portal that landed outside the Hunters Council when the world was just waking up. I blinked rapidly at the sudden blinding gold light, squinting through the rays of sun to the dusky sky above streaked in pink. Color. There was so much color here.
And it was beautiful, it was. But the sky didn’t swirl like smoke and the stillness of it seemed more like lifelessness after spending my days under the gray sky of the shadow realm. And the gold…
I would never be able to see the color again without thinking about the gold tipped flowers in the courtyard. The way the orbs had glowed a littler warmer each day. I’d done that. The warmth had been me.
Maybe Allerick would want me back just for that alone, but I didn’t like the idea of just being a lamp for the shadow realm, even though it had meant so much to me that I’d brought them something.
I glanced at the ground behind me, knowing my cape of shadows wouldn’t have survived the in-between, but feeling bereft at the loss of it anyway. At least I still have the bite mark. That was something tangible, something I could look at and know that the whole experience had been real. That, and the faint tether in my chest. It was a little piece of Allerick I could always carry with me, and I selfishly hoped he was carrying a little of me with him too.
One of the Councilors—Ben? Bob? something like that—turned to speak to me, but the sound of Astrid calling my name as she exited the Council building drew all of our attention.
It wasn’t unlike my sister to work overnight in her role at the Council, but Astrid looked like she hadn’t slept in days. The dark circles beneath her eyes looked like bruises, and her complexion was pallid.
″There you are, Ophelia. Time to go.” My sister grabbed my elbow none-too-gently, tugging me towards the parking lot.
″Astrid, wait—” Blake—or was it Bill?—started. “Ophelia needs to attend a debrief—”
″And she will, but not right now, Bradley.” Ah, that’s it. Bradley. “Right now, she needs to rest. I’m not hiding her, for god’s sake. You know where my apartment is.”
She didn’t wait around for him to answer, all but dragging me to her Jeep and yanking my bag away to throw in the trunk.
″Get in,” Astrid ordered quietly. “It was a setup. I don’t know who to trust. We’re getting the fuck out of here.”
Mutely, I climbed into the passenger seat, fastening my seat belt with shaking hands. A setup?
Did that mean the Shade who’d fed here was working with a Hunter? Maybe multiple ones?
My stomach turned at the idea of them back in the shadow realm, at the risk they posed to the Shades there that I cared about. Allerick is strong. Stronger than ever before from feeding on me. Whatever it is, he can handle it.
″Are we going back to your apartment?” I asked as Astrid got in the front seat and immediately threw the car into drive, wasting no time getting on the road.
Astrid grimaced. “Yes. I’m buying us a little time, though it won’t be much. If the Councilors weren’t in on it, then running from them is a death sentence in itself. Fuck, I don’t even know which way is up or who to trust anymore.”
I’d never seen Astrid like this.
″Mom and Dad?”
″Out of town, but gleeful about the treaty being broken,” Astrid replied, looking grim. “That doesn’t necessarily mean they were involved, but I’m exercising caution.”
No, it didn’t necessarily mean that. Honestly, I was shocked that Astrid wasn’t gleeful about it being broken, she’d never been a huge fan of it in the first place. Then again, her reservations had been more about its effectiveness and unfortunately, it seemed she was right to have doubted it since it had only taken weeks to fall apart.
″We’re going to my apartment because your husband has been there before and will know where to find you,” Astrid said in a softer voice. “I didn’t tell anyone that they visited there.”
″I don’t want to see him,” I replied stubbornly.
″Did he hurt you? I have a new silver dagger under my pillow that I’ve been saving for a rainy day,” Astrid said, her eyes taking on that slightly unhinged look that always appeared when she was ready for the hunt.
″No, you psycho, don’t stab him. He didn’t hurt me. He was wonderful actually.” The tether in my chest seemed to fray a little more, and I swallowed past the thick lump in my throat. “I love him.”
Astrid blinked. Where I was all romanticism and daydreams, Astrid had always been hard edges and ambition. If she’d ever been in love before, I didn’t know about it.
″Okay. Then you have to go back,” she said eventually, like it was obvious.
″I love him, I don’t know that he loves me. If that emotion even exists for him. When Bill—”
″Bradley.”
″—whatever came to collect me, Allerick didn’t exactly put up a fight. He was furious about the treaty being violated and immediately went to find the Shade who did it.”
