Page 124 of Curse of Darkness
“I am?”
He closes his eyes. “For giving me a shred of hope.”
I’ve seen the way the two of them dance around each other for centuries. “I think it’s more than a shred.”
“She’s been avoiding me ever since,” he says quietly.
I head toward the sword rack. “It’s what Eris does. She retreats when her emotions are off-kilter.”
“Fuck.” Finn breathes out explosively. “I think I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No, I don’t,” he says. Then his eyes narrow and he steps in front of me as I reach the sword rack. “But that doesn’t mean you’ve derailed my plan of attack. You’ve already got a sword. You just need to use it.”
Darkyn steel.
My hand flexes. “Okay, fine.”
Returning to the center of the yard, I stir the shadows within my soul. A deathly chill runs down my forearm, Death rising within me.
I’m alone in the dark.
In the silence.
In the nothingness….
A thousand stars stretch through an endless sky above me, but all I can feel is the cold….
The shadows evaporate from my fingertips.
“I’ve got an idea.” Finn takes a step toward me, his blade dipping low in a taunt. “Maybe you need to be under threat.”
He launches toward me, the sword cutting through the air.
I twist out of the way, wrenching myself back again when he slashes in the other direction. Wild, ringing swings he can afford to make, since I’m unarmed.
“Concentrate,” he barks.
I duck beneath a blow, slamming my shoulder into his midriff and sending him catapulting over my back. “Why don’tyouconcentrate?”
Finn’s answering grin as he circles me tells me everything. He wants me pissed off. Because when you want to punch someone’s teeth out, you’re not thinking about the reason you’re afraid to summon the shadows.
He comes at me again.
I duck out of the way, using the outside of my forearm to divert the sweep of his blade.
I can almost feel my own forging to life in my hand. Almost.
“Let me rise,” whispers Death.
“Fuck you.”
Finn forces me back, back…. I catch a glimpse of the wall behind me and understand exactly what he intends.
Evaporating into shadows, I plunge through him, reforming on the other side. The second my foot is solid, I spin and slam my boot right in the center of his back. Finn slams into the very wall he was trying to trap me against.
“Asshole,” he says, pushing off the stone.
