Shadows Book 1 in the World of Shadows (2 page)

I kicked a rock and it bounced down the side
of the mountain. Kamis shot me a look, but I ignored her. I glanced
at the jagged scars around my right ankle and shuddered at the
thought of the night a year ago when I had been desperate enough to
run away even with the Sathen out there. A flashback of pain, my
pounding heart, and scars deep inside that no one could heal sent a
surge of pent-up hatred through my body. I picked up another rock
and threw it as hard as I could.

“
You want to bring the
Sathen on us?” Kamis growled, showing her sharp canines.

“
Maybe I do,” I replied
harshly, but a cold shiver crawled across my skin at the thought. I
saw their eyes again in my mind, black and pupil-less, and felt the
bite of a hundred serrated teeth around my ankle. I shuddered and
looked away from the sun setting slowly beyond the desert mountains
casting blood red rays across the sand.

Chapter 2

I had just fallen asleep on my stone bed
after my second shift when the sound of the grinding gears broke
through my ragged dreams. I sat up, but my muscles, sore and cold
from sleeping on the rock, wouldn’t respond any faster than my
fatigued brain. Four Luminos rushed in, their gray skin and pale
hair contrasting sharply to my confused eyes.

They threw a canvas bag over my head before
I could move. Adrenaline surged through my veins and woke my weary
limbs; I kicked and punched like I had been trained to do since I
could walk. After several expletives that would have made a tunnel
rat blush, the Luminos had my arms and legs bound with cords. They
threw me back on the bed.

Cold stone rubbed my raw back, bringing an
onslaught of memories I had locked tightly away. Fear raced through
my mind and I screamed.

“
Silence!” one of the
Luminos shouted.

A hand clamped over my bagged mouth. I bit
down hard and my canines tore through the cloth and into his hand.
He swore and something struck the side of my face. Blinding pain
followed and I stopped struggling.

The chain attached to the manacle on my
wrist was unlocked and replaced with another chain. I couldn’t
think past the pain in my head, and couldn’t figure out what they
were doing or why. They picked me up and carried me from my stone
chamber, the one place that had been my own, my home. Maybe I had
gone too far with my spying. Maybe Axon had ratted me out. Maybe I
was on my way to the killing chamber.

I kicked out with my bound legs. My bare
feet caught one of the Luminos in the chest and shoved him into a
wall. I rolled over, breaking the grasps of the other Luminos that
carried me. They dropped me to the ground and I tried to scramble
away, a hard feat with my arms and legs bound and the bag over my
head.

Someone kicked me in the stomach before I
got very far. I rolled to my back and held my arms over my face.
The heavy chain tangled on top of me, impeding my movement. I
grabbed it in my hands and swung. The chain connected with someone,
bringing more swearing. They kicked me again, higher this time. A
jolt of pain ran through my ribs. I rolled, found a foot with my
hands, and bit down again hard. A blow to the back of my head
knocked me unconscious.

I awoke to the sensation of being carried.
My head pounded and light showed angry and red through my closed
eyelids. I opened them, but only saw the inside of the cloth bag.
Fear jolted through my veins when I remembered what had happened. I
kicked out, but my legs were in the air and whoever had me slung
over his shoulders held me tightly behind the knees with one hand
and had my still-bound arms clutched in the other. I bent down to
bite where I thought his neck would be and suddenly found myself
flying through the air to land with a bone jarring thud on the hard
ground.

But I didn’t land on the stone of the Firen
Caves. I landed on dirt, dirt that smelled of sunshine and the
dusty, arid air of the desert. I was outside.

Terror filled my mind and I tried to back
blindly away on my hands and knees.

“
Where are you going,
little minx?” a gruff voice said with a hint of
amusement.

Someone grabbed the chain on my wrist and
hauled me to my feet. I wobbled, dizzy from the blows to the head.
“Walk,” the same voice growled in my ear.

Panic filled me at the threat in his tone
that alluded to what would happen if I didn’t obey. I forced one
foot in front of the other, stumbling blindly beside my captor.
Footsteps walked around us, signifying that we were not alone. I
took whatever comfort I could in the hope that maybe being in a
group would stop any undue acts of cruelty. Of course, that had
never stopped the sentries of Firen Caves.