Astrid glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. “He’s the king, Ophelia. He has subjects to rule and order to maintain. He can’t just drop everything to coddle you all the time.”
″I didn’t want him to coddle me,” I shot back indignantly.
″Sounds like you did.” Astrid shrugged. “You’re assuming he didn’t care enough to ask you to stay, but maybe he cared so much that he just assumed you would stay, that he didn’t need to ask you.”
I chewed on my lower lip, second guessing my decision and more than a little panicky about it. Should I have stayed? Would Allerick be upset that I’d left? Would he assume it was because I didn’t care? The thought made my stomach turn.
The drawing. I’d left him the drawing. He had to know how much I cared about him.
Even if he did want me to stay, I’d just be in the way while there was no treaty in place guaranteeing my safety.
″Look, Lia—” Astrid began, before cursing quietly as a gunmetal gray SUV pulled out in front of us, forcing Astrid to break. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. That’s a Council vehicle. Shit! Are they trying to kill us now?”
Our entire lives, Astrid had been the calm, decisive one while I’d been mostly content to wander along in her footsteps, lost in my daydreams of different worlds and interesting people. But Astrid was panicking, and maybe after faking the whole queen thing for a while, some of it had actually stuck because I wasn’t. I wasn’t going to hide behind my badass big sister and just hope for the best.
″Stick to your story,” I breathed, trying to keep my mouth as still as possible as both cars came to a halt. “You’re worried about what I’ve been through. You wanted to bring me back to your apartment to recover from my ordeal before the Council debrief. Be your usual moody self or they’ll suspect something.”
″I’m not moody.” She looked genuinely affronted, like she wasn’t the snarkiest person I’d ever met. “What are you going to do?”
″Cry, sniffle, maybe whimper a little, and ultimately go back to headquarters with them.”
″Ophelia,” Astrid hissed. A female Councilor had already exited the vehicle and was making her way over to us.
″They don’t want me dead, they want information. I’d put money on it. I can learn more from the inside,” I countered, my voice barely above a whisper. I encouraged all the tears I’d been holding in to fall, scrounging up my face so I looked as pathetic as possible. “You can’t get stuck in there with me. You need to be at your apartment so Allerick or Soren can find you.”
I wanted to say more, but the Councilors were already at the window, and Astrid plastered her signature scowl in place as she rolled it down.
I didn’t know what I would have said anyway, what message I would have asked her to pass on to Allerick for me. There was nothing sufficient that I could relay in a secondhand message, not when the words I wanted to say had to come solely from me.
″You could have killed us,” Astrid snapped, glaring at the Councilor. I recognized her now—Moriah. She’d been at the hearing where I’d been kicked out of the community. Her severe black bob was a little more silver nowadays, and the frown lines more pronounced, but those brown eyes were as calculating now as they were all those years ago.
″My apologies,” Moriah said smoothly. “I confess, I was a little worried you wouldn’t stop. That you were running away from us.” She laughed, and it was the least genuine sound I’d ever heard.
″Ah yes, running away to my own apartment,” Astrid replied drily, rolling her eyes. “A devious plan if ever there was one.”
I hiccuped quietly as I made a show of rubbing my tears on my sleeve. Moriah crouched down to look at me through Astrid’s window, her expression full of pity.
″Ophelia, you poor dear, I’m sure these past few weeks have been awful for you—you must be exhausted.”
″She is,” Astrid clipped. “Which is why I’m bringing her to my apartment.”
″A kind sisterly gesture that I can certainly appreciate, but will need to refuse. Ophelia isn’t just your sister any longer, Astrid. She is—or was—the Queen of the Shades. She has obligations that require her presence at Council headquarters.”
I wanted to laugh at the contradiction, but it would have ruined my act. If I was Queen of the Shades, then why did I owe the Hunters Council a damn thing?
Astrid opened her mouth to argue, but I rested a hand on her forearm and leaned over to speak to Moriah. “It’s fine, I understand. I don’t want to cause any trouble.”
″Of course you don’t,” Moriah cooed. I squeezed Astrid’s arm lightly before she punched a Councilor in the face.
″Can my sister visit me?” I asked, adding an extra sniffle for dramatic effect.
″Absolutely. Perhaps tomorrow, when we’ve had time to do a proper debrief.”
″And what am I meant to do until then?” Astrid asked.
