Sharad

Darksilver Book 5

Sharad Time has run out and every option is gone.

Paramount Sentinel Devyn Fletcher has pledged her entire life to protecting Terra. Her devotion to the Blade Lords has robbed her of independence, health, happiness, and even emotion—until now. Because now that she knows Sharad, she knows rage.

Blade Lord Sharad of the House of Scorpions has been to the depths of hell in the hands of his enemy. He has sacrificed all in order to protect his people. In return, he expects nothing more than his due: abject fealty and glad servitude. But his Paramount has other plans.

If they agree on nothing else, it is this: the gate to Terren lies open and, unless they can close it, all of its people will be enslaved.

In the bowels of the factory the chained, beaten prisoner lay unmoving as two of the guards peered through the door grate.

“Still breathing, Donny,” the larger man said. “He ain’t twitched all day, though.”

“Unlock the door,” the smaller, sinewy guard said as he drew his baton. “Give me five minutes alone with this piece of shit, Bill, and I’ll have him twitching all right.”

“You saw what he did to Jay-Jay and Eric. Even with the chains on him you won’t last five seconds.” His companion shut off the light switch to the prisoner’s room. “Come on. We got another shipment coming in tonight.”

Their footsteps echoed in the empty hall outside as they retreated. Only when the sound stopped did the prisoner open his eyes. The darkness concealed his face, allowing him to watch the door grate as he listened and breathed in the air coming through the tiny gaps in the door.

Gone.

Shifting without making the chains clatter required him to move like river currents beneath winter ice. He had immersed himself in the flow of that cold, thick water to move past the fury that never quite stopped howling inside him. In his mind he saw himself in the mountains of his boyhood, where the high, cold winds never stilled. There he rode his favorite mount across the plains, as free and unencumbered as any nameless tribesman.

As he had never been.

Gradually the prisoner slid his hand down to a bloodstained tear in his trousers and sank his nails into the twisted flesh beneath it. Opening the wound sent a jolt of pain into his hip, but he paid no mind to it. Suffering had become his constant companion. Gripping the edge of the broken blade he had driven into his own leg before being captured, he tugged it out an inch at a time until he freed it. Fresh blood made the steel slippery, and the edge cut into his fingers as he curled them around it. A new surge of rage poured through him, but he’d expected that.

Be the winter river.

Bringing the blade up to where his chains had been fastened to the cinderblock wall, the prisoner began to work the tip against the concrete surface behind the heavy bolts. As the fine dust his efforts produced drifted down, he blew it away to scatter and blend in with the dirt on the filthy floor. This tedious whittling had been his work every night since his last attempt to escape. When the dawn drew near, he would stop and push the blade back into his leg wound. The guards always checked the room and his chains, never the wall. Like Bill, they feared him too much to come inside the room now–and they were quite right in their apprehension. Anyone who came into this room would not live to leave it again.

After he freed himself, Sharad thought, they would all die.