Reign of Shadows (Reign of Shadows, #1)

Reign of Shadows (Reign of Shadows, #1)

Sophie Jordan




DEDICATION

For Jared, because when I imagine a world

like this I want you by my side . . .



ONE


Luna


THE ECLIPSE SPANNED all my life. It invaded everything. A deep, seeping blackness that poured into every crack and fissure like pooling blood. The darkness was especially dense outside my tower, sliding like ink to where I stood on the lighted balcony, listening to the hum of hungry insects and animals. And them.

Sighing, I rested both elbows on the balcony railing. Coals popped and crumbled in the stove behind me, emitting a cozy warmth that contrasted sharply with the damp cold nipping at my nose and cheeks. Heat and comfort lapped at my back while darkness stretched before me. And yet I wanted Outside with an anxious energy that buzzed along my nerves.

Longing pumped through me as thick as the chronic night. A small animal scurried in the forest far below my window. I dipped my chin in that direction and cocked my head, tracking it as though I could see through the gloom and treetops, as though the creature were visible at the base of the stone tower.

The animal snuffled at the outside wall, probably trying to decipher the obstacle in its path that wasn’t part of the natural world. A tower didn’t belong in these woods. No hint of civilization did. After a few moments nosing around, the animal returned to the woods. I followed its movements through the underbrush, envying its freedom.

From high in my perch, I listened. My hearing had long adapted to the darkness. From the quick thump of paws, I guessed it was a rabbit. They were bountiful in these woods. They bred quickly and were fast enough to escape the dwellers. Most of the time.

A distant sound emerged. I lifted my face to the sky as the droning chirps swelled from the east, building to a crescendo. I wasn’t the only one who heard them. The rabbit tore through the undergrowth.

My fingers clenched the stone railing, knuckles aching, heart beating hard in my chest.

Hurry, hurry.

I dropped my chin again, urgency burning in my veins as I willed the rabbit to move faster, to live. Which was ridiculous. We ate plenty of rabbits, but somehow I identified myself with this one.

The army of bats drew closer in a great sweeping cloud, their giant, leathery wings slapping on the air. Bats were once pocket sized. Since the eclipse they had grown, now averaging four feet tall. No longer did they consume insects. They hunted bigger prey.

Go, go, go.

They buzzed all around the tower with high-pitched yips that made my skin jump.

“Luna, come,” Perla called. “The last thing we need is one of them getting inside.”

I couldn’t move. Riveted, I stood in place, listening for my rabbit.

The bats spotted it and lunged for it as one giant beast. Leaves rustled and branches cracked as they dove through the treetops. Their song grew frenzied, excited as they closed in.

The rabbit screamed shrilly as its body was ripped apart, flesh and bones snapping like parchment and quill. I flung my hands over my ears against the terrible sound.

Perla was suddenly there, tugging me inside and shutting the door, drawing me into the warm glow of lantern light. She gathered me into her soft, yielding arms until I stopped shaking. I could still hear the bats. The rabbit’s shriek echoed inside my head, taunting me even though it was long dead.

“There, now.” She patted my back as though I were still the little girl she used to read to at night. “You’re safe.”

I sagged against her, accepting her comfort even though it troubled me that she thought I needed it. Because none of this changed anything. I still wanted out there. I still had to learn to make that world my own.

I’d spent my entire life within these walls. I wouldn’t spend the rest of it in here, too. I couldn’t.

According to Sivo, life was supposed to be a balance of light and dark. Each time we cleaned our weapons after a hunt it was this bit of truth he shared with me.

Before, the moon reigned for only half the day. The sun occupied the sky for the other half, burning brightly enough to scorch your skin if you stayed outdoors too long. It was incredible to imagine such a thing, as illusory as the fairy tales that Perla told me as a girl.

I only knew this existence—the black eclipse and thick walls that kept us safe from an army of dark dwellers. I only knew Sivo and Perla and isolation. This life consisted of sporadic runs into the great maw of night with Sivo at my side trying to teach me survival in the shadow of our tower.

A slaughtered rabbit was a casualty of the war being waged. I would not be such a casualty. I knew this because I knew the dark. I knew the taste of it in my mouth. The feel of it on my skin. It clung. Smothered. It carried death in its fold.

The dark should terrify me, but it did not. It never had.

The rabbit wasn’t me. It was prey, and I would never be that.

Perla stepped back and lowered her arms from me. “Come now. These linens won’t fold themselves.”

I glanced back at the closed balcony doors. “It’s quiet again.”

My ears strained for the sound of bats, but they’d moved on, their cries lost in the distance. There was nothing beyond the normal noise of the forest now. The throb of blood-swollen insects on the air and the cawing of carrion birds. An occasional tree monkey scampered through branches.

The whisper of fabric told me that Perla had started folding.