Page 3 of Crown of Storm and Silence
Not everyone had been wise enough to flee. A handful remained—the innkeeper who couldn't abandon his livelihood, the blacksmith too proud to run, the village elder too old to care about death anymore. They watched me from doorways and windows with the resigned expressions of those who knew their choices had already been made for them.
Windows slam shut as we ride through the cobbled streets, shadows peeling off my skin.
I can taste their terror in the air—sweet and metallic, bitter coins dissolved in nectar. Delicious. Let them cower in their little hovels. Let them whisper prayers to gods who've clearly developed a sense of humor about my existence.
The inn stands at the village's heart, its wooden sign creaking in the wind: The Maiden's Rest. The name mocks me with its promise of peace.
I dismount, my boots hitting the cobblestones with enough force to crack them. The innkeeper appears in his doorway, takes one look at my face, and immediately begins backing away.
"Lord Kaan," he stammers, bowing so low his forehead nearly touches his knees. "We are honored by your?—"
"A woman," I interrupt, my voice cutting through his groveling. "Dark hair, unusual eyes. When was she here?"
His face goes ashen. "My lord, we've had many travelers?—"
My shadows surge forward, wrapping around his throat with delicate care. "Think. Carefully."
"Yes! Yes, there was a woman," he gasps, clawing at the darkness. "Dark hair, what I could see of it. Kept her hood up most of the time, but when she paid, it slipped back for just a moment. The eyes—they caught the lamplight. Golden, molten gold in lamplight. But my lord, the light was dim, and I was busy with other customers. I could be mistaken."
"What else?"
"She spoke to no one that I saw. Paid in gold coin. Left early the next morning with the merchant caravan heading east." He's trembling now, sweat beading despite the evening chill. "That's all I remember, I swear it."
I release him, watching with satisfaction as he crumples to his knees, gasping for air. "Show me her room."
The chamber he leads me to is sparse, utilitarian. I examine every inch—the bed where she could have slept, the window she could have gazed through, the washbasin where her hands could have touched the porcelain. My shadows probe for any trace of her essence, any lingering warmth.
Nothing. Just the lingering scent of ordinary soap and nothingness.
"Anyone else see her clearly?" I demand.
The innkeeper shakes his head frantically. "She kept to herself, my lord. Spoke to no one. Left early before most guests were awake."
Another dead end. Another phantom.
"My lord," Emir ventures as I emerge from the inn, having found nothing but cowering families and empty answers. "Perhaps we should?—"
A sound cuts through the evening air from behind the inn—laughter, muffled but achingly familiar. My dead heart lurches against my ribs, wild with systematic hunger. I follow the sound through the gathering dusk, tracking whispered voices and rustling fabric deeper into the forest. The laughter has long since faded, replaced by other sounds—breathless gasps, murmured endearments, the unmistakable rhythm of passion. By the time I find them in the clearing, they're lost in each other, oblivious to the monster closing in.
She's pressed against an ancient birch, her back arched in a bow drawn taut, head thrown back in what I recognize withvisceral clarity as ecstasy. Dark hair spills over her shoulders in midnight rivers flowing free. The man—tall, golden-haired, probably the kind who calls himself a "free spirit" and thinks that makes him interesting—has his hands on her waist, his mouth at her throat.
They're fucking. He's fucking her with the graceless enthusiasm of youth and the technique of someone who learned about sex from tavern stories. His hips move with all the finesse of a blacksmith's hammer, and honestly, it's almost insulting to watch. If you're going to steal someone's wife, at least have the courtesy to do it properly.
In the shifting moonlight and shadow, with hope fracturing my perception, for one agonizing moment, her silhouette could be Nesilhan. The height was right, the way her hair caught the light familiar enough to stop my heart. But as she turns to gasp something to her lover, the moonlight reveals her true features, and hope dies with devastating clarity.
The cheekbones are wrong, the jawline too sharp, the eyes brown instead of gold: just another stranger, another innocent caught in the web of my methodical madness.
Yet the rage that erupts from me is months of accumulated fury given form. Months of systematic disappointment, of cataloguing failure after failure, of dying by degrees in a world that no longer makes sense without her presence. In my fractured mind, she becomes every woman who isn't Nesilhan, every face that mocks me with its failure to be the one I've lost.
"You know," I say, stepping into the clearing with shadows trailing behind me, "you should angle your shaft more toward her center. That would hit her sweet spot, and she'd be coming for you faster than bad news travels."
The man freezes mid-thrust, which is honestly an improvement on his previous rhythm. He turns, eyes wide withthe particular terror of a man caught with his pants down literally.
"Who are you? What do you want from us?" he shouts, covering the woman's body with his own in a gesture that might be noble if it weren't delivered by a man whose dangly bits are swaying in the evening breeze like wind chimes made of flesh. Really, there's something profoundly unintimidating about naked bravado—it's rather difficult to project menace when your manhood is doing its best impression of a frightened turtle.
"Your worst nightmare," I reply, and even as the words leave my mouth, I can hear how perfectly cliché they are. "Though really, I prefer to think of myself as more of a cautionary tale with excellent timing and questionable life choices."
The hours of riding had given my shadows time to regenerate, fed by the darkness of approaching night. My shadows extend without conscious thought, moving faster than regret, embracing him with silk-wrapped death. They lift him above the ground with the ease of lifting a child, and I watch this with detached fascination.
