Abigail's POV
The figure in front of me wasn't Lucian, at least, not fully. There was something vacant about him, a shell of the man I knew.
Yet that didn't make him any less terrifying, and his dark, cold eyes fastened to mine, and suddenly I was just so very back in that place again, back in those shadows under his rule.
"You can't run from me, Abigail," his voice slithered through the air and wrapped itself around my mind. "You've always been part of this… part of me."
I fisted my hands, and forced myself to resist. This wasn't real-at least, not fully. This figure wasn't Lucien.
It was a piece of him, left behind in the Shadowlands, warped and corrupted by the dark. But knowing that did nothing to block the cold seep of fear into my bones.
The way he looked at me, the way he sp
