Page 197 of A Kingdom of Shadow and Ash

Mal stiffened.

‘Your fa-father placed you here on pur-purpose.’

Her brows furrowed. Confusion, laced with the barest touch of something dangerously close to fear.

‘My father?’ she asked.

Ash’s lips parted, his breath uneven.

‘Your fa-father is the God of the Dead,’ he said, his voice a whisper swallowed by the storm. ‘The one that created your l-land and the wy-wyverns.’

Mal did not move.

A single beat of silence.

Then her purple eyes widened.

Ash felt the weight of the words before he even spoke them. Felt them like the shifting of the cosmos, like the tremble of theuniverse itself.

‘And you, Mal Blackburn,’ he exhaled, watching as the truth settled over her like an eclipse, ‘are a god as well. The God of Shadows.’

Tabitha Wysteria tilted her head back, her gaze lifting towards the storm-choked heavens as she wandered the whispering depths of the Forest of Silent Cries. The weight of the curse had lifted—she could feel it unraveling within her bones, loosening its grip on her very essence. And yet, she remained bound.

Something—orsomeone—still held her tethered to this realm, still kept her from stepping through the veil to reunite with Hadrian Blackburn in the afterlife before returning, reborn.

Lightning split the sky in a jagged arc, and when it struck the earth mere feet away, the scent of scorched stone filled the air. From the smoldering ground, a figure stepped forth.

A wyverian.

But not like any wyverian Tabitha had ever known.

His horns—twisted, blackened things—curled like shadows made flesh, their edges as sharp as a blade’s kiss. His form, though lean, carried the power of something ancient, something beyond mortality. Beneath the almost translucent pallor of his skin, black veins pulsed like rivers of darkness. But it was his eyes that froze her—eyes she knew too well.

Eyes that had haunted her since the day she had dared to defy him.

‘Tabitha, Tabitha, Tabitha,’ the wyverian purred, his voice asdeep and resounding as the void between stars. It rolled through the forest like a whisper of impending death, unreal and inescapable.

‘It seems the curse has been lifted, and now you are soeagerto scurry away. Is it fear, I wonder?’ His lips curled, his fanged smile wicked. ‘Are you hoping to slip free before we come to feast on what remains of you?’

Tabitha lifted her chin. Defiant. Unbowed.

‘I am not afraid of you.’

The wyverian cocked his head, amusement flickering in those endless eyes.

‘You placed a curse upon us, Tabitha. And for a hundred years, I was kept from reaching you.’ His gaze swept across the darkened forest, the shadows stretching and writhing as if alive. He lifted his arms, gesturing towards the unseen world beyond. ‘And look at what has become of our little creatures. They are destroying each other.’

He turned back to her, his smile sharper than a dagger's edge.

‘But tell me this—why would you allow the girl to shatter the only thing protecting you? The curse was your shield, and you gave it away.’

Tabitha did not waver. Wouldnotwaver.

‘Because if Mal Blackburn had not broken the curse,’ she said, voice steady, ‘they all would have fallen into eternal slumber. And I—’ Her throat tightened, but she would not falter. ‘I would have been left to wander, alone, without Hadrian. We would not be reborn.’

A pause.

A breath.

---