His arms were stretched out to either side and his chest moved in and out with his breathing.
I moved closer to him, watching him warily now.
“Michael, what are you doing?” I whispered.
His eyes opened and he glanced right at me. I froze in place. His eyes glowed green, brighter than I’d ever seen them before. His gaze searched the area where I stood as if he’d heard something but couldn’t see me. His brows drew together in a deep frown.
And then I noticed something that made me stop breathing completely.
His amulet. The object that kept him alive, gave him solid form and a hold on the physical world, that gave him power, gave him life...
He wasn’t wearing it.
Chapter 13
Seeing him without his amulet took me by surprise, so much so I dropped the black rock.
Before I could bend over to pick it up, the world around me dimmed and swirled and the next moment I was back in my bedroom. The rock was on my floor and I snatched it up and clutched it tightly, but nothing happened this time. It was cool to my touch again, not warm.
Panic gripped me. Michael couldn’t be standing there with his amulet off. He was going to kill himself! Was he doing it on purpose?
I didn’t understand, but I knew I had to do something. And I knew I already had the power to get to the Shadowlands on my own without searching for a gateway—not that there’d be any gateways open in Erin Heights right now. They opened to let someone through and back. I’d come to realize that they weren’t just here all the time.
But I had my dragon’s tear.
“Okay,” I said to myself, shoving the rock in my jeans pocket and trying very hard to calm down. “Concentrate, Nikki. Michael’s in trouble and you have to help him.” There was something seriously wrong with him. He couldn’t take his amulet off. He knew this. It wouldn’t be long before his form began to fade away like a ghost. If he’d temporarily lost his mind, for whatever reason, and nobody found him in time...it would kill him.
I had to get there. So I desperately needed this to work.
I squeezed my eyes shut and focused every last bit of my attention on the teardrop crystal on my bracelet. I didn’t think about what happened at Melinda’s. I didn’t think about my father’s conversation with Queen Sephina. I didn’t think about wandering the hallways of the Shadowlands castle like an invisible ghost thanks to a small black rock someone who shouldn’t exist had given to me.
I focused on one thing: opening a gateway to take me to the Shadowlands. I visualized it in my head. A doorway with swirling light and darkness in the center of it. A passageway to another world—to the Shadowlands. I had the power to make that happen.
Sure, I’d never done this before, but that made no difference to me. This was important. I would do this because I had no other choice.
I felt a swirling inside of me, a warmth in my stomach that spread out to my fingers and toes.
Tingling. I felt the magic. This was magic. The dragon’s magic.
My magic.
Half the secret was believing I could do it. If I didn’t believe it, I had absolutely no doubt that it wouldn’t work.
If I did believe...and I did...then, maybe...just maybe...
I opened an eye and looked.
It worked! There was a gateway right in the center of my bedroom, although it looked a little different from the ones I normally went through. This one wasn’t rectangular, it was circular.
About three feet in diameter. It reminded me of the opening to a water slide.
It flickered, which told me it wasn’t totally stable. I didn’t know how long it was going to last.
The dragon’s tear on my bracelet gleamed with bright light, showing that its magic was currently active. It also flickered.
Since I didn’t have the luxury or time to second-guess myself, I ran toward the gateway and dove head-first into it.
Vertigo...a sensation of swirling...and— slam.
I landed on green grass. Hard.
I looked up at the blue sky above me. Then I pushed up to my elbows to double-check where I was before saying a silent thank you to my bracelet. It had worked! I was in the field, but closer to the border of the Shadowlands than where I usually arrived. My thick sweater was meant for Erin Heights in winter, not this warmer temperature, but I didn’t really care. Scrambling to my feet, I sprinted across the stony ground and the rocks until I reached the front doors of the castle, scared that I might be too late.
The doors creaked open before me and I slipped inside as fast as I could. I didn’t try to find my father first, I made a beeline for the courtyard, bursting out on the landing at the top of the short flight of stairs that led to the green grass and garden.
“Michael!” I yelled as I ran toward him. He still stood there, as if nothing had changed in the entire time it had taken me to get here. I reached for him and—zipped right through his body to the other side. I lost my balance and fell to the ground in a heap.
Just as I’d thought, he was in his true shadow form with his amulet laying on the ground nearby. He opened his eyes, a frown creasing his brow, and he looked directly at me with confusion.
“Princess?” he said, bewildered. “What are you doing here?”
“Why aren’t you wearing your amulet?” My voice was pitchy.
His eyes widened. “How did you—?” The surprise vanished from his face, replaced by a look that surprised me: guilt. He looked as if he’d just been caught red-handed doing something bad.
He moved a few feet to his left and bent over to retrieve his amulet. Something about the chain made it possible to grab hold of it, even in ghostly shadow form. He put the chain over his head and the green stone dropped to his chest.
I collapsed backward onto the grass, exhausted, my chest heaving. I was so relieved he was okay. A couple moments later, he appeared over me, looking down, his arms crossed.
I sat up so quickly that my stomach cramped and I jabbed my index finger at him. “You weren’t wearing your amulet.”
