The Shade was not merely restless; it was vengeful. The memory of its momentary nullification was a brand of humiliation upon its primordial consciousness, and it demanded retribution. It did not lash out at Kaelan's mind this time; that was its home, its larder. Instead, it turned its focus inward, to the physical vessel it shared. It was a master of somatic punishment, an artist of nerve-ending agony.
Kaelan had returned to his safe house, a sparse, warded room in a building that had never known light, the air smelling of old brick and isolation. He had barely crossed the threshold when the first wave hit. It was not a blade of pain, but a dissolution. The bones in his left hand seemed to turn to liquid fire, the sensation of them melting and reforming inside his flesh so visceral he could only stare at his suddenly useless, trembling fingers. It was an illusion, a phantom agony, but his nervous system screamed that it was real. He gritted his teeth, swallowing the cry that fought to escape. Sound was a concession.
He stumbled toward the single room's bare mattress, his body a marionette with its strings cut. The second wave was a symphony of broken glass dragged along the length of his spine. He fell to his knees, his forehead pressing against the cold, rough concrete of the floor. The Shade was methodical. It showed him the memory of the silence, that beautiful, terrible emptiness, and then it filled the void with a sensation of a thousand insects burrowing under his skin, their tiny, needle-sharp legs seeking the most sensitive, hidden places. It was a violation, an intimate defilement designed to poison the memory of the peace she had given him.
He did not fight it. Resistance was fuel. He had learned that lesson over centuries. His only defense was a fortress of pure, cold will. He built its walls in his mind, stone by mental stone, while his body convulsed on the floor. He compartmentalized the agony, cataloging it as a scientist would a foreign specimen. The melting sensation is localized to the metacarpals. The spinal laceration is a six on the scale, reminiscent of the punishment for the Barcelona incident. This clinical detachment was the last shred of his humanity, the final bastion that kept him from becoming the mindless, screaming beast the Shade wanted him to be.
But tonight, the fortress had a flaw. A single, hairline crack. And through that crack poured not the memory of the silence, but the memory of her. Not the power, not the devouring light, but the woman. The shock in her wide, dark eyes when she had turned and seen him. The way her breath had hitched. The terrifying vulnerability in the line of her throat. He had seen a thousand faces contorted in fear, but hers was different. It was not the fear of a cornered animal, but the fear of someone witnessing the end of their world. And in that moment, before the power had awoken, she had just been… human. Fragile. Real.
The Shade seized on this weakness with gleeful malice. The phantom insects burrowed deeper. The fire in his bones intensified to a forge-like heat. A new sensation bloomed. the feeling of his own ribs cracking outward, one by one, a blooming, metallic flower of torment. It was a punishment for the treason of his pity, for the dangerous, nascent curiosity he felt toward the source of his only respite.
An hour passed, or perhaps a lifetime. The onslaught gradually receded, not out of mercy, but out of the Shade's own need to conserve its energy, to savor its victory. Kaelan lay on the floor, drenched in a cold sweat that had nothing to do with the room's temperature, his muscles twitching with residual shocks. Every breath was a knife in his side. The physical pain would fade, leaving no mark. The psychological scar was deeper.
He pushed himself up, his movements slow and stiff. He walked to the small, tarnished mirror hanging on the wall. The face that stared back was a mask of cold control, the storm in his eyes banked to a dull, weary gray. But he saw the truth. The fortress still stood, but it was damaged. The hunter had been wounded not by a weapon, but by a moment of grace, and the infection was already spreading. The Conclave had ordered him to cage her. The Shade demanded he break her. And a part of him, a part he had thought long dead, was desperately, foolishly, wondering what it would be like to simply… be near the silence again.