he was going to leave and that would be the end of all this. A return to monotony.

I turned my attention back to Dagne. “Your friend—” I stopped short of saying leader, but the moment the word “friend” escaped I knew that didn't fit either. “He's good out there.”

“He doesn't want us with him.” She said this as though it was a simple truth. “And he won't wait for Madoc to recover.”

“I'm sure that's not true.” I winced at the lie. By his own admission, it was the truth, but a part of me believed, hoped, that he wouldn't be so merciless as to walk out on them. Would he abandon them so carelessly? As though they were nothing to him?

She laughed harshly. “Oh, it's the truth. You have been living in this tower a long time, haven't you? You can rely on no one.”

Heat broke out over my face for revealing my naïveté.

“Life is unkind. That Fowler even stopped for us at all, that he didn't kill us or hurt us . . .” She paused. “Well, that's as generous as you can expect anyone to be.”

I didn't want to believe that. There had to be more. People had to be . . . better. I couldn't let her destroy my hope for more. “Where are you from?”

“It doesn't matter. Every place is the same. Except for here.
It's nice here. Your hair . . . it's so shiny and clean. Those ribbons are pretty.”

Reaching up, I removed a ribbon, threading it free from my hair. I offered it to her. It was a small thing to do, but it would bring her pleasure. I was certain of that.

The ribbon slipped from my grasp, and I knew she took it. “Th-thank you.”

I nodded.

She sighed. “We left our village years ago. My father, Madoc, and I. We've been moving ever since. Even after Papa . . .” Her voice faded.

He wasn't with them now. That was explanation enough.

Her voice softened and I heard the whisper of her fingertips through her brother's hair. “Sometimes we found a place that seemed safe. An abandoned cottage. A cave. Once we found an old mill. We stayed there a couple months. Others came; they took it from us. They took—they took everything—” Her voice broke a little and it was minutes before she said anything else. I didn't know what to say. I could only imagine with a shudder what
everything
was to her. “I'm glad Papa wasn't around anymore when that happened. This tower is a small slice of heaven.”

She wanted to stay here. It was obvious. But would Perla let her? Would Sivo? Their goal was to keep me alive and protect my identity. They would see keeping her and Madoc as being at odds with that goal.

“Perhaps Fowler will wait,” I suggested, even knowing in my gut that he wouldn't.

She released a laugh that twisted into a sob. “No. But don't worry. I don't expect you to let us stay here. I don't expect anything from anyone. We keep going, right? That's the only thing to do.”

I nodded. Keep going. Except for me. I had to stay put.

Her words, Madoc thrashing on the bed, the coppery tang of his blood—all of it was too much, too ripe in my nose. Dagne's tears flowed unchecked down her cheeks, flavoring the air with salt.

With a murmured good-bye, I moved to the doorway and passed through it, anxious to get away.

I occupied myself in the kitchen, preparing a tray for Sivo to bring to Madoc and Dagne. Perla returned to the room. She would see to the needs of our visitors—and likely make certain that they didn't get any ideas about staying any longer than necessary.

After I made the tray, I took up the knitting—a task I loathed, but I needed to keep my hands busy. My fingers moved deftly with needle and thread through the supple leather, darning the hole in Sivo's jacket. I tried not to concentrate on the sounds floating from my bedchamber, but my ears were too keen to shut off. At one point Fowler emerged from the other chamber to rejoin Dagne and Madoc without a word to me.

Finished with the jacket, I folded it across the basket and started preparing dinner. Perla had already cut up some vegetables, so I finished what was left, cutting them on the wood table and tossing the modest amount into a pot.

Vegetables were few and far between. We'd rigged a garden
on top of the tower. Sivo worked on it constantly, trying to encourage what he could to grow with only the paltry sunlight offered during midlight. I often joined him. It was outdoors, after all, and it won out over inside chores.

I liked standing near the edge with my shoulders back, my fingers dusted with soil. I would lift my face to the wind and inhale the loamy musk of the Outside as Sivo worked, stabbing at the ground, cursing his undernourished greens, radishes, and beets. Occasionally peas would flourish, and that was a good day when we would actually have pea soup. Perla would make it with bits of rabbit meat and Sivo swore it was nearly as tasty as when his mother had made it with ham.

I'd never tasted ham. Boars had not lasted long after the eclipse. They didn't move fast enough to avoid the dwellers.

Sivo sat at the table, the smooth swishing sound of him sharpening knives a familiar rhythm as I placed the lid back on the pot over the hearth and then moved to slice the loaf of bread baked yesterday.

The creak in the floor signaled Perla's approach. I knew her tread well, the length of time that stretched between each steady step. Sighing, she set down the basket full of soiled bedding and rags she used to tend to Madoc. She moved to the washstand. The gentle splashing of water filled the room. After she finished, Sivo collected the basin and dumped it out the window, returning within moments.

“Dinner ready?” she asked, patting her hands and arms dry with the towel.

