Shadow’s Edge

“So you’re saying I’m stuck here until this heals completely,” she threw over her shoulder.

“I’m saying, my dear,” Morgan said, utterly neutral, “you’re stuck here permanently.”

That stopped Jenna dead in her tracks. She turned slowly back to Morgan, holding a hand out at waist level for balance. Panic sprawled over her chest. “I knew it,” she said, her mouth gone bone dry. “I knew I shouldn’t have trusted him. He never planned on letting me leave, did he?”

Morgan’s face held another inexplicable expression. Her eyes shone with a deep, hard thoughtfulness. Her gaze flickered to the window for a moment. “Unless...”

“Unless what?” Jenna said sharply.

She cut her gaze back to Jenna. When she spoke, her voice was urgent, a sudden rush of words falling from her lips. “How did you find your way back to Sommerley, Jenna?”

“I walked, I told you—”

“Yes, for two days. I know. Through woods you’ve never set foot in before, evading along the way an army of the best hunters on earth, and simply came in through the open kitchen door. But how did you know which direction to go?”

For some bizarre reason, Morgan’s facial expression exuded an air of incredulous expectation as if she were just about to peek around a corner to see a unicorn standing in the middle of the room.

“I just...” Jenna struggled to find the right description for what had led her back. “I just followed the trail.”

Morgan just stared at her with the same silent anticipation, so Jenna went on.

“There was a trail—”

“Your scent? You detected your own days-old scent?” Morgan interrupted.

“Well, yes, my scent was the obvious thing, but there was also...the light.”

This was a wholly inadequate description for the pulse of energy she had detected when, as she knelt down to examine the cut on her foot, she closed her eyes for a brief moment and saw the concentric rings under her lids, a faint, glimmering trail of diamond-white and gold that led off into the woods. When she opened her eyes it was gone, but she closed them again and it came back, glittering shapes like circles with streamers trailing behind heading steady south, even as she turned her head to and fro to see if it would move.

She knew instinctively it was her, an impression left as she shot like an arrow through the forest. She knew it would lead her directly back to Sommerley.

“You could see your heat signature,” Morgan said, unblinking. “You could smell your scent and see your heat signature, all from more than two days past.” She lifted a hand to the chair against the wall and sank unevenly onto its stuffed silk cushion. Her eyes were very wide.

“I don’t know exactly how to explain it...I guess that sounds right, though.” Jenna took in Morgan’s face, the sudden pallor on her cheeks, her slack jaw. “Why? What does that mean? Can’t you do that too? Can’t everyone here do that?”

“I...I...” Morgan cleared her throat and began to blink quite rapidly. The color flushed back to her cheeks in a rush of crimson. “And now—if you close your eyes now, can you see anything else?”

Jenna raised an eyebrow. “How did you know I had my eyes closed?”

“Just try it,” Morgan whispered. “This is very important, Jenna—please, just try it.”

“I am in dire need of a shower, Morgan, as you can clearly see, and am almost delirious with hunger and exhaustion. I hardly see how this is the time for me to play—”

“Marie Antoinette,” Morgan interrupted in a hoarse whisper.

Jenna remained silent, wondering, as Morgan stared at her from her perch on the chair.

“She was the last Ikati—”

“Queen. Yes, yes, I know. Your doomed ancestor, the queen of France. What about her?” Jenna said, exasperated. Her foot was throbbing, her patience was fraying, and her stomach was clenched into a horrid little ball of empty, writhing air that seemed poised to begin cannibalizing itself.

Morgan appeared to be breathing regularly, but Jenna could hear her heartbeat drumming under her ribcage like a hummingbird’s.

“The Ikati aren’t dogs, Jenna. We’re not like a wolf pack, though we have Alphas and hierarchies and rules upon rules upon rules,” she said slowly. She swallowed before continuing. “We are CATS. And every pride of cats has a queen.” She paused again. “Though the Ikati haven’t had one since Marie Antoinette. She was the most powerful Alpha of her time, more Gifted than any male Alpha. She was our last true Queen.”

“And look how well that turned out for her,” Jenna said, humorless.

Morgan shook her head, disagreeing. “You are missing the point entirely. The queen of France was allowed to do as she pleased precisely because of who she was. She was in control of her own destiny—had she been any other Ikati, she would have been shackled by the Law, as the rest of us are. So I’m going to take a wild guess here, but if I’m right...”

Morgan inhaled a shaky breath. “Just close your eyes and tell me, tell me what you can see. Close your eyes and concentrate.”

Jenna stared at her, confused. “Why?”

“Because it’s...important.”

Her eyebrows arched.

Morgan took another shaky breath. “Because it’s very important?”

“This is completely ridiculous.”

“Please?”

Jenna made a sound of exasperation. “I already know what I can see—the light! I told you!”

Morgan remained silent but clasped her hands together tightly in front of her chest in a gesture of mute supplication.

“Fine,” Jenna said through clenched teeth. “But you’re going to be disappointed. And you owe me one.”

She closed her eyes.

At first there was nothing but the amber glow of sunlight against her lids. Two songbirds began to warble outside the window, a rising melody of piercing notes that wound together and lifted ever higher, lovely and sweet. She sighed in frustration and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Just relax, Jenna,” Morgan murmured. “Just let yourself go and concentrate on your breathing.”

Inhale. Exhale. She relaxed her body and felt her exhaustion so keenly she thought she might fall asleep standing on her feet. She didn’t bother to cover her yawn with her hand.

She became aware of her heartbeat slowing. Something began to sink into her cells, softening time around her to a muted tick of the clock on the fireplace mantle, a hollow pale echo of Morgan’s breathing. There came a warm, sliding sensation, like honey poured over her skin.

And then it arrived with a breathtaking, silent lucidity as if it had been poised behind her eyelids forever, as if it had only been waiting all along for her to want to see.

Picture: A night sky, black, perfectly clear and cloudless, deep in the countryside where no other lights could pollute the virgin dark. Silence. Then, after a moment of suspended anticipation, a glimmer.

A star.

First one winked to life, a bright spot of white against a velvet black canvas, so near it seemed she would be able to reach out with her hand to touch it. Another shimmering light, again very close, this one burning a strong blood red. Then another, still one more, glittering bright, all close to the first.

Then, all at once, thousands of stars winked to life.

They blazed against the darkness, burning and twinkling, calling to her with the most beautiful, aching song. It ran through her senses like an intangible zephyr, like a silken, living wind, and settled down into her bones as if it had been waiting for years and years to arrive, for her to listen.

Here were clusters of light, like galaxies across the universe, beautiful and ethereal and spread over a vast distance, all pulsing with heated power, every one unique in color and shape and size, every one crying out to her, every one her own.

The strongest song of all came from the glowing red star.

A shiver came over her.