Page 9 of Shadow Master
He was watching me carefully, looking for a crack in my armor, some emotion, some concern for the woman who’d given birth to me.
He wasn’t going to find any. When it came to my mother, there was nothing but an empty hole. “Good. She deserves it, and you”—I canted my head—“you deserve to die without an heir.”
“Enough!” Winterlock’s voice was an icy blizzard. “There is a menace in the mortal world that threatens us all, and there is a threat to our haven here. We are trapped for now, and we must work together to survive.”
Well, that was something I could agree with.
“We must make do with the resources we have,” he said. “AndIwill ensure we are led to victory just as my people did centuries ago.” His eyes blazed in my direction. “You will hand me the pin, girl.”
Several liveried nightbloods advanced toward me.
Fuck this shit. I could fight them off, hurt them, but we needed the bodies, we needed able-bodied men and women to fight the fomorians. Only a fool didn’t recognize when they were outnumbered.
I raised my hand containing the pin just as a roar filled the room. It bounced off the ceilings and walls and battered my eardrums. Everyone looked toward the entrance, and there, framed in the archway, was my bestie, Harmon.
His torso was bare, gray, and stone-like, and his pants looked as if they were about to rip because they didn’t belong to him. He must have stolen them from someone on the Academy grounds because his would have been eaten away by the mist.
Was there a student running around pantless?
Focus.
He hunched to fit through the arch, his eyes glowing green with deathly intent.
“Touch her and die.”
There was no mistaking what he meant. He stomped into the room, and everyone backed up.
He came to a standstill behind me. “Justice is Shadow Master.”
Orion dragged his gaze from Harmon down to me. “This is the unfortunate cadet, I assume.”
Murmurs broke out among the gathered council members and their kin. They were staring, ogling Harmon like he was a specimen. I wanted to gouge out their eyes.
I stepped closer to my friend as anger tightened my gut. “His name is Harmon, and you can fucking address him directly.” I bared my teeth. “Unless you want your guts spattered all over the floor.”
“Hyde?” Orion flicked a quick glance Archer’s way before returning his attention to me.
Yeah, Harmon had given the magnate pause. He may have a tech empire, but here, cut off from Faerie, his power had limits. He couldn’t hurt me without getting his hands dirty, and he knew it.
Hyde sighed and shrugged, all nonchalant. “Aside from the fact that if you try and take the pin, Harmon will flatten you, you’ll also lose the cadets.” He paused a moment to let his words sink in. “They won’t fight for you. You’re an outsider. You haven’t trained with them. You don’t know their world.”
“But you do,” Orion insisted.
Hyde’s smile was mirthless. “Yes, but they won’t listen to me. They watched Henrich give the pin to Justice. She is their Shadow Master, whether you like it or not.”
“Henrich choose Justice,” Harmon added in his deep, gravelly voice.
“You need her, Orion,” Hyde said. “Because you need the cadets. They’re the only soldiers we have with experience in the mist. It’s not like you can bring any more potentials from the outside, now is it?”
Orion pouted in thought. He was so not feeling this idea.
It was my job to convince him, to put aside the animosity his presence provoked and rise above it. “Listen. What we need most right now is men to patrol the mists. Men willing to don armor and work with the cadets to keep the AM posts working. If the posts go down, the fomorians will attack in force. We can’t let that happen. There is no time to debate.”
Orion looked me straight in the eye, but his words weren’t for me. “Brunner, recruit all the strongest, fastest students.”
“They aren’t equipped to fight,” Brunner said.
I smiled thinly. “Well, they’re going to have to learn. No one’s coming to save us. We’re on our own. We have no other choice.”
