~ Sam ~
Sam shuddered as death passed through his borrowed body. He recognized the empty cold. He’d felt it before. All the knots and all the ties he’d so carefully woven through Jackson’s frame shriveled, then disappeared in an instant as both of their souls slipped free.
Immediately, he felt a tug on the other end of the shadows.
A hard yank.
Two ivory fists grabbed hold of his power and pulled him inch by inch to a place he’d evaded too long—a place so unknown even he was afraid of it. The other side. Of life. Of love. Of vengeance. Of everything he’d ever known.
But he wasn’t one to go down without a fight.
Sam reached out with his power, searching for the familiar glow of Pandora, his only bright beacon through the darkness alive inside his heart. As always, he felt her, burning with life, his passionate, fiery Pandora. So vivid. So solidly in the world.
He latched on.
He pulled against the weight holding him back.
He crawled through the darkness, spilling back into the world as nothing more than an ebony phantom, an invisible cloud hovering in the air above her head, completely unseen.
Had she been looking for him, she would have felt him.
Would have sensed him, as he always did her.
But she didn’t.
Because she was too consumed with someone else.
“Jax!” Pandora wailed, a stubborn, fighting, nearly broken sound. Her blood-soaked hands pounded Jackson’s chest. Tears streamed from her eyes. She dug her fingers into his shoulders, refusing to let go. “Don’t you dare, Jax. Don’t you dare. Hold on. Hold on. Fight, goddamnit. Fight!”
The undersides of her palms began to glow.
Cerulean fire burst to life between her fingers and barreled into his lifeless chest, weaving a design Sam had never seen her wield before. Something new. Something not from their past. Suddenly, a strand, faint and barely there, glowed to life, stretching straight from her heart to young Jackson’s—not her power, but something far greater. A soul bond. An ancient sort of power. Stronger even than him.
He’d known it was there.
He’d followed the connection to her spirit, using it to tie himself to that body.
And then he’d tried to break it.
But even with all his might, he couldn’t touch it. His shadows could not snap it. They’d slid around that brilliant gold knot like oil on water, too slick to grab hold.
And now, Pandora poured her immortal fire into that bond, losing herself within it. The strand glowed, brighter and brighter, pushing against his darkness, pushing him back.
Pandora, Sam called through the shadows. He brushed the mist against her cheek, over her skin, trying to call upon the ebony strand stretching between them, the soul bond he’d taken it upon himself to establish so many years ago, when the real one, the one he hoped would appear, never had.
He thought it had worked. After all, it had kept her with him through life and death. It had connected them through space and time. Until now, he never realized what a pale imitation his shadow bond had been.
Pandora, Sam whispered.
“Jax!” she cried in the same moment, her head bowing to his chest as her body shook and her magic surged.
An unfamiliar sense of helplessness passed through him.
Then those searing white hands tugged on his soul again, trying to yank him to that place he refused to go, that place beyond, that place where his isolation would be complete, where even the shadows would forsake him.
No.
He refused.
Sam danced the shadows back, letting the air carry his soul higher.
He looked across the battlefield his power had created. Across the blood and the massacre. There were more bodies he could fill, more lives he could steal, more souls he could corrupt. His power was endless. He was endless. Nothing in this world could stop him.
And yet…
“No, no, no, Jax!” Pandora’s voice sliced through him. The name rolling off her tongue was sharper than any weapon, stronger than any magic.
What does it mean without her?
Sam blinked.
The bodies. The stench of death. The screams.
They’d been here before. A long time ago, and yet, it felt like yesterday. Sam could almost feel his onyx wings flap through the darkness, carrying him high above the field, out of reach of any arrows as the shadows pulsed, alive with his rage. He’d been fighting for them. For the life they’d been owed. The dreams that had been stolen. The promises he’d sworn he would find a way to keep. Always for them. For her.
And Pandora had fought for him too. With her fists pounding against his chest, demanding he return to her. Defiant against his darkness, his anchor to the light, saving him from his shadows. Time and time again. Seeing more than he saw within himself. Never giving up.
But now?
Where was she?
Whose name did she call?
The shadows pulsed with a hollow sort of sensation, an emptiness Sam had never felt before. He looked down.
At Pandora.