″Go home?” Moriah suggested sweetly. “Contrary to whatever you may think, the Hunters are perfectly capable of functioning without you, Astrid.”
″You sure about that? I took my first night off in weeks last night and the treaty was broken,” Astrid replied sweetly, making Moriah scowl.
I unclipped my seat belt before Astrid could really hit her stride, smoothing my thick black dress down as I climbed out of the car, discreetly checking my hair pin weapon was still in my pocket, but leaving my suitcase in Astrid’s car. I’d been so upset I hadn’t even realized until now how weirdly out of place I looked being back here—Astrid was wearing ripped jeans, a black tank with an album cover on it, and a bomber jacket, and I looked like the poor man’s Jackie O.
If you can’t join ‘em, beat ’em.
Or something like that.
I channeled my best queen-like energy, holding my head high and pushing my shoulders back as I walked purposefully towards the SUV that had nearly run us off the road. If Allerick was here…
If Allerick was here, he’d be able to smell how afraid I was. I was a marketing coordinator who’d got average grades at college and spent my free time lost in the fantasies I liked to commit to paper. I wasn’t skilled in diplomacy, I would be no one’s first choice of ambassador, and yet here I was.
Not that the Hunters wanted that from me.
No. They wanted a spy. A rat.
Did they really think I’d do that for them? I slid into the backseat of Moriah’s car like she was my chauffeur rather than my jailer, and gave her a bland smile in the rearview mirror as I buckled myself in and folded my hands in my lap.
The Hunters had been happy to throw me aside until I was useful to them. If this position had never come up, they’d have never spoken to me again. I’d shown up in the shadow realm as the barely tolerated wife of the king, and I’d still found kindness among so many of the Shades, even when Allerick himself hadn’t been so keen on me. Damen had been welcoming right from the beginning, even when he was suspicious of me. Levana had asked me questions, answered mine, and warmed up to me until we’d built a genuine friendship that had been painful to walk away from. Calix had never treated me like I was inferior to the Shades.
″You must be so relieved to be back,” Moriah said emphatically, pulling the car back onto the road and heading back the way we came while I watched Astrid’s vehicle grow smaller in the distance. “I can’t even imagine how awful it’s been for you.”
I remembered the palace staff lining the walls to the entry hall, heads bowed in silence as I passed. Affra wiping away my tears outside the portal, telling me I belonged. And Allerick.
God, Allerick.
The way he was growly and rough and protective, even when he hadn’t liked me very much. The way he’d fuck me like a toy whilst worshipping me like a queen, exactly the way I liked it. The way he’d held on to me so tightly even when he seemed confused about what that meant and how to process it.
The bite mark on my neck felt like it was tingling in response.
I glanced up, realizing that Moriah was waiting for a response, looking slightly nervous as though I might start sobbing hysterically all over the cream leather interior of her fancy car.
″The shadow realm was nothing like here, that’s for sure.”
Moriah showed me to a ‘guest suite’ inside the Council building that I’d never heard of before. A takeout bag from a local restaurant was sitting on the small table, and Moriah had suggested I eat and rest for a few hours while the various Councilors assembled. She’d also left a small bag of clean clothes, since the Council already had all my measurements from outfitting my ‘queen’ wardrobe.
I took a moment after she’d gone to walk around the room, examining my prison. And it was a prison. They could give it whatever fancy name they liked and fill it with more duck egg blue cushions and fluffy beige throws than a celebrity influencer’s bedroom, but a locked door and no windows was a motherfucking prison in my books.
Worried that I was being watched, I decided to do as I was asked and play along for now. I took a seat at the small table and pulled out the cream cheese bagel and cinnamon donut holes they’d brought for me, savoring the sweetness after eating nothing but meat and vegetables for a while, but also finding it surprisingly sickly. I wonder what Levana would think of these?
Sufficiently fed, I shut myself in the bathroom and explored each nook and cranny of the small space for cameras, deciding it was probably safe. It wasn’t the fanciest bathroom, but there was a tub with a curtain around it that looked pretty heavenly. Underneath my funeral garb outfit, I was still pretty thoroughly caked in monster cum, and while a perverse part of me wanted to keep it that way, I really wanted to feel clean.
Deciding I didn’t want to be caught lounging in the bath if the Hunters showed up— and I sort of expected them to because this whole experience had been an experience in keeping me off-balance right from the beginning—I opted for a quick but thorough shower and pulled on a clean black dress before lying on the bed fully clothed for a power nap.
