Page 3 of Cast in Shadow
My heart stuttered violently. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes. I hadn’t heard his voice in ages. To hear him now, in my head, as if a hundred and thirty years hadn’t passed since I’d carved myself out of his life… it would have brought me to my knees if I wasn’t frozen in place by his damned magic.
“Forgive me,” he whispered, and my world went black.
2
I eased my eyes open, holding my magic in a death grip as I tried to get a sense of my surroundings.
I was inside. That much was clear from the rough plaster ceiling above me and the dim light glowing from somewhere off to my right. I’d been laid out on something hard, like a table or counter, but the air was warm enough that I was sweating in my jacket and cargo pants.
It wasn’t a space I knew, and yet, a whisper familiarity tickled my senses. Then I tried to roll my head and realized I couldn’t move. My last few moments in the forest came rushing back.
As if on cue, an unnatural warmth rolled over me, making my limbs tingle like they’d been asleep. Sensation crept along my nerve endings, and dread trickled through my veins as I flexed my fingers and curled my toes. One by one, I tested my other joints, moving like a wooden puppet that had just been animated for the first time in its life.
Emerson had used his magic on me many times before, but always in a consensual way, pulling my control and ravaging mybody. I might have spent the last hundred and thirty years hating him, but for some reason, having him use his power on me like this made me sick to my stomach.
Not to mention furious.
I sat up and swung my legs around, swallowing hard against the acid burning up my throat.
“For what it’s worth, I had hoped to do this differently,” he said from the shadows.
I coughed out a bitter laugh, barely able to contain the whirlwind of emotions churning inside me. So many questions swirled in my mind. Why had he frozen me with his magic? Why would he interfere with my mission? Why did he knock me out and bring me to this place?
But most importantly, how did he find me?
“Why were you following that woman?” he asked. His tone was different now, more demanding.
I shot him a narrow look and instantly regretted it. He looked exactly the same. That stubborn square jaw was as proud as ever. His lips still carried those painfully familiar curves, despite his scowl. And somehow, he still managed to take up all the space in the room.
And what was my traitorous body’s reaction to seeing him? My heart was tripping over itself, unable to find a predictable rhythm. Ice and fire warred in my veins. And my head throbbed with a toxic cocktail of anger, fear, adrenaline, and something I refused to acknowledge.
I pulled in a deep breath to steady myself a little and found my voice. “Is that really how you want to start our first conversation in over a century? With an interrogation?” When I moved to get off the counter, pain ricocheted through my limbs, but they didn’t move an inch.
“No,” Emerson said, stepping closer. “But I will if I need to.”
His strong brow was drawn down, and that unruly dark hairI used to love tangling my fingers in was swept back from his face, like he’d just shoved a hand through it. There was no one in the world I should have hated more, but that didn’t stop my mouth from watering at the sight of him.
The pain in my joints eased a little. There was no point in trying to fight him. His magic was as familiar to me as my own. So too was the way his ethereal touch feathered gently across my cheek.
He was the worst kind of trouble. The kind that left me twisted up inside long after I’d fled from him. Yet, even now, after a lifetime apart, my body ached with the memories of how he’d made me feel and the things I’d let him do to me… things I’d begged him to do.
What was wrong with me?
How the hell could he still make my mind spin and my body ache?
“Let me go.” I ground the words out despite the need pulsing between my thighs.
His smirk told me he knew the effect he was having on me, but there was something else lingering in his expression. “I can’t do that.”
“It wasn’t a request.”
“Senna.” My name rolled off his lips in a lover’s whisper, and I closed my eyes.
His voice was a warm blade slowly dragging against old scars, slicing open wounds that had refused to heal cleanly. It was too much. I couldn’t bear to hear him and see him look at me that way. Not when leaving him had cost me so much.
“Let me go, Emerson. This has nothing to do with you.” Thank the gods I still sounded like I had a backbone, because I sure as shit didn’t feel like it.
His energy pulsed around me, closer, until the heat of his body pulsed inches from mine. Except when I dared to open myeyes, he was still a few paces away. “I’m not letting you go.” His gaze raked down my body. “Not yet, anyway.”
