Free Shadow's End (Light & Shadow) by Moira Katson Page A

of the room, unable to process the enormity of what we faced. Aron, and the men who had killed Garad. Either—
    N o. I could not think of it.
    “Hide that,” Miriel said, suddenly superstitious. “Don’t let it see the light. Hide it.” Her jaw set, and she turned for the door.
    “Where are you going?” I called after her, and she turned to look over her shoulder.
    “The tavern, still. I don’t know what—that—means. But those men owe Heddred, and I am going to call in the debt.”
     

Chapter 7
     
    It was hardly a struggle to escape the house. Jeram had stationed men outside the window, and they patrolled with purpose. Inside, however, the Merchant’s servants had long since gone to bed, thinking Miriel and me to be asleep. We crept down the hallways, ran quickly through the great entrance hall, and escaped out a side door, having only one patrol to avoid. I made a mental note that if we survived this, I would teach the men how to avoid multiple patrols. I even began to plan the lessons out, as well as I could—anything, to keep from thinking of what had just happened.
    But as w e picked our way through the darkness to the tavern, the thoughts began to creep into my mind without my volition. It took long minutes of silence until I could untangle the mess of anguish and understand what lay beneath: betrayal, but not of the human sort. I had thought, however foolishly, that when I came here I had outrun my fate, or that it was finally done with me. I was no longer a spy to a ruthless noble; I had begun to do something good, I had begun to believe in something that gave a purpose to my life.
    I had believed betrayal somehow could not follow me here; I had left my life behind, the Court and its intrigues seemed a lifetime away. But someone had come for me. They had sent an assassin here, to find me as I tried to build another life. And now I had nothing: no hope that I could have a life untainted by fear, no hope that I could turn myself back from an assassin to a girl. When the first false belief crashed down, all of the others came with it.
    I walked in a daze, the darkness closing around me like a loving caress, shadows calling to a shadow. Now I could see myself drawing closer to them. I had tried to stop the tide of darkness within myself, but it had been too late. I was slipping away. I had deluded myself into thinking that I could yet be a person like any other. I had killed, twice; I had killed without hesitation. No work for the rebellion, no good deeds, could reverse that. All my life, I would live with this, and it would eat at my heart until nothing was left, and I was a shadow, indeed. Was that what had happened to Temar? Was that why he always had such sadness behind his gaze?
    Ahead of me, Miriel strode purposefully, her bloodstained hands clenched, her back straight. She was muttering to herself, as she had once been wont to do when she walked through the Palace tunnels to meet the King; she was rehearsing. In my mind’s eye, she had gone as bright and hard as steel, brittle and unbending. The change she had tried to push away was pressing back, insistent; it was consuming her. She was becoming light untempered by shadow, unsoftened by darkness. Beautiful, and entirely inhuman.
    Across the windy fields, the lights of the town glittered in the darkness. It seemed so welcoming, I thought, that I was overwhelmed by a wave of homesickness. I was not homesick for any place I had ever known, but for a home I did not have, would not have. We had run away, only to find that we could not settle here. We could not settle until we could outrun what stalked us—and there was no outrunning fate. I would never walk across the fields, seeing lights in the distance and knowing them for my house, knowing that my family waited there. I would never roam the earth and know that there was always a place for me to return to. I would spend my life as I always had: a stranger, a cuckoo’s child.
    I followed Miriel and