Of Silver and Shadow by Jennifer Gruenke

Author:Jennifer Gruenke [Gruenke, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Fantasy / Dark Fantasy / LGBT / Dystopian
Publisher: North Star Editions
Published: 2021-02-15T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FOUR

Ren couldn’t sleep. Maybe it was because a tavern full of rebels had been attacked, or maybe it was that Markus had killed a man and was sitting on Freya’s couch doing an impressive imitation of a statue in Keepler’s Prospect, or possibly it was the knowledge that Darek was just a door away, asleep in her own sitting room.

But it was most likely her pounding skull. Ren was really starting to regret agreeing to take part in a revolution. She hadn’t realized being a rebel would come with so many head injuries. In the past two weeks, she’d been knocked unconscious twice, which was almost as many times as she’d been decked into oblivion in four years’ worth of pit fights.

Seven hundred thousand gold pieces.

She stared up at the bare ceiling beams and ran through the night’s events, from the blasted tavern doors to her encounter with the South Terth pit lord. Ren had forgotten about him the second she’d left his pit, but he clearly couldn’t say the same about her. His smile was the playful kind that had gotten Ren into bed before, and though half his face was hidden by a mask, he clearly had a handsome one. He’d been simple enough to ruffle. A suggestive line here, a look through the lashes there. Men. They made it too easy.

Ren felt a familiar itch, a desire to release a bit of whatever was swirling around inside her. She slipped from bed, changed quickly, and stepped out into the sitting room. Darek’s prone body sprawled across her couch pulled her up short. He’d removed his sling and had a palm resting on his stomach, while his other arm was raised around the back of his head. His legs hung off the end, feet bare, chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm like waves rolling into shore on a cold, clear night. He looked so . . . Ren didn’t know what he looked like, but she didn’t hate it. Even in sleep, his face was comprised of lines and angles, and a chunk of hair had come free of his knot to brush his cheek. He was so broad, lying there on her tiny couch, and for just a moment Ren considered his chest, how it would feel against hers.

A shudder went over her, and she unstuck herself from the floorboards, dashing across the room and out her door as if fleeing a vengeful ghost.

The basement was as cold and dark as a graveyard under a moonless winter sky. Gooseflesh covered Ren’s arms, her breath puffing in the dry air. There were no candles or lamps, no windows to let in a glow from the moon, but Ren didn’t need the real starlit sky. She could create one of her own.

Standing in the middle of the room with lifted palms, her silver swirled upward and pooled overhead. The shadows pulled back, the bare basement walls revealing themselves as she moved her fingers and wrists, directing the magic into shape.

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