Page 16 of Heavenly Bodies

Fire flickered frantically between his hands, but when Elara noticed it, it extinguished.

‘The last is shadowmancing then?’ he demanded.

Elara tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry, so she just nodded.

‘Then where are your shadows? I’ve met many a shadowmancer in my time who has tried to kill my light with their darkness. Where was yours yesterday, when I had you pinned to a tree?’

The cool amusement in his face made her stomach writhe.

She didn’t want to say it—she wouldn’t say it. But skies, she could feel a magick settling over her, something that probed and pushed. It was invisible, but it felt as foreign as the Light, urging her to be truthful. It wrapped around her,trying to push past the shadows stuck within her, and Elara desperately tried to push her box deeper within the shadows, somewhere that Enzo could never find it, could never know that she was hiding terrible secrets from him. But to her horror, a ray of light shone a gap through the shadows, beaming right over the obsidian chest. His light tried to prize it open, but it remained firmly locked.

‘Well, well,’ Enzo said. ‘It didn’t take long for your wall to break down for me.’

Elara stood quickly, pulling out the dagger that until now she had kept hidden on her thigh. ‘Get out of my godsdamned head,’ she spat.

Enzo looked at the weapon, cruel amusement in his eyes. ‘Not until you can be honest. What are you hiding in that little box, Elara?’

‘I will gut you where you stand if you don’t get your filthy light out of me.’ She was heaving breaths, his element so wrong within her. Enzo chuckled, but she slowly felt her shadows wrap around the box inside her again, his light dissipating.

‘Something happened to your shadows.’

‘I can’t wield them, if that’s what you are so desperate to know,’ she said, voice hardening.

‘What do you mean, youcan’t?’

‘I mean that I can’t conjure a single one,’ she snapped.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know,’ she lied.

Enzo’s magick crept in tendrils over her once more, trying to coax the truth out of her, trying to scour her soul for the lies upon it. But Elara gritted her teeth, making sure the shadows trapped within her wrapped more tightly around her truths, until he brought his seer magick back to him.

‘The shadows are still within you,’ he said.

‘I know,’ she replied.

‘So I suppose our work is going to be to release them.’

‘And how exactly are you going to do that?’

‘I am the most accomplished magi Helios has seen in generations,’ he replied calmly.

‘Are you the most modest magi too?’ she asked, smiling sweetly.

His eyes flattened. ‘You’re going to have to at least try to work with me.’

She hesitated. She didn’t want to help him, or his father. But if he could help her access her shadows again, if she could feel them between her fingertips once more, then perhaps she really could kill Ariete, and reclaim her throne.

‘Fine,’ she gritted out.

‘Believe me,’ he added, stretching out his shoulder muscles. ‘I’m as happy about this arrangement as you are.’

‘Well, that makes me smile.’

He stood. ‘Come on then. Let’s try and loosen these blocks.’ He turned, lifting his shirt up over his head. Elara’s breath hitched.

His back was a masterpiece of carved rippling muscle, appearing burnished in the heat. But it was his tattoo that had stopped her. Between his shoulders, a snarling lion in mid-roar was etched in gold, its teeth glinting. Wings stretched out over each of his shoulder blades, drawn in such breathtaking detail, Elara couldn’t look away. As he rolled his neck, the taut muscles straining, the lion’s wings rippled as though it was about to take flight. It was beautiful. Vicious.