Angel helped me pull my shit together, dress, and get the backpack onto my shoulders. By the time I was done, Shadow was just a broad-shouldered speck in the distance.
My friend kept glancing at me as we started after him, and I was sure that the shock on my face was a permanent imprint.
“Are you okay?” she finally asked, no doubt hoping to jolt me from my dark thoughts.
“I have no idea what just happened,” I breathed, blinking about fifty billion times, like that would clear my head. “My aim was to calm him down, but it appears I might have done the opposite.”
Angel shot me a knowing smile. “I’ve never seen anyone rile Shadow like you do. Or, to be more accurate, it’s not the riling that’s odd, it’s the way he doesn’t kill you when it happens. If I know anything about the beast, it’s that he doesn’t like to come undone. He doesn’t want to be out of control.”
I snorted. “Isn’t he always out of control, bursting into flames, growling and grumbling at everyone?”
She actually laughed out loud. “Firstly, you’re probably not going to believe this, but Shadow was rarely out of control before he met you. And secondly, most of the time, even when he’s using his power and rumbling his words, it’s still controlled. The smoke show is all deliberate to achieve whatever end he’s after. But with you, it’s an actual loss of control.”
“He’s not the only one,” I admitted. “How can I hate him so desperately one minute, and then the next, feel like I’ll die if I don’t kiss him?”
My fingers lifted to brush across my lips. “That was my first real kiss,” I whispered. That bullshit with Torin didn’t count. Fucker. “How pathetic.”
Angel ground to a halt. “He kissed you?”
In my surprise, I stumbled forward as well. “Uh, yeah, he did.”
She swallowed roughly. “Are you sure?”
What? Whaaat?
“Uh, yeah, pretty sure. I mean, I’m inexperienced, but even I know what a kiss is.”
She was starting to worry me now as she paced back and forth, her blades finally relaxing in her hands.
“Angel!” I snapped. “What are you trying to tell me? Why are you so shocked about Shadow kissing me?”
I mean, yeah, I got that I wasn’t his usual type, but surely, the idea that he might have kissed me wasn’t insane enough to merit this reaction.
She stopped moving, meeting my gaze. “Did you know that the royals of Shadow Realm have true mates?”
I shook my head because I was pretty sure that hadn’t come up.
“They do,” she continued. “Sometimes they are betrothed at birth, and sometimes it happens when they find the perfect match and perform the ceremony. Before they find this one, they will be open sexually, but they never…” She swallowed roughly. “And I can’t reiterate the never enough. They never kiss someone who is not their mate.”
“What?” I breathed.
I searched her face to see if she was joking with me, despite knowing it was not her style to joke about something like this.
“Why?”
Her smile was full of secret thoughts. “There’s an intimacy in kissing that not even sex can replicate. In the moment of a kiss, you share energy, power, the essence of you. You share a part of your soul, and in the realm, they reserve that for their true mates.”
“I’m not his mate.”
I wasn’t. Torin was my mate. Shadow and I didn’t have a bond between us like that of a true mate.
“You aren’t,” she confirmed, and my chest squeezed at the blunt statement. “As the Darkor, the Supreme Being, he was assigned a true mate at birth. They were set to be bonded on the day he was crowned to his power and position. He hasn’t seen her since the door was sealed.”
“He never said anything,” I whispered, resisting the urge to press a hand to the ache in my chest. “Is this the true reason he was so desperate to get back here? To get to her?”
Angel shrugged. “I’m not privy to Shadow’s inner thoughts. I have no idea of his motivations, outside of his obvious need for revenge. That one is the complete truth, but the rest… only he knows.”
I wasn’t privy to his thoughts, either, but I’d always wondered if there was more pushing him than just the need to destroy his sister. He hid so much from me, a plethora of secrets and intrigue. And the kiss… I had no explanation for that, but now I understood why he’d refused to let me touch him last time.
“He initiated the kiss today.”
Not just initiated but consumed me. Taking everything and leaving me both horny and broken. Angel didn’t say anything, but she was pondering it.
“I can’t believe that was Shadow’s first kiss too,” I said, blinking at the absurdity of it. “Unless he’s secretly decided to take up kissing chicks in the last thousand years.”
Angel shook her head. “Never. I know females whom Shadow was with, and none of them have gone near his lips. It’s just sex—mind-blowing sex, apparently—but no intimacy and definitely no kissing.”
