Page 186 of A Kingdom of Shadow and Ash

‘Why will the curse tell me what created me?’ she whispered. ‘What am I?’

Tabitha smiled, slow and knowing.

‘You, Mal Blackburn,’ she said, ‘are the Princess of Shadows.’

The moment the words left her lips, something inside Mal unlocked.

It was like a key slipping into place, like a door long sealed suddenly thrown open. Her entire body hummed with energy, with power, with something ancient and waiting.

A memory slammed into her, unbidden.

Something watched her from the forest, lurking in the silence.

And it had been waiting.

Waiting for her.

Mal turned, her breath catching as the darkness before her began to twist and churn, pulling together like ink dissolving in water. The shadows bled into form, shaping themselves with an elegance both ethereal and wild.

And then—wings.

A long, serpentine tail. The sinuous arc of a neck that had once curled protectively around her as a child.

A wyvern, but not of flesh and bone—no, this creature was wreathed in mist, its translucent body casting no true shadow of its own, revealing glimpses of the skeletal black trees behind it.

Mal's lips parted, her heart aching with something she could notname. Loss. Longing. Relief.

‘Hello, Nyx,’ she said, raising her hand towards the spectral wyvern. ‘Did you miss me, old friend?’

The beast roared, a sound that seemed to shake the very air around her. It was not the cry of a creature among the living—it was something else entirely. A lament. A greeting. A promise.

‘You once wondered why you were not blessed with a shadow like your siblings,’ Tabitha’s voice drifted through the hush of the forest, her words weaving through the mist that coiled between the trees.

Mal swallowed hard. She remembered. The nights spent chasing her own reflection, searching for something that was not there. The whispered questions to the Seer, the sleepless hours spent staring into darkness, wondering why she alone among her kin was missing a piece of herself.

‘You were always blessed by the gods,’ Tabitha continued, her voice thick with meaning. ‘That is why you were never given a single shadow, Mal. Because you were born with all of them.’

Mal’s throat tightened, her voice barely a whisper. ‘What does that mean?’

Tabitha smiled—a knowing, wicked thing. ‘It means you are their master. Every shadow, every whisper of darkness—it bends to your will. You can summon them. Command them. You, Mal Blackburn, are a shadow-walker. And if you desired, you could raise an army of darkness itself.’

Mal glanced sharply about, her skin tightening as she realised just how many of them were there now. The dead had drawn closer.

Not just close.

They surrounded her.

She felt them—cold, weightless presences pressing against the edges of herawareness. But they did not reach for her, did not lash out. They knelt.

Mal’s stomach curled in on itself. ‘What are they doing?’ she whispered, her fingers trembling as she resisted the urge to step back. ‘Why are they bowing?’

Tabitha’s grin sharpened, her purple eyes gleaming with something unreadable.

‘Because, Mal,’ the witch said, ‘you are their princess. And your true father—’

The air around them thickened, darkened, pulsed. The dead did not rise. They waited.

‘—is their King.’

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