Silver and Shadow (The Canath Chronicles Book 2) Read online

  Silver and Shadow

  Book Two of The Canath Chronicles

  S.M. Gaither

  Eva Truesdale

  Copyright © 2018 by Eva Truesdale/S.M. Gaither

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Find out more about the author at www.smgaitherbooks.com

  Contents

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

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  Also by Eva Truesdale/S.M. Gaither

  Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Romance

  Syndrome

  Sacrifice

  Ascendant

  Blood and Wolf

  Silver and Shadow

  Epic Fantasy

  Skykeeper

  Cursebreaker

  Storm bringer (coming soon!)

  The Queen of Cursed Things (coming soon!)

  Chapter One

  I can still hear the world I left behind.

  I can’t see it anymore. Can’t smell it, either—not the tea and honey scent of my mother, or the pine and ocean scent of the clearing I left her standing in. Her, and my dad, and my two best friends Liam and Carys—I left the four of them standing there, watching me as I followed a possibly-insane sorcerer into a parallel universe.

  All four of them are wondering what the hell I was thinking. Their thoughtspeech is loud and crashing around in my head. I’m trying to block it out so I can keep moving forward, but they keep pressing, asking me WHY?

  And in the interest of honesty, I’ll go ahead and admit it: I have no freaking clue.

  What the hell was I thinking?

  Ahead of me is blinding white light.

  Behind me, the light is fading. For every step I take forward, the darkness behind seems to press closer. It’s swallowing up the last of the ‘real’ sounds I could hear—the swaying trees and that ocean breeze, and the occasional shout from my parents that wasn’t directed into my head in that special shifter brand of thoughtspeech.

  A minute later, even the thoughtspeech is almost gone.

  Everything left of my old life is down to a whisper of my mom’s voice, so faint in my head that I might be imagining it—

  (Please think about what you’re doing, Eleanor. Please.)

  I stop, still sandwiched between the darkness and light.

  I see a bridge.

  It’s a dark grey disruption of that white light, and it reaches beyond where I can see. Flowing over the edges of it, and down into a foggy abyss, is dust. Shimmering golden dust that reminds me of falling stars. It’s the same dust that fell over Soren—the aforementioned possibly-insane sorcerer—when we first split our world open and revealed this path to the in-between.

  Soren.

  Where is that bastard, I wonder?

  If I cross over this bridge before me and keep trying to find him, what happens?

  Will I be able to find my way back?

  I turn around and I’m met with that unsettling wall of darkness that’s folding in after me; when I hold my hand out in front of me, I can’t see it anymore. So I’m already not sure I could go back the way I came, even if I wanted to.

  I turn, walk toward the bridge, and slowly start to make my way across it.

  Once I’m in the center of it, all of the noise in my head completely stops.

  I feel oddly weightless and disconnected from my mind and body and everything I once was—so much so that I forget how to move for a moment. I stand completely still, staring out from either side of the bridge, and I see more bridges running parallel to this one I stand on. More than I can count on either side.

  Do they all lead to different worlds?

  There’s dust flowing from their edges as well, every shower of it a slightly different shade.

  I see a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye—something, or someone, up ahead on this bridge.

  Soren?

  I forget about the intriguing, incredible possibility of those bridges to more worlds than I can count, and I break into a run.

  And I run.

  And I run.

  And then I run some more.

  The bridge doesn’t end. No matter how far or how fast I run, it all looks the same ahead and on either side of me, and now behind me too. It’s disorienting. Unsettling. But I don’t know what else to do, so I just keep jogging along until my legs feel like they might collapse beneath me—which takes a long time, considering my lycan genes and that powerful wolf side of me. Even after my limbs start their transition to jelly, I don’t give up. I slow to a brisk walk and I try to formulate a different plan.

  I try turning around and walking backwards, which seems counterproductive, I know—but there’s obviously magic at work on this bridge. Distance and direction don’t seem to be functioning in the way I’m used to.

  Now that I’ve slowed down, I notice an odd creeping over my skin. I try to shrug it off. I circle, taking stock of my surroundings once more. Still darkness behind me, but now it’s ahead of me, too. And those parallel bridges are still on either side of me, but they appear to have gotten farther away, somehow.

  I start to run again.

  “Something’s wrong.”

  Soren’s sudden voice sends a myriad of feelings rushing through me—everything from relief to desire to anger to pure, powerful annoyance.

  I stop running.

  He’s there, just behind me—or at least I think it’s really him. He doesn’t look like an illusion; he looks more solid than anything else in this weird place. And the sight of his familiar face is ultimately comforting, despite that mess he’s made of my thoughts and feelings.