It didn’t take them long. I’d been napping fitfully for about an hour when there was a knock on the door, and I jumped up as quickly as I could, smoothing out my dress and shoving my feet back into my flats.
″Come in,” I called, doing my best to keep my voice even.
I wasn’t surprised when it was Moriah who appeared, dressed now in a suit but retaining the same plastic smile as she had earlier. “Ophelia, I hope you’ve had a chance to relax. If you’d like to follow me, the Council will see you now.”
Lovely.
″Unfortunately, your parents are on a cruise this week, making the most of their time off,” Moriah said, doing her best version of a sympathetic smile. I wasn’t the smartest person, but I thought I was pretty good at reading people for the most part—it was a side effect of being constantly underestimated. I wasn’t picking up malicious intentions from Moriah, not necessarily. It felt more opportunistic than anything.
″I’m glad they’re taking a vacation,” I replied, figuring it was best to make polite small talk and seem as ignorant as possible. “Though of course I’m disappointed not to see them.”
″I think they expected you to visit more often,” Moriah said lightly. “When you didn’t come back for so long, they ended up just taking the trip.”
It took everything in me not to roll my eyes. For years, I’d seen my parents exclusively on holidays, and only when I couldn’t feasibly find somewhere else to be and they felt too awkward to not invite me. Maybe the Hunters Council finally finding a role for me had given them some sense of pride in me again, but given what that role was, I highly doubted it.
Most of the Councilors ignored me as Moriah and I entered the room, and I quietly took the seat she indicated, across from her and between two portly men I only vaguely recognized. As a kid, I hadn’t had much cause to spend time with the Councilors, and even when I was preparing to leave for the shadow realm, it had mostly been with just Astrid for assistance. In hindsight, she’d been quite aggressive about it, like she didn’t trust anyone except herself to prepare me.
″Well,” Bradley announced, clapping his hands. He hadn’t seemed very impressive when Astrid was cutting him down earlier, but it appeared that he was the leader of sorts in this room. “Now that we’re all here, let’s begin. What an exciting night it was! Here we were, thinking it’d take months for them to break the treaty.”
Everyone but me laughed, while I looked around in alarm.
″I’ll admit, they made it easier than we thought they would,” Moriah said with a girlish giggle. “We were fortunate to find a Shade so willing to make a play for power. And Ophelia! For those of you who don’t know, this is Ophelia Bishop. She was our sweet, willing huntress bride, responsible for meeting one of their more barbaric demands in the treaty.”
″You must have suffered greatly,” Bradley said, giving me a grave, pitying look.
Gross.
I had a lot of follow up questions about the ‘play for power’ comment, but I had a feeling they were only speaking so freely in front of me because they believed I was Team Hunter. I didn’t want to ruin that illusion while it was convenient to me, but I physically couldn’t bring myself to talk badly of the Shades or the shadow realm.
″I’m fine,” I replied with a watery smile, pretending this was all totally no big deal and I hadn’t absolutely made the biggest mistake of my life coming back here. “Of course I’m grateful to be home, but I was treated well. No complaints.”
The disbelieving looks were honestly insulting.
″They mauled you.” Practically all of them were glaring daggers at the bite mark on my neck and I barely resisted the urge to cover it with my hand. I wasn’t ashamed of it, despite whatever uninformed opinions they had about it.
″Did anyone terrorize you? Feed your fear?” someone else asked. “That was explicitly forbidden under the terms of the treaty, though it’s clear they had no qualms about breaking it.
″I barely felt fear the entire time I was there,” I replied a little sharply. Get in character. Act relieved. “They took the treaty very seriously. That’s why I was so surprised to hear it was violated.”
More stupid titters from people who thought they were being clever.
″You’ve done so well, Ophelia,” Moriah sighed, her expression almost maternal in a twisted kind of way. “I knew you would—you were my first choice for the role. I told Astrid as much, but she insisted on asking all the other outcasts first. She’s grown too big for her boots, that one. Someone needs to remind her of her place,” Moriah added with a scowl.
Was being Queen of Shades prestigious enough to get away with punching a Councilor in the face?
″What is it that I’ve done well at?” I enquired politely, doing my best bland face—the one Allerick hated so much.
Oh, Allerick. What was he doing right now? Was he thinking about me as obsessively as I was thinking about him?
