Page 19 of Crown of Storm and Silence
Sinan stands there, framed in golden lamplight, his storm-gray eyes immediately cataloguing my disheveled state with the thoroughness of someone trained to assess threats. The gentle merchant mask he usually wears slips for just a moment, revealing something sharper, more dangerous beneath; it’s the same darkness I saw when the bandits attacked.
"Elif?" His voice carries urgent concern as he reaches for my arm. "What's wrong? What happened?" He’s looking over my shoulder, assessing a threat that isn’t there. He glances back at me, brows furrowed, and his fingers reach up to touch my tear-stained cheeks.
The moment his fingers brush my skin, everything inside me recoils. Not from pain, from wrongness. His touch, which has been nothing but gentle comfort these past days, suddenly feels like betrayal against my flesh. Like accepting warmth from one man while belonging to another.
I jerk away so violently I nearly stumble, and the hurt that flashes across his features makes guilt crash over me in waves.
"I'm sorry," I gasp, backing away from him, from the safety he represents, from the future he wants to offer. "It's not you. It's?—"
The words die in my throat as the sky above us turns black as night, stars disappearing behind clouds that writhe like living things. Sinan's head snaps upward, his warrior's instincts recognizing unnatural phenomena when he sees it.
"What in the name of the gods is happening?" he breathes, one hand moving instinctively to where his sword would rest.
But I know. Deep in my bones, in the place where memory should live but only shadows remain, I know exactly what causes darkness to swallow the light. I know who commands night to fall at his whim.
The man from the river. The stranger who isn't a stranger at all.
As if summoned by my thoughts, he emerges from the gathering darkness like vengeance given form. The shadows don't just cling to him, they worship him, writhing around his tall frame like devoted lovers who can't bear to be parted from his skin. Each step he takes seems to draw the light fromthe world around him, until the very air grows thick with an otherworldly twilight that has nothing to do with the time of day.
Tall and imposing, he moves with the deadly grace of something that has spent centuries perfecting the art of being dangerous. But it's not just his movement that steals my breath—it's the raw, devastating beauty of him that makes my knees weak and my soul ache with a recognition I can't name.
He is magnificent in the way that fallen angels must be—all sharp angles and aristocratic features carved from marble and moonlight by an artist who understood that true beauty must always carry a hint of ruin. His hair falls in dark waves that seem to drink in what little light remains, framing a face that belongs in ancient paintings depicting gods and demons locked in eternal conflict.
But it's his eyes that destroy me completely.
Dark eyes that are shot through with flecks of flame, they burn with an intensity that makes my very soul feel transparent, as if he can see through flesh and bone to the deepest chambers of my heart. They hold centuries of knowledge, of power, of desires that could reshape the natural order to suit his whims. When they fix on me, I feel stripped bare, seen in ways that should terrify me, but instead, they make something traitorous deep inside me sing with desperate, inexplicable longing.
Every line of his body speaks of controlled violence, of power held carefully in check. His shoulders are broad beneath what appears to be a perfectly tailored coat that manages to look both elegant and threatening. His hands—gods help me, his hands are beautiful and terrible, long-fingered and graceful. Hands that could create or destroy with equal ease, that could caress or kill depending on his mood.
He is darkness made flesh, shadow given form and terrible purpose. Raw, devastating beauty wrapped in malevolence so complete it takes my breath away. Everything about himscreams predator, apex hunter, creature of nightmare, and forbidden desire. Yet some deep, traitorous part of me wants nothing more than to surrender to whatever he represents, to give myself over to the darkness he carries like other men carry light.
Standing there in the supernatural twilight he's painted across my peaceful village, he looks like a king surveying a kingdom he's about to claim through conquest. The very ground seems to bend to his will, shadows spreading outward from his feet to caress everything within reach. Even the cottage behind me feels small and fragile in comparison to the magnitude of his presence.
And those burning dark eyes are fixed on Sinan with murderous intent.
"Step away from her," he says, shadows surge around him in response to his words, reaching toward Sinan.
Sinan moves immediately, positioning himself between me and this dark apparition. His hand finds his sword hilt, though we both know steel will be useless against whatever this man truly is.
"I don't know who you are," Sinan says, his voice steady despite the supernatural terror pressing down on us from all sides, "but you're frightening her. Leave. Now."
The stranger laughs, and the sound is velvet hiding razors, beautiful and dangerous and sharp enough to draw blood. "Frightening her? Oh, that's rich. That's absolutely precious." His dark eyes narrow, fixing on Sinan with the focused attention of a predator selecting its prey. "Tell me, hero, do you know what it feels like to have someone steal your reason for breathing?"
"I said leave?—"
The shadows strike without warning, erupting from the darkness with the speed of striking serpents. They wrap around Sinan's throat, his wrists, lifting him off the ground with casualease while he struggles against bonds that have no physical form to fight.
"Do you know," the stranger continues, stepping closer while his shadows hold Sinan helpless, "what it feels like to search the entire realm for the woman you love, only to find her letting another man play protector to the child you put inside her?"
The child you put inside her.
The words detonate inside my chest, each syllable shattering something vital. My hand moves instinctively to my belly, and suddenly everything makes terrible, perfect sense. The dreams of dark eyes and shadow-wrapped hands. The wrongness I feel when Sinan touches me. The way my body responds to this dark stranger as if it knows him intimately.
"She doesn't remember you," Sinan manages between gasps, still fighting against the shadows. "Whatever you are, she doesn't?—"
"No," the stranger agrees, his voice dropping to something low and dangerous, shadows beginning to writhe with murderous purpose. "She doesn't. Which makes it so much easier to kill you without having to explain to her afterward why your blood decorates her doorstep."
The darkness around Sinan begins to burn, not with heat, but with something far worse. Cold fire that doesn't consume flesh but devours the very essence of what it touches. Sinan's face contorts in agony as the shadow-fire spreads across his skin, and I realize if I don’t do something, then I'm about to watch him die.
