him. That without him, I’d be lost to the fractures in my mind.” He smirked. “I was wrong. He was a blanket that I clutched like a child in the night. I’m laughing at my own foolishness.”
It was true. He had created that shadow of his out of a rejection of all the things he believed made him weak. His pain. His agony. But most of all—his shadow was a creation of his own crippling loneliness.
What his shadow had always been, in the end…was a stuffed animal. A demented creature he could argue with, despise, and taunt. But one that was always there.
His shadow was just another part of the elaborate house of cards he had built around himself in an attempt to fend off the Big Bad Wolf.
A safety net pulled taut beneath the trapeze artists.
And now…his shadow was gone.
There was no rush of angst, no onslaught of spastic and over-exuberant emotions flooded him. Nor did he feel like anything was missing. He felt…fine.
Well, besides the concussion.
I spent all those years convinced I could not feel those things because I had thrown them away. I spent all those years convinced I couldn’t love because it would destroy me.
Goodness, I really am a megalomaniac, aren’t I?
The Family was right about me this whole time. I am an egotistical madman. I suppose I should apologize to them.
On second thought…nope. They can rot.
He snickered again. He couldn’t help it. It was hysterical. All those years! All those years spent shut away from the world because he believed it was protecting his sanity. He cackled, slapping his hand on the stairs. He must look like an absolute lunatic. The look on Cora’s face said he was right.
“Simon?”
He chuckled and struggled to sit up. She helped him, and he managed to get upright enough that his back was against her chest, and he was nestled between her knees. He leaned his head against her shoulder. “I’m fine. I’m better than fine. I’m free of the rope. And I’m free of my shadow.”
“Please don’t gloat. I miss him…I…” She wiped at her cheek. “I know you don’t care that he’s gone, but I do.”
Twisting slightly, he wove his hand into the hair at the base of her neck and pulled her into a kiss. He kept it tender at first, but then deepened it, little bit by little bit. He stopped just short of leaving her gasping. Those beautiful, astonishing gray eyes of hers were darkened by lust. Just an inkling of it. He kissed her cheek then smirked, letting his breath ghost over her skin. “I’ll have to work hard to make up for his absence, then.”
She wrapped her arms around him and held him, bowing her head to rest it against his shoulder. He stroked her hair, kissing her temple. “Now, can you please explain to me how it is that I’m sitting here with you? And how it is you gave me a concussion?”
“I dropped you on your head on the stairs,” she muttered. “I slipped.”
“You’re avoiding telling me something, Cora dear. Something very big and important. How, exactly, did you have me suspended in the air in the first place?”
She muttered something into his coat that was unintelligible. He elbowed her. She grunted, lifted her head, and with a long breath, held out her hand in front of her. “Like this.”
Simon’s eyes went wide.
Concussion or not, there was no mistaking what he saw.
He might have lost his bizarre shadow…
But it seemed she gained one of her own.
Darkness crawled along the wall, extending from the shade cast by her arm. But they were darker than any other shadow around them. They were as pure as the void itself—as the nothingness that was the sky of the Inversion. They slithered up the wall, wrapping around the windows in lazy, pointed spirals.
And then, they were no longer on the walls. They extended out into the air, blotting out the lightbulbs that burned valiantly against the sunlight.
They reminded him of his own shadow’s eerie and bizarre shapes.
He wondered if she made them that way in tribute or if it was because of an intrinsic link to Harrow Faire. But he hadn’t any time to consider it, as the tendrils of darkness wound around the railing beside him and reached up the stairs. He scrambled to pull his feet clear of the inky nothingness, but he had nowhere to go.
He was surrounded.
The source of it was sitting at his back, after all. Her arm was extended