Had he thought about me at all?
″You softened them up. Made them forget how much they despise us. That guile you have—it can’t be faked. You were exactly the right choice to send in as a bride.”
Some of the others murmured in agreement, and the two on either side of me chuckled to each other over my head like I wasn’t sitting right there.
I thought they’d asked regular eligible huntresses and all had refused, but no. They’d asked ‘outcasts’ as Moriah had so eloquently put it. There were more people out there like me, and the Council had seen them—us—as convenient sacrifices. Willing, eager, biddable.
Lonely, probably. I know I’d been lonely.
A slimy feeling radiated out from the center of my body, coating every inch of me. A potent combination of shame that I’d been an unknowing participant in their scheme, as well as humiliation at my own naivety.
No wonder Allerick had been so suspicious of me when I’d first arrived in the shadow realm. He was smarter than I was.
I was a plant. A hopeful little idiot on a mission I’d known nothing about.
″Why?” I asked hoarsely before clearing my throat. “What was the point of all this? Of me?”
″Negotiating power,” Bradley replied with a smile that was all teeth. “That the Shades would break the treaty was inevitable—they’re barely more than beasts. They’ve experienced some level of security over the past few weeks, and they’ll be eager to have it back, whatever the cost.”
″They’re used to having a few conditions on them when they feed now, what are a few more?” Moriah agreed. “We thought this would happen sooner, which was why we needed to recruit an unhappy Shade to speed things up. I imagine she’s having a very bad day now the news has come out,” Moriah added with a laugh.
She. It was totally Meridia. Meridia was a scout too—she monitored this area specifically and would have been in the perfect position to encounter a Hunter willing to talk.
″What kind of extra conditions?” I asked, dreading the answer.
″Prescribed feedings, for one,” the man next to me muttered. “We’ll decide exactly which humans they can feed on. Set them up at the prisons or something.”
For a moment, I couldn’t respond. Words stuck painfully in my throat and the whole situation felt incredibly far away, like I was watching in slow motion from underwater. It was all too surreal—too cruel—for me to comprehend.
″Who are you to decide that?” I asked quietly, appalled.
″The Hunters Council,” he shot back snidely. “Don’t forget whose side you actually belong on, Ophelia.”
Oh, I hadn’t. I knew exactly whose side I belonged on.
I said nothing for the rest of the meeting while they discussed the logistics of approaching the Shades and how best to keep them on the back foot, desperate for peace and willing to agree to sign over all their freedoms in the process. I absorbed as much as I could, noticing that the less attention they paid to me, the more freely they spoke. The more contemptuous they were. For what? They acted like the Shades were the ones who’d been murdering their families for centuries.
“Let’s call it a day,” Moriah said, tapping the end of her pen twice on the table. “We’ll reconvene tomorrow to get things in motion, no point rushing it now. Let’s leave them to sweat for another twenty-four hours.”
They all laughed like that was the funniest thing they’d ever heard, and I forced myself to paste a tight smile on my face, hoping my breakfast stayed in my stomach in the process.
″Shall I call Astrid to pick me up?” I asked Moriah politely as everyone stood, chatting among themselves. I already knew the answer. There was no way on this good green earth that they were going to let me walk out of here.
Moriah’s answering smile was serpentine. “For your own security, it would be best that you stay here for the interim. We’d hate for a Shade to get ideas about dragging you back into the shadow realm, and you weren’t trained in exterminating them the way most Hunters are.”
″You’re right,” I said flatly, holding eye contact. And I’m grateful for that every day. “But I also have lived as part of the human world for so long that I’m not accustomed to sleeping in a brightly lit room.”
Moriah’s lips pursed, an internal debate silently playing out over her face. “We can dim the lights in your room.”
″As dark as possible, please. And could I have some additional blankets? It’s a lot colder here.” I gave her an insincere smile before making my way back through the rabbit warren of fluorescent-lit halls to my prison room, a staff member on my heels the entire time, asking if I needed directions or assistance.
What I needed was a dark enough space for a certain Shade to visit me on the off-chance that he’d visited Astrid, knew where I was, and even wanted to see me again. Even if he didn’t, surely he’d want to see if I had information about the treaty negotiations? However he felt about me personally, Allerick would still do his best to protect his kingdom.
I’ll find a way. Please don’t give up on us. I’ll regret giving up on us every day of my life.