The party stopped and waited for me to get
back to my feet after tripping over yet another unseen rock. My
bare feet ached from the unaccustomed sharpness of stones that
seemed to poke out of nowhere from the hot desert sand.

“
She would probably keep up
better if she could see,” a voice in front of us said with a slight
hint of sarcasm.

“
We can’t trust her,” the
man beside me argued, but he pulled the bag off my head
anyway.

The glaring sunshine blinded my eyes used to
the darkness of a cave, not the full light of day. I ducked my
head, still kneeling on the sun-baked sand. The most I had seen of
the outside world was from the entrance of the Caves and my one
failed attempt to leave. I squinted, trying to peer through the
blanketing rays. Tears filled my eyes. I wiped them on the sleeve
of my dirty shirt and got dust in them instead. I blinked and
glared at the man next to me.

He was the biggest Luminos I had ever seen.
Usually Luminos were tall and slender, but my captor had the
thickly muscled body of a Nathos while still bearing the gray skin
and fair hair of the Luminos. He grinned at me, his crooked teeth
jutting out in the front like a tunnel rat. “Now will you walk
straight, little Duskie?” His expression was amiable enough, but
there was a hint of steel in his light eyes and something else I
was familiar with, poorly concealed disgust.

“
Can we continue on our
journey, Dathien?” Axon’s voice spoke from the front of the group.
“Or is one Duskie too much for you to handle?” Several around us
chuckled and the Luminos in front of me parted. Axon stood cloaked
and hooded in the attire of a desert crosser like the rest of his
group, sand-colored clothing, sandals on his feet, and a strangely
curved sword at his side. He smiled down at me, his expression
clear of any vehemence or judgment. I met his gaze, my own guarded
and distrustful.

He studied my face and his smile fell. He
glared at the men around him and several stepped back and dropped
their eyes. “Is this how we treat someone we’ll soon be trusting
with our lives?” he demanded.

He dropped to a knee in front of me and I
scooted back in surprise. Dathien’s solid legs kept me from moving
any further. A puff of red desert dust rose around us.

Axon caught my chin in his hand and turned
my head to look at the bruises and swelling. I jerked my chin from
his grasp and bared my teeth. Dathien’s big hands grabbed my head
to hold me still, but Axon's voice came softly, “It’s alright, let
her be.” He met my eyes. “I wouldn’t trust us either.”

He rose to his feet and dusted the dirt from
his loose pants, quite a contrast from the Firen Caves attire of
tight lizard skin that the higher inhabitants of the Caves wore to
prevent snagging on the rocks. He sighed. “We might as well take a
break here. If we don’t work this out now, we’ll all be prey for
the Sathen at nightfall.”

The company moved like clockwork. Axon’s six
men set about their individual tasks. Several unrolled beige tarps
and set up a makeshift tent that surrounded the sides of his chosen
camp and left the top open to the sun’s rays while others pulled
out food and water and arranged small cushions to sit on. One of
the men brought a cushion for Axon. He met the man’s gaze steadily
until he bowed his head and brought back a second one.

Axon waited until the man left, sat on his
cushion, then motioned for me to take the other one. I hesitated,
but knew that with the lingering dizziness from the blows to the
head I would be taking a seat on the hot desert sand soon enough. I
grabbed the cushion and scooted it as far from him as the chain he
held would allow.

Axon just watched me with an ever-present
touch of amusement in his cool eyes that I found unnerving.
“Comfortable?” he asked.

I glared at him, then looked away when he
remained undisturbed by my hostility.

“
We’re not going to hurt
you,” he said quietly.

I looked back at him and gritted my teeth
against the anger that rose in my throat. His eyes again took in
the bruises on my face in a quick sweep and the amusement in them
lessened. “I guess that’s a little late to promise, isn’t it?” His
gaze softened slightly. “It’s not right, you know, the way you’ve
been treated.”

I didn’t trust my expression to be as calm
as my voice and looked down at my hands. They were stiff and
swollen from fighting back. “It’s your men that did the treating,”
I said quietly, my voice steady.

