ELARA'S POV
The pain was everywhere.
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Fire burned across my chest like someone was carving into my skin with a white-hot blade.
I clawed at my shirt, desperate to make it stop. The fabric tore easily, and I looked down at my chest.
A mark was appearing on my skin. Black as midnight, glowing with silver light. Intricate symbols twisted together over my heart, burning themselves into existence like a living tattoo.
"What—what did you do to me?" I gasped, looking up at the figure standing in the torn circle.
He was the most terrifying thing I'd ever seen.
And somehow, impossibly, the most beautiful.
Tall and powerful, with midnight-black hair that moved like shadows were woven through it. His skin looked pale in the darkness, marked with silver scars that pulsed with dying light. Massive wings spread behind him—tattered and scarred, but still magnificent. Curved horns rose from his head like a dark crown.
But it was his eyes that made my knees weak. Molten amber, ancient and knowing, staring at me like he could see through my soul.
Then he stumbled.
His hand pressed against his chest, right over his heart. His face twisted with pain and something else—shock.
"No," he snarled, his voice making the air vibrate. "Not you. Not again."
He tore at his own shirt, and I saw it. The same mark burning onto his chest. Identical to mine. The symbols glowing with the same silver light.
We both had the same mark. Over our hearts. Connected somehow.
Through that mark, I felt... him. His emotions crashed into me like a wave. Rage. Hunger. And underneath it all, grief so deep I thought I might drown in it.
"What is this?" I demanded, trying to sound brave even though I was shaking. "What's happening?"
His laugh was bitter and cold. "You summoned me, little scholar. Did you not read what the ritual actually does?"
"I—I studied it for years! It's supposed to be a historical curiosity, a ritual that never worked—"
"It worked." He moved closer, fast as lightning. One moment he was across the chamber, the next he was right in front of me. I pressed back against the cold wall, trapped. "That mark is a soul tether. The rarest magic in existence. Your soul reached across the void and claimed mine."
"That's impossible," I whispered. "I'm nobody. I don't have that kind of power—"
"Clearly you do." His hand slammed against the wall beside my head, caging me in. I could feel heat radiating from him, smell something like cinnamon and smoke and darkness. "Tell me your name. Your real name."
"Elara Thorne."
"Liar." His other hand wrapped around my throat—not squeezing, just holding. A threat. "The name you used in the ritual. The one your soul knows as truth."
My heart hammered against my ribs. Those amber eyes burned into mine, demanding honesty.
"Elara the Forsaken," I finally said, the words tasting like ash in my mouth.
Something cracked in his expression. Pain flashed across his face before his usual cold mask returned.
"Of course you are," he said quietly. Then louder, with dark amusement: "Well, little forsaken one, congratulations. You've just bound yourself to the most hunted creature in existence."
"What do you mean? Who are you?"
His smile was terrifying. "I am Kaelen. The Shadow King. The realm-breaker. The monster your precious Seraphim tell stories about to scare their children." He leaned closer, his breath warm against my ear. "And that mark means your life is now tied to mine. You die, I die. I die, you die. We're bound together until one of us stops breathing."
Ice flooded my veins. "No. No, that can't—there has to be a way to break it—"
"There isn't." He pulled back, studying me with those ancient eyes. "But here's the truly entertaining part. I'm cursed, little scholar. Have been for six hundred years. That curse is slowly killing me. And the only thing that can break it?" He touched the mark on his chest, then reached out and pressed one finger against mine.
The touch sent electricity through my entire body.
"Is you," he finished. "Selene's soul, reborn in a new body. You're the only cure for the poison destroying me from the inside."
"Selene? I don't know anyone named—"
"You wouldn't remember. But I do." His expression turned cold and distant. "Six centuries ago, I bonded with a mage named Selene. We were unstoppable together. So the Seraphim murdered her and locked me in a prison designed to torture shadow-kin for eternity." His voice dropped to something deadly. "And now her soul has returned. In you."
My head spun. This was insane. All of it. "I'm not—I can't be—"
"You are." He grabbed my wrist, yanked off the silver bracelet I'd worn since childhood. "This is a binding charm. Someone's been suppressing your power your whole life."
The moment the bracelet broke, something inside me exploded.
Power rushed through my veins like liquid fire. The shadows in the room responded, writhing and dancing. Every nerve in my body lit up with sensation. I gasped as magic I'd never felt before flooded into me, wild and intoxicating and mine.
My reflection appeared in a broken mirror shard on the floor. My eyes had changed. No longer brown—now they were silver with black flecks, glowing faintly in the darkness.
"There she is," Kaelen said softly. "The shadow-bonded mage they tried so hard to hide."
Before I could respond, footsteps echoed in the corridor outside. Many footsteps. Running.
Kaelen's head snapped toward the door, predatory and alert.
"Your summoning made noise," he said calmly. "It seems we have company."
The chamber doors exploded inward with a blast of force.
Armed men poured through, weapons drawn. And standing in the center, looking triumphant and slightly insane, was Marcus.
"I knew it!" he shouted, pointing at me with shaking hands. "I knew you'd be stupid enough to try the ritual yourself!"
His eyes moved to Kaelen, and his face lit up with manic excitement.
"The Shadow King. After all these centuries, someone finally summoned him." Marcus pulled out a strange device covered in glowing symbols. "Capturing you will make me the most powerful mage in history!"
Kaelen looked at me, one eyebrow raised. "Who," he asked with deadly calm, "is this insect?"
The word came out before I could stop it, dripping with venom I didn't know I had.
"My ex-fiancé."
Kaelen's smile turned absolutely terrifying.
"How wonderful. I was worried I'd lost my touch for creative violence after six hundred years of imprisonment."
He stepped in front of me, wings spreading wide, shadows gathering around his hands like living weapons.
"Let me sho
w you what happens to insects who threaten what's mine."