I’d known Shadow for an indeterminate amount of time, but it was at least a year in Earth days, and I’d never seen him move as fast as he did in that moment.
He was literally here one second and gone the next, leaving behind nothing much more than a puff of smoke. If I had to guess, the shadows he controlled had absorbed him and were about to spit him out in the Library of Knowledge.
Lucien and Reece disappeared as well, and almost as quickly, while I was still staring open-jawed at the spot they had all been standing a micro-second earlier.
Angel didn’t leave me, tightening her hold around my body as I began hobbling toward the door. “Go,” I said, waving my hand forward. “Go and help them. I’ll get there in a minute.”
“No.” Her reply was short and not-that-sweet.
“Angel,” I said, forcing my legs to move faster. “You’re a warrior. Go battle or whatever you do. I’m holding you back.”
She snorted, some of the tension in her tight shoulders easing. “Side by side, girl. We fight side by side, remember? I would never leave a friend behind. And you don’t have to worry. The spell on the door has been broken for more than a few minutes, and so far nothing has walked through. They’re quite possibly not even aware in the realm that they’re free.”
One person would be aware, though. The one who’d cast the spell.
“I did this,” I admitted, needing her to know that I probably wasn’t worthy of her epic-as-fuck friendship. “I thought they’d killed Dannie, the woman who half-raised me, and I lost my shit. I might have possibly calledthemistsandabillionshadowcreatures.” In shame, I ran all the words together, but Angel’s quick mind followed along with ease.
“You did nothing wrong, Mera. Your life has been controlled by forces beyond you for a long time now. You’re reacting to the pressure cooker you’ve been placed under. No one should be surprised when you finally burst into flames.”
Wait? Did she know about that?
“Uh, so yeah. I kind of did burst into flames,” I admitted. “Fire raced across my skin, the same way Shadow’s power often reacts.”
She blinked at me, and it was clear that her previous comment hadn’t actually been a literal reference to the events on Earth.
“You and Shadow have a similar energy,” she finally said, her surprise fading as she thought it through. “Not like you’re related,” she added quickly, knowing me well enough by now to know that my mind immediately went there. “Your powers are compatible. It’s interesting, and… it makes sense that you ended up calling the shadows and the flames.”
I stumbled. “Seriously? You don’t think my reaction was a little excessive? I’m full on kicking my own ass at the moment over how I acted.”
She shrugged. “When my family was destroyed, I went on a destructive campaign that lasted sixty years. You got yourself together pretty fast, in my opinion.”
Sixty. Years.
Yeah, okay, so maybe she did get it and wasn’t judging me at all. It was actually nice to have someone in my corner, and maybe when we got to the bottom of the mystery of what the actual fuck I was, Angel and I could spend some time working on our bond. I’d like to see it step up to the next level, just in case she ever needed me for the same support she always offered me.
For now, though, we had far greater concerns to overthink and unnecessarily stress about.
“What do you expect will happen now that the Shadow Realm door is no longer barred?” I asked when we reached the veil leading into the library.
Angel didn’t answer until we’d stepped through to the other side. “No one has any idea. It’s been barred longer than most have lived, and for the rest of us, only time will tell what has changed in that realm.”
Well, damn. That was legitimately not even a tiny bit reassuring.
Just as she walked toward the crowds gathered near the Shadow Realm door, I had a sudden thought. Turning to the magical white button, I slapped my hand against it. “Directory.”
When the blueprint of the library appeared, I wasted no time pressing the Shadow Realm door. Angel returned to my side, and if her expression was any indication, she was as curious as I was to see if it said the same thing as last time: Shadow Realm: Information unknown. Critical error.
There was a ding, and we both stared in silence.
“That’s new,” she breathed.
Shadow Realm: Built on the ancient mists of yin and yang energy. The royals are the supreme rulers, keeping under their control the creatures, except those that roam in The Grey Lands.
“Holy shit,” I said, eyeballing the directory like it held all the answers. “The doorway is really open.”
The truth of that had finally hit me. The realm was freaking open. Shadow would have no more use for me. He could finally get his revenge, and… what would become of me and my life here?
Why did I suddenly feel like I was about to be homeless? Even worse, kicked out of my favorite places in the world: the libraries. My heart squeezed tightly, and my hands started to sweat as I wrung them together.
I could give up a lot, but I wasn’t sure I could stop living among the knowledge and beauty and ancient history so prevalent in the Library of Knowledge and the lair. This place had burrowed its way into my soul, and I couldn’t let it go.
It would destroy me.
“Let us go see what has transpired with this new development,” Angel said, nudging me toward the main section of the library.
Feeling like I was the ancient, thousand-year-old being, I sighed. “Formal talk, hey? Must be serious.”
She managed not to roll her eyes at me, but I knew she wanted to. She was just too mature and badass to bother with such a human gesture. “I’m just worried about what we might walk into, and whether or not I can protect you. We need all the information we can gather because eventually something will exit from the realm, and right now you’re vulnerable.”
I snorted, hobbling after her like I was eighty years older than my current age of… Twenty-three. At some point, I’d had a birthday, but no one cared when most of my friends were in their thousands. “You know I’m the one who broke through the lock on the door”—with zero idea of how I did it—“and controlled a bunch of shadow creatures so that Shadow could get them locked away. I think I’m the one who’ll be taking care of all of you.”
She laughed, a beautiful tinkling sound. At the same time, she sent her wings out to stop the crowds from knocking into us. “Big talk from someone walking at a ninety-degree angle.”
