Page 3 of Shadow Master
Harmon stood there, his gray, stone-like body shrouded in rubble dust. It settled on his skin, almost reverently. His piercing green eyes located me and then focused sharply.
“Justice.” His mouth moved in my name, and then he fell to one knee.
It was only then I noticed the bundle cradled in his arms. A person. A knight.
The knight turned his head to look our way, and recognition shot through me. “Henrich?”
* * *
Devon,Aidan, and Lloyd were in fight mode, weapons ready to attack. It took a second for my brain to make the connection why. They didn’t know this was Harmon, they didn’t know how he’d changed.
“Stop!” I strode over the rubble. “It’s Harmon.”
“Shit,” Devon said.
But I was already by Harmon, crouching to take Henrich from him. Harmon’s eyelids fluttered. He was about to pass out.
Devon and Aidan got to him first, bracing him as he keeled over onto his side.
“What did they do to him?” Aidan muttered.
The other cadets were almost on us now. As I adjusted my grip on Henrich, the troop flanked me. The cadets joined us a moment later, gasping at the sight of Henrich.
“Justice.” Henrich clutched at my arm. “You have to stop them.” Blood bubbled out of his mouth, staining his lips and cutting off his words for a moment. He coughed. “You need to take over. Lead. Lead with your head.” He clasped my hand, and warm blood coated my fingers. Something circular was pressed into my palm. “Take it. Lead. Stop them. Promise me.”
What was he talking about?
“Promise me!” He tried to sit up, and his eyelids fluttered with the effort.
Shit. “I promise. Just rest, and we can…”
But the light had bled out of his eyes, leaving them glazed and lifeless.
He was dead.
I lowered him gently to the ground and slowly unfurled my palm to reveal a metallic disc coated in Henrich’s blood. Even smeared in crimson, the emblem was unmistakable. A raven wreathed in tendrils of smoke. It was the Shadow Master symbol.
It was the Shadow Master pin.
Two
“He’s gone,” one of the cadets said.
I stared at the pin, then up at Lloyd, who was looking at me with an expression I couldn’t decipher.
“More cadets incoming,” Aidan warned.
I stood and held out the pin to Lloyd. “Here, take it.”
He frowned and shook his head. “No. He gave it to you. He wanted you to take over. He wanted you to be Shadow Master.”
“What?” one of the cadets said. I recognized him as a second-year. “He was dying. He probably would have given it to the first person he came across.”
Devon growled low in his throat, and the cadet held up his hands and backed up.
More cadets surrounded us, their faces distraught. Twenty, no thirty. Were there more?
“I’m just saying that Henrich did what any desperate, dying man would do,” the second-year said. “Handed it over to the first person he saw.”
