Jessa Slade: Forged of Shadows

Behind her closed eyes, the tempest of the soulflies twinkled like a frozen sea of stars from when the universe was newly born.

Liam whispered her name against her lips.

In a heart-stopping reverberation, the white glow burst, and the real world returned, harsh and bright with color even in the dark of night.

In this realm, the tenebrae—malice, ferales, and salambes—were a wild tangle of ether and distorted flesh. The talyan struggled on all sides.

Jilly slipped from Liam’s arms even as he unleashed the hammer in a single move of lethal beauty. She flattened her palm between his shoulder blades, and her pulse raced at the deadly sensuality of his blacksmith strength pitted against a foe that he would bend and break.

She fisted her hand in his coat as he swung, and the hammer swept the soulflies on a tsunami of etheric energy, blasting them toward the salambes. The salambes fled ahead of the bright flecks to bury themselves in the empty haint husks.

The soulflies, drawn in tow, stuck, half melted in the haints.

One salambe, embedded in its haint, shrieked. The malice took up the chant. But they backed away. The salambe, its smoking orange leaking into the night, strained to jump free as Liam approached, hammer at the ready.

But it couldn’t get away, locked down by the shredded scrap of soul, shining on the haint’s forehead like an echo of the solvo stars that had blossomed over Dory’s empty flesh.

Down the line, the haints staggered drunkenly as the trapped salambes struggled to free themselves. Liam swung again, Jilly lending her teshuva’s strength, to arc another wave of soulflies across the battlefield of the street.

A few salambes fled to the shadows, malice in a black tide around them.

They split and wove around one huge form that did not flee.

“I will not be trapped,” Corvus cried. “Not by these.”

His djinni—half again as tall as any of the salambes—towered over him, a poisonous yellow mushroom cloud that pushed the soulflies away.

But the tiny white flecks crept closer to the trembling gladiator body.

Ferales, never the sharpest pins in the voodoo doll of demonic influence, flailed through the fight, inattentive to the turning tide. The talyan attacked with renewed vigor. With the salambes trapped inside the faltering haint bodies, the talyan were able to close and bring their teshuva to bear to drain the tenebrae. The clashing demonic emanations shivered the rain as it fell.

Liam advanced on Corvus. Jilly followed close, her shroud of soulflies lighting the night.

“You’ve lost.” Liam’s voice thrummed with demonic lows.

Corvus snarled. “That never stops your teshuva.” He threw up his hands, a thrust of ether that scattered the flecks of soul.

But they returned, aimless yet tenacious as butterflies in the wind.

Corvus recoiled. “You can’t win. There are not enough of you to stand against my darkness.”

Jilly stepped forward. “We have each other.”

Corvus’s lip curled in disdain. “As we took your sister for our own, we will take that too. Have you talyan not yet discovered the name of this power that pierces the Veil? But you taught it to us, this love that is a weapon to span heaven and hell.”

He meant to wound her, weaken her. Liam drew her close, his hand wrapped around her to cradle the reven , the place where the knife had sunk and severed her—though she hadn’t known it at the time—from the life she’d had before.

She straightened her shoulders against Liam’s chest. “You can’t take from me what I’ve lost myself. I brought me here. And I choose a new path.”

To Liam, Jilly’s soft words felt straight and sharp as a freshly honed blade, cutting him to the quick. Did she think she’d lost all chance at love? God, hadn’t he believed that when he’d come to understand all the forces arrayed against the league? But he wanted to be beside her, whatever she chose. And wasn’t that love?

There was so much in the way, though. He circled, drawing her with him, and the net of soulflies tightened.

“You’ll never find the way.” Despite his words, Corvus lowered his head and took another lumbering step back. “Just as your teshuva can’t stop fighting after they’ve lost, we’ve watched you talyan chase what you can’t have.” He glowered at them, but his lazy eye wept, and the tear was sheer as glass, only human. “What you shouldn’t have.”

Hearing words he’d said spoken in the djinn- man’s lisping grunt made Liam’s skin crawl. Under his hand, Jilly wavered as if she felt it too, a shudder that went deep into bone. The pale curtain of soulflies shivered and parted, letting through a glimpse of darkness that threatened beyond, a hell on earth always waiting. Corvus smiled.

Both the djinn-man’s eyes pinned Liam with vicious glee. Liam read the satisfaction in that glance that said he’d brought this trouble on himself.

But he’d finally figured out he was happy when trouble came in a xiao -pixie package with badass boots. And the tenebraeternum wasn’t so tough when he had a rebel of his own at his side.

He smiled back at Corvus, feeling like they understood each other better now. “Shouldn’t? Maybe. But I want it. And come teshuva, league, and all your armies of shadows, I won’t be afraid to ask if she can love me in return.”

Corvus roared and leapt, the djinni in the fore.

Liam met the leap halfway. He swung the hammer with all his human and teshuva force. Hammer and djinni collided, and the night blew apart in a shower of soulflies and stars.

Liam rolled. Shards of slagged metal clanked around him. His head rang with a hollow sound, and his hands stung and burned. Had his forge exploded?

The street around him was a shambles. Street? Not the forge, then. Light posts bent. Concrete and asphalt buckled. Bodies lay strewn. . . .

In a cold sheet of terror, the drifting memories of his past vaporized.

“Jilly!”

He staggered to his feet, looking around wildly.

There, just a few steps away—a glint of blue against the silver rain.

He dropped to his knees, oblivious to the figures rising around them. Friend or foe, he didn’t know, didn’t care. Not if she didn’t open those golden eyes and light his darkness.

Because none of this mattered without her.

He turned her face up to the rain. Her dusky skin was blanched, even her lips leached of color. Her silver jacket had been ripped open. A trickle of blood joined the marks of her reven to add intricacy to the butterfly tattooed above her breast.

He touched the spot. It was just a shallow wound, not fatal. But she didn’t rouse. Though she lay in his arms, he couldn’t find her with his demon senses.

Where had she gone?

“Ah, Jilly.” His voice was ragged. “What have you done to me?”

A form loomed over him. He didn’t glance up as he stripped out of his coat and swathed her gently in its folds.

“Niall?” Archer crouched beside him. “We need to—”

“Take care of it.”

“But—”

Liam snarled. “I have given enough. I will not give her too.”

Archer backed away, moving closer to Sera.

Liam didn’t miss the knowing light in their eyes. Nor did he care that he was following the talya bond down a path that led he knew not where. Since the soldier’s gun had smashed into his temple and blinded him, he’d never seen so clearly, not even with the teshuva’s power. He would make his way to the heart, never mind the risk.

He wrapped his fingers around her wrist below the bracelet, feeling for her pulse. Thready, distant. Since she’d been resonating with the energies the bracelet stole from the tenebrae, the shock wave of his clash with Corvus’s djinni must have hit her with terrible force. “Come back,” he whispered. “Without you, this means nothing.”