A surge of anger rose inside me, and as irrational as it was, I could barely stop myself from demanding more details so I could kill these “females.” Since I didn’t own the beast, and sadly never would, I forced myself to focus on the situation I’d found myself in. The complete and total insanity of what she was saying.
He’d kissed me. He’d given me a part of himself that no other had ever had.
“Shadow’s going to break me,” I told her, my throat unexpectedly dry. “Torin almost did, his rejection splintering off a part of my soul that I’m almost certain I haven’t gotten back. And Shadow…”
Could I ever let him go? Allow him to return to the true mate who owned his heart and soul? And if I did, would she try to murder me for stealing their first kiss?
There was no more time for my current crisis because Inky appeared on the horizon, a huge, black cloud tearing toward us. It was thankfully too far away to have heard our conversation, but it was clear that Shadow had had enough of waiting for us to catch up.
The smoke cloud swept around the pair of us, lifting effortlessly. Angel was having none of that shit, though, her wings sweeping out as she rose out of Inky’s embrace. “No one carries me,” she fumed. “Tell Shadow to keep his fucking hands to himself.”
“Woot,” I shouted. “You go, girlfriend.”
She shot me a small smile before she floated herself down to the ground.
I patted Inky. “I can walk too, buddy. Please put me down.”
And what do you know… it did.
Angel and I didn’t delay again, hurrying off along the rocky terrain. Inky stayed with us, directing us toward Shadow. As my boots kicked up the rocks beneath our feet, I noticed that the shiny black had threads of silver and bronze veins bisecting it. A rock bed filled with minerals, which went on as far as I could see.
“It’s truly odd for the lava fields to be this far from the main chasm,” Angel said, shaking her head as she peered into the horizon. “I mean, there have been geysers that popped up over the years, randomly blasting areas when the mists were acting out of character, but this is weird.” Angel was playing tour guide, and I wondered if there was any world she didn’t know well.
“So this land is kind of built on a huge volcano?”
“Not the same,” she told me. “It’s the heat of the mists here that cause the lava flow. But it’s a similar concept.”
The mists were always spoken about with a combination of fear and reverence, but for me, I was mostly curious about them. Maybe it was my bond with Midnight that made it so I couldn’t fear this entity. At least not yet.
It took us what felt like days to catch up to Shadow, who was waiting on another elevated section of rock, a blackened and dead-looking tree beside him. I huffed in a lungful of air, thankful for the light, clean oxygen. I had no idea what the literal chemical composition of the atmosphere here was, but it seemed to be doing the same job as oxygen. Thankfully.
The beast didn’t turn as we approached, and since I wasn’t sure how he was going to react, I moved cautiously as I got closer. Thankfully, when he finally turned my way, he wore a neutral expression, and it was clear we weren’t discussing what happened.
I didn’t particularly want to hear about his soulmate, so I didn’t push the issue.
“We should rest here for the night,” he said shortly. “The light is going to fade soon, and we don’t want to cross the rest of the land in the dark. Too easy for us to be ambushed.”
I stepped closer to where he stood. “Shadow…” I trailed off as I noticed that he hadn’t just been staring off into the distance. There was a village below us, down a jagged side of this outcropping.
“This is your home?”
He shook his head. “No, this is Wenberton, an outer-lying city of the royal compound of Fraple. We’re still a few days walk into Trinity, and then it’s even farther to the edge of my home: Darkor.”
I paused. “That’s your name?”
He let out an aggravated sound. “When a Supreme Being is born, we’re named after the royal city our family rules from. The heir could be born into any of the royal families. I’m the second chosen heir of Darkor. It’s more of a title than a name.”
“Shadow suits you better anyway,” I said, not even joking. “That and Asshole. You’re both, so it works. “
He didn’t bite back, but there was a smile. So brief, but I caught it, and fuck, that was nice.
“How will we get through this town undetected?” I asked, looking across the vast section of land, filled with buildings and no doubt a ton of inhabitants. From what I could see at this distance, the houses weren’t like Earth’s, most of them a combination of futuristic and ancient. Built of stone and rock, with clear bubbles of glass around the structures, almost protectively guarding each house.
He didn’t seem worried. “We should be able to just take the long way around. I’ll assess further in the morning. Most villages will be the same, and our true test will come when we reach the great forests that surround Darkor. Then we’ll have to plan the attack.”
Lots of damn planning.
“With that in mind, I need some sleep,” I declared. “Not to mention food, water, and a place to wash up.”
Shadow finally looked at me. The first real look since we’d kissed. A lot passed between us in this one look, but no words.
“Come with me,” he finally said.
Like I had another choice.