At the body she knelt over.
At the lips crying another man’s name.
At the power she called, not for him, but for him.
Conduit fire from across the enclave was swirling through the air, funneling into Jackson’s chest as Pandora stole all of that heat and warmth and light for him. The golden soul bond strengthened, beaming as bright as the sun as it stretched between their two hearts, nearly blinding as it pulsed, growing more and more powerful with each passing second.
Sam was forgotten.
The phantom he always feared he’d become.
Lost.
Alone in the shadows.
Unseen, even by her.
A desolate barrenness throbbed across his darkness. Something cold. Broken. As though his soul were splintering and cracking, breaking into more pieces than he knew how to contain. Shattering beyond recognition. All the grief he’d refused to feel crashed over him, carrying him under, deeper and deeper into a darkness that wasn’t full of power but of pain. For him. For her. For the life they should have had. For the family they’d so desperately wanted. For the freedom and the peace they’d craved—the freedom and the peace that had always been just barely out of reach. All the fury and the hatred and the fear vanished, turning to a pounding ache he could no longer ignore, could no longer deny.
Because the worst had happened.
Despite all his power.
And all his strength.
And all his words.
He’d lost her.
He was alone.
He was just as invisible as he’d always been.
And that was when Pandora finally looked up at the sky above her head, at the darkness hovering where only she could see. Her blue eyes blinked, focusing. There was a tug at the edge of his shadows. She saw him. Felt him.
“Please,” she whispered. Her sparkling irises bore through the void, drilling straight to his soul. And then they dropped ever so slightly, falling to the onyx tether stretching between them, the one she could finally see since he was using it to remain in this world.
Sam froze.
“Please,” she repeated, begging this time, as she refused to blink, staring the darkness down. Blazing cerulean ropes began to twine around their shadow bond, slowly, deliberately, as though asking permission. “Please. Please. Please.”
Her words were a prayer.
Not to God.
But to him.
And with each nearly silent plea, his world fell apart. The blood staining the ground grew brighter. The screams grew sharper. The anguish and the suffering grew suffocating. He could no longer see the beauty in his power. He could only see her pain, mirroring his own.
Gold and cerulean strings coiled through his darkness, dipping and diving and twisting and knotting, weaving tighter and tighter, until he felt he had no breath left. The shadow bond stretching from his heart began to shrivel at the other end, to fray, as its anchor slipped loose. There was no room left in her heart for him, no cracks or crevices where his power might slink unseen. Pandora’s soul was too full of someone else, too bright with glittering light.
One yank on the shadows was all it would take to stop her.
One wave of darkness.
One flood of inky black.
Sam reached for his power, letting it build, and—
“Please,” Pandora murmured one last time.
He stopped cold.
He froze.
Her voice pierced, slicing through both of their powers, touching something raw, a bright spark within, one he thought he had snuffed out a long time ago. And finally, finally after so long, Sam listened. He heard not what he wanted to hear, but the truth she was trying to tell, the truth he’d been so cruelly ignoring.
Please let me be happy.
Please let us find peace.
Please let the cycle end.
Please be the man I know you can be.
Please be the person I loved.
Please. Please. Please.
Sam listened, and all the power he’d built for that final onslaught wilted, cascading around the two of them like a warm summer rain instead of the maelstrom he’d intended. He pressed his phantom lips to the back of her head, to the spot where his shadow kiss was imprinted on her skin.
Pandora closed her eyes, sensing his presence, and took a deep breath—something in between a sigh and shudder, something in between love and hate, something in between light and dark, something just like them. Then she lashed out with her immortal fire, finishing her weave, snapping their bond completely in two.
She destroyed their connection.
He let her.
And in that split second of hesitation, those white necromancer hands reached for his soul and clamped tight. The shadows caved in, clawing against her power, desperately slashing at those ivory fingers. Yet there was nothing they could do without him. And Sam was dazed, dumbstruck as the medium carried him away. Because when the world faded, for the first time in he didn’t know how many thousands of years, there was no more bright light leading him home. No more Pandora.
But she’d left him something.
A warm tingle deep in his chest.
A feeling he’d forgotten.
Hope.
Hope that after so many lifetimes spent repeating the same endless journey, it might be time for a new adventure after all.