I saw Axon shake his head out of the corner
of my eye. “I don’t mean now, I mean always.” He rattled the chain
that attached to my wrist manacle. “This isn’t right.”

I gave an unfeminine snort. “Like you can
change it.”

He tugged gently on the chain until I met
his gaze. “I can change it. I just need to know I can trust you.”
His light blue eyes held mine and I couldn’t turn away.

“
Prince Axon, Rasa spotted
dust rising in the distance. We need to move.” The voice broke our
gazes. I stared at Axon, trying to pair him with the title
‘Prince’. They had called him ‘Sir’ during their stay at the Caves,
but the Luminos who spoke to him, a thin man with worried green
eyes and ink-stained fingers, bowed deferentially and waited for
Axon's next words.

“
Have everyone ready to
leave as soon as they’ve eaten,” Axon said. He turned back to me
and read the questions in my eyes. I never was good at hiding what
I thought. “It was safer that the inhabitants of your Caves didn’t
know who I was. You never know who might be seeking revenge or
looking to advance themselves in some way.” He shrugged as though
these were common concerns. “Like I said, I have the power to
change your position.”

Suspicion tightened in my chest. “Why
me?”

A brush of pain changed Axon’s expression.
“We lost all our Nathos in a Sathen attack on our way here, and the
inhabitants of Firen Caves refused to journey with us to Lysus.
We’re protected by our own fortifications against the Sathen during
the day, but nightfall leaves us a bit helpless, as you can
imagine.”

I stared at him. “You kidnapped me to defend
your group against the Sathen by myself after dark?”

“
Yes.” He spoke with blunt
honesty.

Aghast, I fumbled over my words. “I don’t
have my spear or a shield. There will be too many of them for one
person to-“

Axon pointed at the tent around us. “This
cloth cloaks us from them. It’s been treated with special oils that
block our smell so that they can’t locate us. All you would have to
do is be there in case any did happen to get through.”

I looked doubtfully at the cloth. “If the
tent works so well, how did the Sathen find you the first
time?”

Axon looked away from my searching eyes. “We
got sloppy and confident in our own strength, the downfall of many
a great empire.” He looked back at me and said seriously, “If you
help us get safely across the desert, I promise you’ll be free once
we reach Lysus.”

“
Free.” The word had an
unfamiliar flavor, like the tart I had stolen once from the kitchen
at the Caves and was whipped for later. It hadn’t tasted as good as
it smelled.

Axon nodded. “No chains, no masters,
nothing. You will be your own person.”

I wondered if it was my imagination that saw
the longing in his eyes at his own words. I shrugged and fought
down the doubt in my abilities to defend all of them against a
Sathen attack. “I guess we don’t have much of a choice, do we?”

He smiled and it reached the corners of his
eyes, drawing them into little laugh lines that made him look
younger. “I’m glad you see it my way.” He paused. “You know my
name. What’s yours?”

I considered not answering, but his eyes
held me with their open curiosity. “Nexa,” I finally said.

“
Nexa.” He tested it out
and looked me up and down. “That fits you.”

My brow furrowed. “What’s that supposed to
mean?”

He laughed. “Not everything’s a shot, Nexa.
Ever think that someone might just be trying to be nice?”

I shook my head.

Rasa, the shorter Luminos with eyes that
never stopped searching the horizon, handed me a hard roll with
jerked meat, a piece of dried yellow and green fruit I had never
seen before, and a chunk of hard cheese that broke off in pieces.
The man barely looked at me, and his lip curled in aversion when he
touched my hand to give me the food. It was a feast compared to
what we normally ate at the Caves and I stared at it in my hands
long after he walked away. I looked up to find Axon watching me.
“Better eat up,” he said, his expression unreadable. “We’re
leaving.”

I shoved the roll and meat in my pocket and
slowly ate the fruit and cheese as we walked, savoring every
mouthful. The fruit had a bitter skin, but I bit into it after
watching the others do the same, and found that the bitterness
counterbalanced the almost too sweet yellow interior that seemed to
melt on my tongue the moment I took a bite. I ate it slowly and
savored the way the taste chased away the dryness the desert air
left in my mouth.