Walk Into The Light - Shadows of the Night 6

Chapter 18

Hi,

I hope you all had a great weekend! Now to the chapter: Anna's still trapped in Vladislav's "throne room"/possibly mind. Do you have any idea how she could "get out"?

Comment and vote if you like. And of course: enjoy the read! :-)

PS: You might want to listen to the song: "In the Shadows" by Amy Stroup!

Lara

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Chapter 18

The throne room around us was dark, shadows eating up anything else that might have existed once in these halls. I couldn't see the throne, but I knew its location; knew how many steps I had to walk along the wall, where the position of paintings would tell me where I was.

The darkness made the people standing in front of me more real. As it they were made of flesh and bone, instead of figments of memory Vladislav had picked out of my head. I scanned their faces, tracing their features – trying to find a flaw that would remind me that they were phantoms, not people I loved.

Starting with Blaze, my eyes glided over their features and finally settled on Maria. Together with the ghost of a smile her expression had lost the tinge of benevolence extended towards a friend. Maria's lips thinned. She stared at me for a long moment. I stared back.

"Don't do it, Anna. I mean it," she said, her tone matching the clear warning message in her eyes – eyes that were both familiar and alien to me.

Blaze moved forward, coming abreast with Maria.

"Stop trying to save fucking lost causes, Anna," he said.

My mother and father stepped up to them synchronously.

"I will not let the only daughter I have get killed," my father said gruffly.

I jerked at the sound of his voice. It sounded so very real, it hurt. Seventeen years ago my parents died. Seventeen years of absolute torment with an obsolete memory.

Even without my memory, I'd imagined talking to my parents, had made up stories of them watching me grow up and work for the Circle. The child in me always wanted to make them proud. The adult in me wanted the same.

I swallowed. And no matter how much I wanted it, they never would see me, or be proud of who I turned out to be. I had to accept that and live with that knowledge. Or die.

I let out a harsh breath – anything to ease the stifling weight of knowing.

I have to get out of here. Now.

They were effectively blocking my way to Vladislav's throne – the one spot I believed I had to reach if I ever wanted to get out of this.

"There's not much time. Let me through." The words fell from my mouth, sounded more like prayer than soft whisper.

Maria shook her head and folded her arms in front of her.

"No."

I drew in a shaky breath. Something in Blaze's eyes had just moved and I was familiar with it. It was the kind of look most shape shifters had shortly before changing. He stepped forward, arms loose at his sides, swinging.

"You're gonna have to go through us, if you want out."

Perhaps I only imagined the sudden drop in temperature and the motion of air; the cold draft rolling into the throne room like a miniature tempest. And, just like an afterthought, I heard the long-drawn, low rasp of a sigh. Perhaps the decadent smell of decay and the slight hint of decomposition was only a product of my imagination too.