I nodded. “Almost.”

Sivo resumed sharpening his blades. “How is he?”

“If his fever breaks, he'll live. He's young. Strong. Whether or not he will walk again is another matter.” She moved beside me. I felt her gaze on my face. “What were you thinking?”

I sighed. “I was thinking they would die if I didn't help.”

And I was thinking I was tired of being alone. That I would go stark mad staying all my days inside stone walls with never once encountering another soul.

I didn't say that, of course. It would make me seem ungrateful. It would make it seem like Perla and Sivo weren't enough—that they hadn't done enough for me.

When the high chancellor slew my father and my mother after she had just given birth to me, Perla snatched me from the nursery and fled. Cullan had clearly been waiting for an opportunity to seize power, and he found it the night of the eclipse, in the outbreak of chaos and wave of blood and death.

I shouldn't have lived. If not for Perla and Sivo, Cullan would have ended me, too.

I held my tongue, determined not to say anything that made this life they had miraculously carved for us seem too little.

“And why should whether these strangers die concern us?” Perla grumbled. “It's enough to keep just ourselves alive.”

I felt Fowler's arrival even before I heard him step from my bedchamber. I lifted my head, wondering if he had heard Perla's comment. And if he cared one way or another.

His tread vibrated along the floor with a stealth that even Sivo couldn't manage.

“He's asleep,” he announced.

“Fallen unconscious more likely,” Perla responded. “Pain will do that to you. Knock the fight right out of you.”

After a long pause, he replied, “If that's what pain does, it's a wonder any of us still live.”

I stopped sawing on the bread and lifted my head in his direction. We all fell quiet at these words, and I knew that Sivo and Perla were staring at this stranger, wondering at him. Afraid of him.

And there was me, overcome and eaten alive with curiosity, the back of my neck prickling with awareness. I wanted to know about him. Where did he come from? Where had he been? Where was he going?

He was too new to be anything other than fascinating.

Heat scalded my cheeks and I lowered my head lest anyone see how he affected me. I concentrated on arranging the thick slices of bread into a basket.

“It smells good,” Fowler offered, easing the awkward stretch of silence.

“Help yourself if you're hungry,” I offered.

“Of course he's hungry,” Sivo proclaimed. “A strapping fellow like him needs his nourishment if he's to make it on the Outside.” A nongentle reminder that he was to go. Sivo wasn't much for subtlety. He might as well shove Fowler's belongings at him and show him the door.

I set the last slice of bread in the basket and dusted loose crumbs off my fingers, and heard myself saying, despite what
he'd already told me, “Well, I'm sure he won't depart until Madoc is on his feet—”

“I'll leave on the morrow. At midlight.”

He hadn't changed his mind. Had I expected him to? That somewhere over the course of a day, with warm bread in his belly and walls safely surrounding him, he might have changed his mind?

I turned my head in his direction, still inclined to persuade him. “But your friends—”

“They're not my friends.” His voice dropped hard and absolute. “We traveled together. Briefly. I have to keep going.”

His deep, rumbling voice wrapped around me, squeezing like a fist. He had to keep going. Alone. That's what he meant. He wanted no one. Like one of the slippery fish that I managed to seize for a fleeting moment in the stream before it escaped through my fingers. Gone.

There was no keeping him here. He would be leaving. “Why? Why would you want to go out there? It's safe in here.” Strange, I mused, that I would be using the same argument Perla used against me every day. Perla, who preferred to die in this tower. This thought scudded through me with a wilting shiver. Dying in the tower. Living the entirety of my days within its walls. My presence, my life, unmarked. Unremembered. Unimportant. As though it never happened at all.

“Luna, don't be rude. The young man has a right to come and go as he pleases. We can't force him to remain.” In Perla's voice, buried beneath the muted tenor, was the message for me to simply let him go. Release him and good riddance.

“There's a place. The Isle of Allu.” Even as he said this to me, there was a thread of something in his voice. Surprise, perhaps, that he felt compelled to justify his actions. “It's reported to be free of dwellers—”

“Oh, and the sun shines there, too, I am certain,” I snapped. “What a lovely fairy tale.”

And yet even the remote possibility of it intrigued me. Which only infuriated me because I would never know if such a place actually existed. He could leave. He could go in search of this fantasy island. Whether it existed or not, he would never return to tell me.

I turned, my movements sloppy in my frustration. I grasped the lid off the pot, forgetting to grab the mitt to protect my hand. I cried out and dropped the lid.

Air rushed around me as Sivo jolted from his chair. Perla's heavier gait came forward, too, but there was another movement. Someone who moved faster, his stride fluid as water running free between my fingers.

“What have you done there?” His voice was a deep rasp, curling warmly like peat smoke. Warm fingers circled the bones of my wrist, turning my palm over.

“It's nothing,” I grumbled, sensing Perla and Sivo hovering close, watching. Whatever they were thinking, they made no move to stop Fowler from touching me or curtail his attention on my hand.