Free Shadowlark by Meagan Spooner Page A

than ever he reminded me of an animal, some untamed beast raging at its captivity. For a long time there was no sound but the scrape of his shoes on the stone and his harsh breathing.
    Then he abruptly whirled toward me with a snarl. “We’re running out of time, Lark. You have to do it.” There was a faint sheen of sweat on his brow.
“Do what?”
    “Kill me.” He indicated the knife in my hand with a jerk of his chin.
    I took a step back, staring. “What?”
    “You couldn’t do it at the Iron Wood, fine. You could shove me off into the wilderness and forget me. Here you don’t have that luxury. It’s now, or it’s later when I come at you in your sleep.”
    I gritted my teeth. “It wasn’t like that. I wasn’t trying to forget anything.”
    “But you wouldn’t have to watch me fall,” he hissed. “You said to me—before, you told me that we weren’t a team anymore. Fine, we’re not. But Tansy’s gone now, and you’ve got no source of power. When you run out, that’s it. I’m a shadow again, and you’re dead.”
    I could see the betrayal in his gaze—but why was it such a crime not to want him dead? “You’re afraid,” I retorted. “Because we’re in here, because you don’t like not being under the sky.”
    “Yes,” he agreed. “So? That doesn’t change the facts.”
    I shook my head, shoving the knife back into its sheath in my waistband. “Panicking won’t help. We’ll figure something out.”
    “By standing there sulking about Tansy?” Oren started pacing again, making two circuits of the cell before halting again and turning toward me slowly. “You’ll have to defend yourself.”
    I met his gaze, watching as his eyes narrowed and he took a few steps to the side, circling me. “ If you change.”
    “ When I change. So I might as well speed up the process. Make you defend yourself now.”
    I could feel my heart starting to race, wondered whether he could hear it, whether any of his shadow-self traits lingered when he was in human form. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
    The tension drew out between us as he circled, and I could feel it stretching thin. Without warning he feinted a lunge at me, making me fight to hold my ground.
    “You don’t want to hurt me,” I said, forcing my voice to stay even. If Oren decided to take matters into his own hands, I wasn’t sure I could hold my own.
    “That’s right,” he burst out. “That’s why—” He let out his breath, dropping out of that deadly hunter’s stance. “That’s why I need you to act. I can’t do it. I’ve tried.”
    My blood roared in my ears. “What do you mean?” I whispered.
    “I mean I tried. After I found out, after you sent me away.” Oren turned to look through the bars of the cell, so all I could see was his profile, the tension in his body. “Animals don’t kill themselves, and I couldn’t—I couldn’t do it. Every instinct fought against it, and I wasn’t strong enough. I’m not stronger than the thing inside me.”
    For a moment my mind tried to picture it, tried to imagine what awful thing Oren tried to do to himself, to rid the world of one more shadow.
    “Not killing yourself isn’t weakness,” I said finally. “It’s not cowardice.”
    Oren just shook his head, moving forward until he could press his forehead against the bars, a plaintive gesture. His long fingers wound around the iron. “It’s certainly not bravery.”
    I had no answer to that. Not when I didn’t know what I was myself—perhaps we were both no more than things, echoes of who we once were. Maybe we both deserved death. The silence thickened the air.
    “That girl,” Oren said finally, still gazing out at the darkness beyond our cell. “She was your friend?”
    “I thought she was.” The words tasted sour, and I swallowed hard. “I can’t forgive what she did.”
    “You thought I was your friend, too, and look where we are now.”
    “You only follow me because you can’t help it, the monster can’t let