His lips thinned. “So?”
“So? You know what that means!”
He scrubbed a hand through his dark hair. “What are you doing here? How did you get here?
Did you—” He gave me a surprised look. “Did you use your bracelet?”
“Yes! Of course I did. How else would I get here? Demon shuttle bus?”
“How did you know the right way to use it?”
“I guessed. And I was right. And you’re very lucky, too. A couple more minutes and you would have been gone forever!”
My chest tightened at the thought of it. Our gazes locked and my breath caught at the intense look he gave me. Without further comment, he held out his hand to me. It only took a second before I took it—the heat of his skin against mine made my breath catch.
“So you saved me, is that what you’re trying to say?” There was a glint of amusement in his gaze, as if what I’d seen had been nothing to worry about.
I now knew what “flabbergasted” meant, because that’s exactly how I felt. “Don’t you dare look at me like this is no big deal. It’s a big deal. A huge deal!”
“How did you even know what was going on here?”
“Because... this.” I fished into my pocket and thrust the black rock at him. “It let me visit here in, like, spirit. I could see all over the castle.” He studied it with confusion. “That let you visit here in spirit?”
“Yes, but I couldn’t do anything, touch anything...or anything!” I knew I sounded just this side of hysterical. I still struggled to catch my breath.
“What is it?” he mused to himself.
“Michael, what the hell were you doing?”
His jaw set and any amusement fell from his gaze. “Practicing.”
“Practicing what?”
He fixed me with a look that clearly told me he didn’t want to answer.
“This isn’t okay.” Anger finally elbowed in on my previous panic. “You
know I can command you to tell me the truth if I want you to.”
Something dangerous slid behind his eyes then. “Yes, you could do that. I’m bound to you as your servant. You can command me at will whenever you choose.” That dark glare fixed on me. Would I pull rank to get him to tell the truth? Would I treat him like a lowly servant boy, even though I continually swore to him that wasn’t what he was to me?
You, I sent telepathically, are incredibly annoying sometimes, do you know that?
::And you, Princess, worry too much.::
I hissed out a breath of frustration. I won’t command you to tell me. I won’t do that to you.
He was silent for a moment, a look of relief spreading over his handsome features, but then it shifted into something else. Curiosity. ::No, wait. I want you to. I want you to command me.:: He yanked his amulet off again and let it drop to the ground. I stared at it with horror.
“Michael!” I shouted out loud.
A glimmer of amusement moved through his green eyes. “Princess, please. Just relax. I’m fine, I’m not in any immediate distress. But I want you to try to command me right now to tell you the truth.”
My heart was pounding so hard and loud I felt it in my ears. “Why? You don’t think it’ll work?”
“I don’t know. It’s an experiment.”
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
His lips twitched almost into a smile. “Sorry for stressing you out. But this is important.
Command me. Right now.”
I wrung my hands and locked gazes with him again, finding it difficult to breathe. He wanted to push the envelope here. For some reason, compared to the first time his amulet had been forcibly taken from him, he seemed perfectly fine with...
Wait a minute. Something clicked for me then. “When Elizabeth took your amulet, she took it from you forcibly. You didn’t have a choice. This, though, this is you taking it off of your own free will. Is there a difference?”
Michael just studied me without confirming or denying my suspicions. “Command me, Princess.”
It was a challenge uttered in a low voice that moved through me like warm water. I could command him to do anything I wanted. It was very tempting.
I could command him to kiss me.
That would be a dare.
However, I was going more for the truth right now. While a kiss would be wonderful, the truth was essential.
I tried to stay calm. Even though he wasn’t wearing the amulet, I couldn’t see through him like a ghost. He seemed solid and strong and totally in control of himself. More confident than I’d ever seen him before, actually.
“Fine,” I said shakily. “I command you to tell me the truth. Why have you taken off your amulet?”
His eyes glowed green for a split second before they returned to normal. “Because it totally clashes with my outfit.”
I stared at him with surprise. “That was a lie! You lied!”
“Not a complete lie. It does.”
“Like you care about fashion. Not with the way you dress.” A slow smile spread across his face. “Ouch. That was not called for, Princess. I know I don’t dress like a pretty faery king with ridiculous designer labels, but I think I do okay.” I wanted to tease him back, but stopped myself. “You were able to resist a direct command from me. That’s not supposed to be possible.”
“You haven’t given me many commands in the past. Maybe I’ve been able to resist for a while.”
I chewed my bottom lip and looked down at his amulet. “No, it’s because of the stone. Is that what keeps Shadows in servitude?”
“It has nothing to do with that. It contains our life force,” he said. “Without it we die.”
“And here you are standing right in front of me and you’re not dying.” Michael looked just as confused as I felt. “Princess, can I see the rock you were given? The one that allowed you to visit the castle undetected and spy on us?”
“I wouldn’t exactly say I was spying.”
He raised an eyebrow. “What would you call it?”
“Observing,” I said firmly.
