Starve On It

Starve On It
Kane

Amelia hated it when I barred her from things. She didn’t say it outright, but I could feel the shift in her shoulders, the faint pull of defiance through the bond whenever I laid down a command. She always hated being told what to do. This time was no different.
“You don’t go near it without me,” I told her flatly that morning, catching her chin so she had no choice but to look me in the eye. “You don’t leave this mountain without me. Do you understand?”
Her lips parted like she might argue, like she might remind me of that fire in her I loved so much, but then she swallowed, her gaze softening just a fraction, and she nodded. I felt relief down the bond.
She’s still afraid.

I released her, though every part of me still bristled. I couldn’t help it. The thing in that council building wanted her. I’d seen enough, felt enough, to know that much. And if it thought it would ever get her, it was already dead.

That was why I came down here now, alone. Not because I doubted the wards I’d woven, but because I trusted nothing and no one when it came to her safety. Not stone, not iron, not time.
Only shadow.
Mine.
The chamber was cut deep into the mountain’s spine, sealed with layers of magic only I could feel. To anyone else it would look like a blank stretch of stone. To me, the wards hummed faint and cold, lines of shadow tangled together like barbed wire. They would hold as long as I willed them to.
Landon thought he could break through this? The audacity almost made me laugh. The fool clawed at the edges of a cage he couldn’t even see, convinced he could tear it down. Shadow binds shadow. Nothing else. He could burn an army against it, and the mountain would still stand.

I remembered the markings we’d found in that abandoned house at the dig site that were scratched into walls, carved into floors, circles layered on circles. Not random, but careful, deliberate paranoia.
The Council had known what was buried here. They had sealed it, feared it, and still… they dug it back up.
Why?

I straightened, shadows slipping back into me as I pulled away from the ward-lines. The mountain was secure. It always was. That wasn’t what kept me awake at night.
The relic in the council building was the problem.
If the council had been paranoid enough to scratch circles into stone and stack wards until the walls bled, then why in the hell had they disturbed it? Why move it here, into my territory? Unless they thought they could use it. Unless it had already been whispering to them the way it whispered to her.
My lip curled. I didn’t care about their reasons. I only cared that it would never touch Amelia.
I turned from the chamber, striding back up through the mountain’s spine until daylight broke cold across the ridge. Beyond lay the council building, half-emptied, still reeking of their arrogance.
That was where I was going now.

I stalked through the main hall.
The deeper I went, the heavier the air grew. My shadows were restless.

The relic sat in the center of the room like a tumor, black stone veined with cracks that glowed faint as dying embers. Not bright, not loud, but alive in a way no rock should ever be.
I stepped closer.
To most eyes, it was just a stone. To mine, it was wrong. My shadows recoiled at the edges, like animals catching a scent they didn’t trust.
I pressed forward anyway, letting the darkness slip from me and thread through the stone’s surface.
I can sense the wards the council had set on it, different from mine. Woven with blood, brittle with desperation. They clung like spider silk stretched too thin. My shadows tangled through them easily, a hunter tearing webs apart, until they reached the heart of the stone.
That was when I felt it.
Pull.
Not words. Not whispers. Just hunger.

It wasn’t like my darkness, which shielded and cloaked, clean and sharp. This was heavy, suffocating, endless. A hunger that didn’t consume to protect....it spread, ravenous, insatiable.
For one sharp moment, I considered whether I could seize it the way I seized feral wolves. Press my shadows into it, force it to heel, to break. My gift itched for it, snarled for it.
But this was no wolf. No beast.

Through the bond, Amelia’s fear spiked again. Not sharp as before, but steady now, like a shiver running under her skin. I felt it echo down my spine.
I stilled.
So it was true. She had felt it.
Not the wards. Not the shadows. The stone. Through me.
My jaw tightened as I stared at the relic. The Council’s paranoia. The whispers Amelia had confessed.
It wasn’t coincidence.
It was tethered to her.

The realization hit like a blade in my gut. My mate, bound to this thing in some way I couldn’t see. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know why. But the bond between us had just confirmed it, and that was enough.
Rage seared through me. I pressed harder, shoving a heavier wave of shadow into the stone, daring it to answer me.
The hunger surged back, greedier this time, sucking until my own gift snarled against it. Amelia’s fear leapt, and I jerked away with a snarl, slamming the shadows back inside me.

“Mine,” I hissed under my breath, though I wasn’t sure if I was cursing the stone or swearing her to myself.
I paced the chamber, fury cutting through me in sharp, lethal edges. If it thought it could take her, it was wrong. If it thought it could bind her, it had already lost.
But the tether…

My mind circled. If it could reach her through me, if it could pull at her gift from a distance, then she wasn’t just a target. She was a key. The Council had known something of that. Why else would they keep it, not destroy it, not bury it deeper? Why risk it at all?
The markings we’d seen in that abandoned house flashed in my memory, circles within circles, cut into stone and on things within the cellar. Obsession. Not just paranoia. They had believed in this thing. Perhaps even worshipped it.
I bared my teeth, shadows coiling sharper around me. Fools.

My hand lifted again, my shadow gift threading out, testing the hunger once more. It pulled, eager, greedy. Not words, but I could almost sense shape in it, like a mouth yawning open in the dark. Amelia flinched again down the bond.
The only thing that mattered was keeping it locked away from her.
I stepped close and laid my palm on the rock.

“You will not have her,” I said, each word edged in steel. “Not today. Not ever. She is mine.”
The relic thrummed faintly in answer, a pulse that rolled through the chamber like the aftershock of a quake. It didn’t understand words. But it understood the bond. It understood want.
Good. Then it could starve on it.

I turned from it at last, my shadows snapping sharp as I pulled them all back inside. Behind me, the stone glowed faintly, restless. But I didn’t care.
Let Landon waste himself trying to get into my mountain. Let the relic gnaw in hunger until it rotted.
Amelia was mine.
And I would drown the world in shadow before I let a stone take her from me..