Page 59 of Branded By Shadow
I closed my eyes, shutting out her offer of life, and focused my entire being on the impossible cold.Damon?The name was not a word, but a prayer, a hypothesis, a frantic question aimed at the abyss.
The phantom pull grew stronger, more insistent. And as I answered its call with the full force of my will, the darkness began to respond. It seeped from the hairline cracks in the ancient stone, thin, inky lines of shadow threading through the marble. It pooled around my hands, dark and viscous.
The air turned icy, my breath misting in front of my face. I heard gasps of alarm from the Council members, but I couldn’t pull away. The shadows weren’t hostile. They weren’t consuming. They felt… familiar. They recognized me.
They recognized the mating mark at my throat, the raw, severed ends of a bond that had been torn rather than naturally dissolved. Where Helena had cut our connection in this world, something still existed in the realm beyond. A thread of shadow and dangerous love that refused to accept annihilation as final.
The Shadow Realm had always craved me, and that hadn’t changed. Not even now, when Damon was gone. And from the echoes of my shattered bond, an image resurfaced.
That of Orpheus and Eurydice.
Everyone knew the story. When death had claimed his mate, Orpheus had walked straight into the underworld itself to reclaim her. His defiance had cursed us all with our secondary natures, but it had also saved his wife.
In the claiming, when the void had tried to consume me, Damon had become my Orpheus. He had refused to let the darkness have me. But now, the roles were reversed. He was the one lost to the underworld, and it was my turn to descend.
The shadows deepened and spread, following veins in the marble that pulsed with a dark, impossible heartbeat. An archway began to take shape in the floor, a portal carved fromshadow and need, leading down into a darkness that shouldn’t exist.
“By the gods,” Julian croaked out behind me. “The Shadow Realm doesn’t respond to outsiders. This cannot be.”
But it was happening. The portal yawned beneath my hands, stairs of solid shadow leading down into depths that existed between worlds. And I could feel something calling from within, faint, fractured, but unmistakably him. He was not gone. He was waiting.
Alexander’s eyes widened, and for the first time, he looked genuinely lost. “What have you done?”
“Nothing,” I said. I stared into the abyssal depths, into the promise of reunion. “It knows me.”
“Cora, get away from there!” Helena’s fingers clamped around my arm, her grip tight enough to bruise. Panic flooded her scent, her sweet perfume turning sharp with an animal fear. “You don’t understand what you’re dealing with! No one comes back from there. No one!”
I looked down at her perfectly manicured hand, then up into her terrified blue eyes. Her fear was a confirmation. “Then I guess I’ll be the first.”
I pulled free from her grasp. The portal pulsed, a living heart of darkness responding to my resolve. I could smell his scent rising from its depths, carried on winds that shouldn't exist.
“Don’t be a fool!” Alexander snarled, the mask of the politician burned away. He moved, his body a blur of speed. It was a final, instinctual attempt to stop me from throwing myself away.
He never reached me.
A wall of muscle and scarred flesh moved to intercept him. Marcus Dred planted himself directly in Alexander’s path, his arms crossed over his massive chest. The Ares Alpha’s scent, old blood and honorable combat, filled the space between them.
“Get out of my way, Dred,” Alexander hissed, lightning crackling at his fingertips.
“No.” Marcus didn’t even flinch. “I’ve seen enough maneuvering for one day. The girl made a warrior’s choice. You will honor it.”
“This isn’t about honor! It’s about—”
“Your reasons don’t matter,” Marcus cut him off. “Only hers do.”
Alexander’s face twitched in pure, thwarted fury. He was being held at bay by the simplest code in existence. And I realized I’d underestimated Marcus.
I looked at him, at the scarred warrior who had just stepped between me and Alexander. I saw something in his eyes that wasn’t pity. It was a flicker of grim, respectful understanding. In his world of blood and battle, my choice had meaning. He would not let it be dishonored.
He gave me a quick nod, acknowledging me in a way he hadn’t before. “Go, Cora Ellis. I understand now.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. The shadow stairs waited, patient as death and twice as certain. I took a breath, the air from the portal filling my lungs, tasting of him. I stepped forward.
The marble edge crumbled beneath my foot. The last thing I heard was Helena’s broken scream echoing off ancient stone.
Then shadow swallowed me whole. I fell toward the man who held half my soul, ready to drag him back from whatever hell had claimed him. Or die trying.
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