“Gods, I would kill for an energy boost of some form,” I moaned. “It’s weird because I’m exhausted, but it’s more than just a physical thing. It feels almost soul deep.”
The closer we moved to the Shadow Realm door, the more crowded the area got. Angel eventually had to tuck her wings back in because there was literally no room for them. We started pushing our way forward.
“Tell me everything that happened from when you were captured by the shifters,” she said, taking in the scene, tendrils of worry finally seeping into her tone.
Sticking close to Angel, since she was the muscle getting us through, I detailed quickly—and quietly—what had transpired from the moment I’d left the library in the arms of two dumbfuck shifters. Shifters I still had to murder.
I finished up with how I’d called the mists and creatures, which had finally torn through the spell on the realm doorway.
Angel listened to the entire story before speaking. “Do you believe Shadow when he says that Dannie was born in his realm and couldn’t have been killed?”
“I have to until proven otherwise. For my own sanity.” Most of the pain was dulled now, just a sliver of aching hollowness that would remain until I saw her again.
She nodded. “I haven’t known him to be a liar,” she admitted. “I mean, he would conceal information if he felt it wasn’t relevant, or for other reasons—he’s a secretive beast. But I don’t know him to outright lie.”
“I agree.”
And I did. Shadow was a lot of things, most of them annoying as fuck, but he wasn’t a liar. Nope, he was more along the lines of a sneaky bastard.
When we got through the last of the onlookers—what was with all the Brolder animal asses taking up all the room in here?—we reached six broad shoulders. The kings of the Solaris System had formed a semi-circle around the door, blocking it completely from view.
Shadow and his merry band of assholes.
As if he’d felt my energy—or scented me—the beast turned, his eyes running across my features. No doubt copping an eyeful of one exhausted, hot mess.
“Sunshine,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument. “Get your ass into bed.”
Len, the silvery fae, opened his mouth, but a single dark look from Shadow had him backing off, both hands held up in front of him. His expression was all innocent, like he’d never think or say anything untoward or sexual in nature. We all knew better.
I ignored them both, choosing to speak with Reece, whom I felt might actually provide me with accurate information. “What’s happening with the door?”
He set those intense blue eyes on me, with their impossibly long eyelashes, and I swallowed hard. Shadow the second was too hot for his own good. Just like Shadow the first. “The spell is broken, but the door has not been used yet.” He shook his head. “How did you manage what the rest of us couldn’t in thousands of years?”
I shrugged. “I got pissed off?” Vast, epically vast, understatement. “Never fuck with a woman scorned, and all that jazz.”
There was a minute of silence, until Len started to laugh, which set a couple of them off. Even Galleli, with his gold wings tucked neatly against his back, cracked a smile. “Remind me never to upset Mera,” Lucien said with a chuckle. “Unless I want to find myself turned into a puddle of blood.”
Ignoring the idiots in the room, I focused on Shadow. “Are you done with me now?” The laughter died off, and there was no evidence of a smile on any one of their faces. I wondered if they’d misunderstood the intent of my question. “Will you send me back to Earth?” I pushed.
Shadow turned his huge body toward me, crowding closer, and I stood my ground so we were near touching. “Do you want to leave?”
I swallowed roughly, my body going haywire at being this close to him. We’d had that one night together in Faerie, and since then, life had been a shitshow, and I’d had no chance to really think about what had happened. But my body remembered. The way he’d buried his head between my thighs, his talented tongue that had brought me to orgasm more times than I could have imagined…
Shadow leaned right down so he could run his nose along my neck—unsurprisingly, this dude had a lot of shifter tendencies. “You smell delicious, Sunshine.”
He could scent my arousal; I didn’t bother to get embarrassed about it. But I did need him to focus. “Are you sending me back to Earth now that you’ve achieved your goal of getting into the Shadow Realm?”
My words were clipped and brittle. Maybe it was the reality of leaving hitting me hard, but all of a sudden, I was desperate to stay. I wasn’t done; there was so much more here that I had to explore.
He reached out and brushed back a lock of my red hair, his hold on the strands almost possessive. “Answer my question, Sunshine.” The low voice vibrated through me, settling somewhere… quite low. “Do you want to leave?”
“No.” The absolute truth of that was slamming through me with the force of a bullet. “I have so much more to experience and learn; I’ve only just gotten started.”
The hand holding on to my hair shifted, sliding farther through the long, somewhat tangled strands so he could gently tug my head back. Our gazes met with a searing connection, energy almost visible in the air. He was so much taller than me that immediately my neck ached, but as his strong fingers caressed my scalp, the last thing I would do was complain.
“I need to know what you are, Sunshine,” he said softly, and it almost sounded like a threat. “You’re not going anywhere until the mystery is unraveled. The fact that you broke a near two-thousand-year-old spell on a door when no one else could, tells me it’s in my best interest to unravel your mystery.”
“So I’m staying?” I confirmed.
“Yes. You’re still mine. For now.”
Relief almost crushed me to my knees—not that I’d ever admit that to the beast before me.
“When are you heading into the Shadow Realm?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’m not sure, but probably not today. I have some preparations to make first.”
“What do I do while you’re in the realm?”
A perfect smirk appeared on his face. “It’s cute that you think I’d leave you here unsupervised.” He shook his head. “Nope, Sunshine. You’re coming with me. We’re going to figure out your connection to my world if it’s the last thing we do.”
With those ominous words, he stepped aside, and I saw the Shadow Realm doorway for the first time. Gone was the black smoke, and in its place was a solid black door. The only black door in the library.
And apparently, I would soon be exploring this realm. A world that had not been visited by outsiders for thousands of years.
No problem.
