Free Shaedes of Gray: A Shaede Assassin Novel by Amanda Bonilla

the calm expression on his face.
    “What are you doing here, Xander?”
    He gave me the same treatment I’d given Tyler at the club, basically ignoring me to get some sort of rise. It worked.
    “Is that how you address your king?” he asked, staring at the wall.
    My king? My ass. I still wasn’t excited by the idea that someone could hold dominion over me, no matter how much he insisted he could. I gave a quiet but derisive snort.
    “My liege,” I began in my most regal voice, copying Anya’s from the previous night. “I am both humbled and honored that you have graced my hovel with your imperial presence. I am yours to command and wish nothing more than to serve you.”
    The air in my apartment changed. Charged with energy, like a coming thunderstorm. Xander’s body became insubstantial, scattering in a violent pepper of black dust.
    In a waft of sweet, fragrant heat, he reappeared to stand in front of me face-to-face, or, more to the point, face-to-chest. He stood so tall that I almost got a crick in my neck from looking at him. But I didn’t cower in the presence of anyone.
    “You were looking for me tonight?” he asked.
    With a movement so fast even I had a hard time tracking it, he ran his hands along my side, lifting up my shirt along the waist. My breath caught in my throat as he passed a warm palm along the gash in my side—almost completely healed, save for a thin white line.
    “You’re healing well.” The sound of his rich voice lulled me, banishing any trace of anger. He pulled the shirt down and flashed a very unkingly grin. “What do you want of me?”
    At that moment, I could have made a list a mile long and comprised of the different things I wanted of him. And then I came to my senses. I thought about Ty, sitting alone at the club, the things he’d said, the way his mouth pressed against mine, and my feelings for him, despite the rules I’d laid down for myself.
    “I want to know,” I said, swallowing my considerable pride, “about who I am.”
    “I can’t tell you who you are,” he said. “But I can tell you what you are.”
    “ What am I, then? How did I come to be this way, and why did Azriel leave me without teaching me anything? Why have I thought that I was alone for a century and that there were no others like me?” I paced as I rambled on, trying to form the questions my arrogance didn’t want me to ask. “What is it that I can and cannot do, and why do I do those things? Am I immortal or something else? And where is the magic blade that is the only thing that can take my life? Who has it? Do you?” I asked, remembering Azriel’s words to me.
    I left Xander gaping after me and settled down in a chair, too flustered to continue. I suppose those were a lot of questions to bombard someone with. I hadn’t intended to let them all tumble out of my mouth like marbles rolling out of a sack.
    He didn’t come to my side, and I was glad for it. His voice floated on the air, and I listened with my eyes closed, out of shame more than anything else.
    “You . . . are . . . nothing,” he said. “A creature that lives between the realms. You are made of twilight and shadow and move as the wind through the trees. You are Shaede.”
    I reluctantly admitted to myself that his speech sounded eloquent and kingly. If only Azriel had been a millionth of that, I thought as bitter memories taunted me. Though he’d shared the king’s flair for dramatics (maybe it’s a Shaede trait), Azriel had never been one to lend me words of comfort. Merely a force of nature, he’d existed like the wind: fickle and unconcerned with the obstacles in his path.
    “You won’t wither and die the way humans do,” he continued. “And even if your physical form is damaged beyond repair, you will only fade into shadow for eternity, never recapturing your solid self.”
    Xander appeared before me, his eyes studying my face, right down to each individual pore. “If I had known about you, I would have come