Shadow Reaper (Shadowlands Series) (35 page)

BOOK: Shadow Reaper (Shadowlands Series)

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I was a Shadow Eater and I was dying.

Please . . . I need you.

The darkness at the edge of my vision tunnelled in, and I felt myself slipping away.

There was a crash, a scream, commotion that would have had me sitting up if I’d had the strength.

I felt myself being lifted. I was flying with the breeze on my face. I was free.

***

“I’m not a monster . . . not a monster.”

“No, Ashling, you’re not.”

I opened my eyes to see Avery looking down on me.

“What happened?”

“You almost died.”

“Is that all?”

He pressed his lips together to hide a smile that sparkled in his eyes. “We knew returning would affect you negatively in some way but. I’m sorry for what you were forced to endure. However, it may have come about, you’re one of us now, and a Shadowlander cannot survive on the other side of the Cusp. You are bigger than they are, more complex, more powerful than their human minds can comprehend, so they perceive you the only way they can; as a monster.”

I pushed myself up into sitting position. I was in my new room, the one that connected to his.

“How . . . how did I get out?”

Avery’s lips twisted in a dry smile. “My hermitic brother Daemon. He sensed you were in trouble.”

The commotion and the screams now made sense. If they saw me as a monster, Mother only knows what they would have seen when they looked at Daemon.

Served them right, the fuckers!

“Ashling?”

I didn’t mean that, of course. It wasn’t their fault.

Wasn’t it? You took them food and gave them hope, and they tried to kill you!

It was the not-me voice again.

I rubbed my temples. There was something else. Something important I needed to do.

“Ashling? When you were in and out of conscious you kept calling out for someone.”

“Huh?”