Shadow Bound

But the form he took—that was in her keeping. If mortals only knew the power they wielded, they could reshape the three worlds with a thought. Perhaps one day they would.

What did she see when she looked at him at last? A nightmare concocted of fear, aged beyond reckoning and grotesque? It happened like that quite often. Those whose dread of the dark passage created a terror out of the ether, shaping him with their minds into a being bent on horror.

No. She did not fear time or Death. She did not tremble as he advanced closer to her. As he stepped forward to view her painting.

She’d gotten some things wrong: The black forest was darker, dark as pitch, and as inky as abject fear. She’d missed, too, the pillar of smoke that rose in the center from the fire of rage. But he was there, crouched in the foreground, a figure wrapped in gray wind. Storm wind. The kind that harries or hinders, a force unto itself. She’d caught that exactly, but she did not depict his face.

What did she see? The question pricked him.

“Is it a good likeness?” Anxiety pitched her voice high.

He shifted his gaze to her. “Yes.”

She inhaled deeply, tamping down her emotion. “What is beyond the sea?”

He contemplated that often himself. “I don’t know. I can’t go there.”

“But I will.”

It wasn’t a question, but he nodded a confirmation anyway.

She brushed her tears away with a wrist. Then she held a slightly trembling hand to him. “I’m Kathleen O’Brien. Nice to finally meet you in person.”

Ah, a friend, then. A companion. That was good. He did not know if he could bear it if she feared him. If she saw him as a monster.

He knew the custom, had witnessed it for a millennia or more, but still he wondered as he reached out his own hand and grasped hers in a slow slide of Twilight and mortal skin. She was warm, soft, and for all her frailty, as strong as the tide. Her heartbeat reached to the end of her fingertips and stirred something alien in him. Curious.

She drew a careful breath. “And what’s yours?”

He’d been called many things over the years, but all those he rejected. He would not have those names formed by her lips. “I don’t have one.”

“Everyone has a name.”

“Then I’ve forgotten it. Pick another for me. I swear I won’t forget again.” He laid himself open to her, waiting for the word that would name his soul, the sound of her claim on him.

A slow smile bloomed across her face, delight washing away the last of her unease. For that alone, trespassing the boundary had been worth it, come what may.

“I’ve been calling you Shadowman for, well…forever.”

“Then I am Shadowman forever.”

She kept his hand. He did not release hers. They were anchored together yet adrift. Kindred spirits from different worlds.

The light in her spirit darkened. “Is it time?”

“No. Not now.” He skimmed his mind along the shimmering veil. The membrane was thin, but still impenetrable for a mortal. “Not today, I think.”

Creases formed between her brows as she frowned. “I’m not sure that I am ready to go, but I am tired of waiting.”

He smiled slightly. Impatience was a universal trait for mortals. For them everything had a beginning and an end, like fixed points in a landscape of life, and that knowledge incited a persistent expectation of what was to come. Not so in Twilight, where everything stretched in-between and time was something Twilight folk wove into their midnight music.

“Do you know when?”

“I don’t. No one can know that. Would you really want to?”

Her gaze darted up, forehead tight.

“No. And yes. I want to know—or, or understand something. I’ve been sick my whole life. What is the point of being alive if I never get to live? I want—” Her words choked off. She took another steadying breath. “I guess I just want a reason.”

Riding through her body, down her arm, across her fingertips and into his hand—frustration and loneliness. Almost unbearable. Certainly unacceptable.

“There is no reason for beauty. It just is.” Scant comfort, he knew. “Perhaps you will find a better answer in the next world.” He raised his hand to the horizon line on her painting. “In the world beyond the sea.”

“And you can’t go there?”

“Just you. The faerie are forbidden.”

“So this is it.” She turned back, eyes shimmering with fresh pain. “This is all the time I get?”

He inclined his head in answer, but slightly, carefully. He did not know precisely what she meant, so he could not agree in totality. Not with that strange light shining in her eyes. Not with the alien intent that coursed out of her and into him, the velvety longing that gathered in his gut.

“Touch me,” she said, suddenly. “I mean—will you?”

Then, not a friend. Or, not only a friend. What did she see?

She stood, her body a breath before his. “I want to feel something real while I can. You’ve been there all my life, waiting. Just out of sight. I’d hoped that we were…that you and I…” She dropped her gaze, shaking her head in frustration.

You and I. Yes. Nothing else was necessary; she’d captured the truth in a marriage of words that had power on any side of the veil.

He felt her will harden inside her, and she slowly raised her head to meet his gaze. “Please touch me.”

No. Being in this room, speaking thus, already broke the laws of Twilight. There would be repercussions as it was. But her heart pounded in his head, pushing out all thought. Heat rose in his chest. He searched blindly with his mind for the coolness of Shadow. He should not have come here; the laws of Twilight existed for a reason. He understood that now.

“Shadowman.”

The sound of his name stopped him short.

She released his hand, reached up to his face, and dipped into his dark hood. Finding his cheek, she drew back just enough to skim her fingertips over his lips.

“I cannot do this,” he said. He should remove himself from her reach at once and draw the fae shadows tightly round his shoulders. Never come here again. He’d meet her in Twilight, perhaps soon, and that would have to be enough.

Yet he turned his face into her palm, her soft skin burning away the last of his resolve. Her mortal will was stronger than any he could marshal.

He could not pinpoint the moment he fell—perhaps when he first stepped out of Shadow. Or in that breath drawn to shape the sound of his first word, hush. Or years before when he came to watch her from his dim vantage when he had no call to do so.

“Shadowman?”

But he was lost now, bending his head, tasting her lips for the first time. The dark, wet wine of her mouth, sweeter than anything on any world or in-between. One taste, one deep drink, and then he’d go.

Her heart beat strongly, thudding over the bridge that they’d created. Hardly weak. Perhaps if he touched her like this she might live forever.

He pulled away and the loss of her hollowed him out. “There are laws that even you must know, deep inside, should not be broken.”

“I don’t care. I’ve been careful too damn long.”

Only a mortal could be so brave. They know an end will come and so, too, a new beginning. But for an immortal, the repercussions were simple and never finite. She had no idea.

“You said it yourself,” she insisted. “It will not be today. Maybe tomorrow or the day after, but I have