  But he doesn’t need to know that last part.

  “You,” I blurt out. “What the hell were you thinking, tricking me like that and running off into this weird place by yourself? You couldn’t even have given me a warning before you freaking disappeared into a parallel universe in the middle of our supposed ‘date’? Seriously? Who does that?”

  He doesn’t answer me.

  He doesn’t even say, I’m so relieved/happy/annoyed/surprised to see you, Elle.

  All he says, in a distracted voice, is: “This is the Bridge of Cosain-Orga. It connects our own Earth to the realm of Canath. And it looks exactly like all of my books said it would, but none of those books mentioned any sort of Everlasting spell that might be protecting it and the things it leads to…I wonder how we’re supposed to break that spell?”

  I would be upset by his apparent avoidance of my questions, except I know that he simply gets like this sometimes—so focused on one thing that he pr
obably didn’t even hear me speak. Or if he did, the words simply haven’t registered yet.

  “Maybe we have to say the magic words?” I suggest drily. “Open sesame seeds?”

  “Doubt it.”

  “Speaking of sesame seeds, now I want Chinese food. Do you think they have that in Canath?”

  He shoots me a dubious look and then drops to his knees. The bridge’s surface glows brighter at the points where his weight shifts and presses into it. He doesn’t seem to notice; all of his attention is focused on the fog-filled expanse that this bridge is stretching over, and on that dust that’s tumbling into it. After a moment he leans over the edge to better study that dust.

  I’m torn. Part of me wants to grab the hood of his sweatshirt and make sure he doesn’t go tumbling over the edge, while the other part wants to kick him over myself because hey, that’s what he deserves for lying to me about his plans.

  “Never mind Canath; have you seen any Chinese restaurants while traveling on this bridge?” he mutters. “Because unless we can figure this out, I’m never going to reach Canath; this bridge might become our new permanent residence.”

  The direness of the situation hits me a little harder, and I drop to my knees beside him. After a moment of building up my courage, I reach my hand into the falling dust. I expect it to feel cold—like that similar dust that fell over me back on Earth.

  But it feels like nothing at all.

  Is it even real?

  That’s a question I’ve found myself asking endlessly since I met Soren, I realize.

  I push that thought—and my lingering annoyance with him—aside for a moment, and I focus on studying. I trust my sight least of all, so I close my eyes and focus on the stronger wolf senses—hearing and smell.

  Smell is useless; I smell things, but they’re unlike anything I’ve encountered before, so I can’t separate or make sense of them.

  But I also hear voices down below us.

  Very faint, and speaking in a language I don’t understand—but they sound human, at least. Or like some sort of intelligent life forms. I listen for a minute, trying to glean what I can from the strange words. There are two different voices. And in addition to their occasional whispering, I hear a distinct scrape of metal against leather.

  Maybe it’s the weapons-enthusiast in me, but I would swear it sounds like a sword being restlessly shuffled up and down in its sheath.

  Guards of some sort?

  As soon as the possibility occurs to me, I feel my inner wolf raising its hackles, and an image flickers through my mind—a black door with a familiar symbol carved into its center.

  My eyes flash open.

  What the hell was that?

  I’ve had strange visions before. My mother has the gift of Sight. My visions have never been as frequent as hers, and they usually occurred whenever I felt like I was losing control of my powers—but I feel perfectly in control now.

  And I don’t really understand it, but I feel like that door is somewhere down below, being guarded by whomever those voices belong to.

  “I think this bridge might be a decoy,” I say.

  Soren slowly pulls his eyes from the dust and fixes them expectantly on me.

  “I hear things—people, maybe— below us and I…I think I saw a door.”

  “You think you saw a door?” he repeats.

  “In my mind.”

  He stares at me. I expect him to call me a liar, or crazy, or both. But instead he nods in a slow, understanding sort of way. “Some of your connection to Canath persists, maybe. It’s calling to you. Or maybe it’s an extension of your power as a guardian of that key that led to this world.” His voice has lowered to a whisper. “Your mother has the power of Sight too, doesn’t she?”

  I nod. “Maybe the real bridge to Canath is below us?” I suggest, just as quietly. “And you miscalculated your landing in this place?”

  His lips purse, but instead of arguing his piloting-between-worlds ability, he straightens up and starts to pull his sweatshirt off. He’s wearing a white t-shirt underneath, but it gets caught and pulled partially off as well, revealing a narrow band of olive-toned skin.

  I look away before I blush, because being distracted by his perfectly sculpted stomach is almost as bad as being distracted by thoughts of Chinese food at a time like this.