“Sure.” He put his amulet back on—another big relief, for me, anyway—so he was able to take the stone I held out to him. He studied it closely. “It looks familiar.”
“I know. But I can’t figure out what it is.”
He turned it over in his hand and studied it from all sides. “I think I might know...”
“What?”
“Of course. Of course, that’s what it is. But I don’t understand how it could help you see this place from a distance...”
I grabbed his arm, his muscles flexing under my grip. “Michael, I command you to tell me what you’re talking about.”
I just used the word command as a throwback to what we’d just been experimenting with, but his face tensed and he inhaled sharply.
“It’s stone from the castle,” he said, then he groaned. “Okay, that command definitely worked. And it pinched a little, too.”
My eyes widened. “Commands hurt?”
“Only when I try to resist them.”
Outrage filled me. “That is so unbelievably unfair. So you’re trying to tell me that when a demon commands a Shadow, if there’s any resistance, it causes pain?” He shrugged, his face blank of any discernable emotion. “Pretty much.”
“So stupid and unfair...and—and cruel. Why does no one seem to have a problem with this but me? I’ll never understand that.” I forced myself to let go of him and crossed my arms and paced in the general area, trying not to focus on the disgusting way Shadows were treated. For now. “So this means the ability to command you is related to your amulet. Something about it not only contains your life force, keeps you in a solid form, but it’s what makes it possible for demons to bind Shadows to them as servants and control them. But why? Who’s responsible for this?”
He shook his head. “All I know is that demonkind defeated us, took the Shadowlands away from us, and that was that. Those Shadows who survived were made into servants. The deposit here of the green stone that originally gave us life was mostly destroyed, and we were each given a piece of it to wear to keep us alive. There isn’t more information available, and nobody talks about what really happened.”
“I think Jonas knew the truth,” I said after a moment.
“He did,” Michael said, his face haunted. “He knew some truths, anyway.” I looked at him with concern. “How do you know for sure? I was there for the entire conversation between you two in the Underworld dungeon. He spouted off some rebellion talk, but nothing really useful or sane, in my opinion. That guy was nuts.” His jaw tensed and he looked reluctant to say anything else.
I grew concerned and I grabbed hold of his hand. He didn’t pull away. “Michael...”
“I can hear him in my head, Princess. Ever since I destroyed him. It’s like I absorbed part of him into myself. And I’ve been having the strangest dreams lately. They feel so real. I can never remember much of them after they’re over, but I know they mean something. Jonas—he’d somehow learned a small part of the truth.”
“What truth?” I asked, hanging on his every word.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. That’s why I’m hoping to get that book I told you about.”
“Rhys is on it,” I told him, disappointed that he didn’t know more information that I might be able to use to help him. “He agreed to ask his advisors to locate the book and give it to me.” I expected him to say something unpleasant about the faery king, but he held his tongue, instead nodding firmly. “Thank you for asking him.”
“So you can hear Jonas? In your head? What is he doing? Talking to you like an actual conversation or do you just hear random words?”
“Just words that don’t make any sense—like echoes of his voice in the Underworld.” His expression turned grim. “I shouldn’t have told you any of this.”
“Yes, you definitely should have. And you should have said something the other day, too.
; You don’t have to keep secrets from me, Michael. You can trust me.” I put my hand on his shoulder and immediately felt how tense he was. His head was bowed a little as if this conversation had been taxing on his energy. His eyes even looked duller green than they normally were—like when he’d used a burst of energy in the past and then had to recover his strength.
He took my hand and looked down at it, his thumb brushing against my palm. My heart did an immediate cartwheel. Then his gaze moved up to meet mine.
“You really do care about me, don’t you?” he asked, as if surprised by this realization.
My breath caught and my cheeks flushed. “Of course I do.” He raised my hand, almost absently, and brushed his lips against it in a soft kiss that felt like it burned right into my flesh. I stopped breathing completely.
“Princess...” he whispered. His eyes brightened from the dull color to a vivid green light again as he drew closer to me. It was so beautiful. Mesmerizing. I could get completely and totally lost in eyes like his...and I was absolutely, positively convinced he was going to kiss me this time.
But then he let go of me completely, and I gasped with surprise as he took a giant step back from me.
I just stared at him, not understanding what just happened. Why had he pulled away?
His attention was on the ground where he’d dropped the black rock, and he snatched it back up. “Like I was saying, when you commanded me to tell you, I think this is from the castle itself
—the stone it’s constructed from.”
I struggled to clear my head of the previous fog. “Uh...the castle? Really?” I looked up at the back of the castle. It was built from smooth black stone. All of it, right up to the sharp spires that reached into the sky above. I couldn’t see the spires from where I stood. The magical blue sky obliterated anything, as if it was a movie screen fifty feet above our heads. I glanced around at the courtyard. It was enclosed by a tall impenetrable wall also made of the black stone.
Maybe that was why the black rock had seemed familiar to me before. I’d stared at the castle many times. I still thought it was one of the scariest things I’d ever seen. Architectural Digest wouldn’t be calling to make an appointment for a photo shoot here any time soon.