Shadows and Starlight
696 Words
Lina's pov
The grass was still damp beneath her palms, though it wasn’t grass at all. The blades shimmered faintly, as though stitched from strands of moonlight. Lina pressed her fingers deeper into them, hoping the cool bite would ground her.
It didn’t. Her pulse refused to settle, her breath still ragged from the fight. The glow in her hands had dimmed, but its echo remained—a warmth threaded through her veins that didn’t belong to her alone.
Every time she glanced at Kael, she felt it. The tether. A pull she couldn’t explain, couldn’t sever.
She hated it. She needed it. Both truths gnawed at her.
Kael stood at the edge of the clearing, back turned to her. His silhouette looked almost sculpted from the mist itself, shadows lapping at him like loyal hounds. He hadn’t spoken since the last of the creatures fell. He hadn’t looked at her, either.
And that hurt more than it should.
Finally, she pushed herself up. “Are you just going to brood there, or explain what the hell that was?”
His head tilted, though he didn’t turn. “What would you like me to explain first? The Veil? The hunters? Or why your light answers to my shadows as if it belongs to them?”
Her stomach twisted. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” His voice was low, almost taunting.
“Don’t say it like I’m… tied to you. I’m not.”
That made him turn. His eyes were fathomless, shadows burning just beneath. But his expression was unreadable, carved from stone.
“You felt it. When we fought. You know denial doesn’t change truth.”
Lina’s hands trembled. She clenched them into fists. “I didn’t ask for this bond. I didn’t ask for you.”
For a moment, the mask slipped. A flicker of something raw crossed his face—pain? Anger? Desire? She couldn’t tell. Then it was gone, buried beneath shadow again.
“No,” he said softly. “You didn’t. And yet here we are.”
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Kael's pov
He shouldn’t look at her. Every instinct screamed at him to keep distance, to remember what she was: a mortal bound by accident, a liability that would draw hunters until the Council had her head.
But Kael couldn’t stop.
Her light had seared through the Veil-born beasts like a blade of dawn, and it hadn’t consumed her. It had danced with his shadows, matched their rhythm as if her soul had been carved to fit his.
It terrified him.
Because bonds between shadow and light didn’t end with survival. They ended in ruin—one consumed, the other corrupted. He had seen it. He had caused it.
And yet when she looked at him, fire in her eyes and fear trembling beneath, Kael wanted to protect her more fiercely than he had ever wanted his own life.
He closed his fist around his blade until shadowfire burned his palm. He welcomed the pain. Anything to drown out the pull toward her.
“She deserves truth,” he muttered under his breath. “But truth will break her faster than lies.”
Still, when her gaze met his—uncertain, defiant, alive—he couldn’t stay silent.
“You’re stronger than you think,” he said, softer now. “But that strength will destroy you unless you learn to master it.”
Her lips parted, questions trembling there. But before she could speak, the Veil shifted, wind whispering like a warning through the starlit grass.
They both turned toward the horizon, where towers of black crystal loomed faintly in the mist.
Kael exhaled slowly. “We can’t stay here. There’s a sanctuary nearby. Hidden, forbidden… but safer than this open ground.”
Lina hesitated. “And who exactly do we trust there?”
His shadows curled closer to him, as if answering for him. “No one. Not even me.”
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Lina's pov
The words should have chilled her. They should have made her step back. Instead, they made her heart stumble in her chest.
Because part of her already did trust him. And that terrified her more than the monsters.
- Writer