  Not to mention I’m still pissed at him, pretty abs be damned.

  “Focus—”

  “I am,” I hiss.

  “—your senses,” he finishes. “I’m going to drop this down through the fog and see if it hits anything. Listen and see if you can tell how far it falls.”

  I do as he suggests, and I hear a soft thump less than three seconds after he lets the folded garment go.

  “I don’t think it fell that far. Ten, fifteen feet, maybe?” I whisper.

  A tremor of excitement rushes through me.

  I’m not really sure why; I mean, it might mean getting off this particular bridge, yeah— but there’s also a chance we’ll be dropping into certain death so…

  Soren is moving like the idea of certain death hasn’t occurred to him. And for some reason I grab his arm and hold him back.

  “My body’s more durable than yours,” I point out. “Powerful shapeshifter and all that. So I should go first. And maybe if I’m feeling charitable I’ll even catch you when you jump down.”

  He pulls free of my grip, frowning.

  “I won’t tell anybody you let a girl catch you,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Your man card is safe with me.”

  “Why are you even offering to do it in the first place?” The words come out almost like an accusation. “And why did you follow me here?”

  I still don’t know how to answer to that.

  So I hedge, obviously.

  “Maybe we can discuss that after we get out of this place that feels disturbingly like Purgatory?”

  His frown doesn’t budge. If anything it deepens, and then he’s practically glaring at me, despite his acknowledgment that I followed him into this hell. You’d think he’d be a little more grateful for that last part, right? Because at least me being dumb enough to follow him means he isn’t facing this place alone.

  And yet somehow I doubt I’m going to get a ‘thank you.’

  After a moment of awkward silence, he finally looks away, and he steps calmly toward the edge of the bridge again.

  He jumps.

  My breath leaves me in one quick, panicked whoosh.

  I hear a soft, graceful thump and the rustle of what I imagine was a rolling landing. And then, after focusing for a moment, I pick up the sounds of his slightly labored breathing—so he didn’t roll off the edge and hurtle downward into a bottomless abyss.

  Which is good.

  I guess.

  At least I know I can jump down and not die, now.

  I do just that, following his lead and rolling as I land on a bridge that feels as solid as that decoy one above. But I hit harder and move faster than I meant to, and I roll dangerously close to the edge; I can feel my weight start to pitch over the edge. I flail my arms out, trying to stop, and Soren grabs one of them and jerks me back toward the bridge’s center.

  He shoots me another confusingly irritated glance before stalking over, grabbing his sweatshirt and yanking it back over his head. Clearly annoyed that I’m still following him. But he keeps his mouth shut.

  Not like he could tell me to go home at this point, right?

  And we’re interrupted before he can say anything, anyway.

  Our fall apparently was louder than I thought, because those voices I heard earlier have stopped, but in place of them is the sound of heavy, deliberate footsteps, soon followed by what is definitely a sword being unsheathed.

  “Get as close to the edge as you can,” Soren whispers. His hands are raised— prepared to do magic.

  I inch my way to the edge, hoping he has a better plan than I do. Which wouldn’t take much, since I have no plan.

  He creeps back with
me and wraps an arm around my waist, pulling me closer.

  So he can more easily concentrate his magic around the two of us, I tell my brain before it can start running too wild on me.

  That magic appears a second later: a twisting, tumbling, very real-looking impersonation of that light-infused fog that fills the space around the bridge. It wraps around us like a shield, creating the illusion that we’re nothing more than a bit of that mist.

  And not a second too soon.

  I suck in a breath and hold it as two creatures saunter into sight, emerging from a darkened end of the bridge some twenty feet away from us.

  They look like what I imagine could be hiding underneath the cloak of a grim reaper or something—tall, unnaturally thin bodies draped in ragged white linen; greyish skin stretched taut over protruding bones; gaping eyes and mouths deeply set in heads that twitch oddly as they look around, almost like they’re wind-up toys.

  So definitely not human.

  But I was right about the swords I heard; they’re both carrying some of the most gorgeous ones I’ve ever seen, each in their right hand. The blades are slightly curved, like a shotel, and they look like they’ve been dipped in starlight—pitch black with shimmering specks of white that flare brighter with even the subtlest movement.

  If I’m going to die here, I weirdly think I’d be okay with one of those swords running me through.

  But I’m not in a hurry to die, so I’m still holding my breath as the terrifying creatures stalk past us, jerking their heads about and clearly searching for whatever made noise. They stretch the swords out in front of them as they get closer to us, sweeping them back and forth, back and forth—almost like blind men with canes.