Of Shadow Born Read Online Free PDF

its glittering gaze steady and unblinking.
    Deven rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t talking to you,” he said, and turned away, intending to Mist off the roof and head deeper into downtown for a late-night hunt before returning to the hotel.
    Just before he reached into himself for the power, however, he glanced back over his shoulder at the bird, inexplicably uneasy under its watchful eye.
    It was gone.

Two
    For a while, Miranda wanted nothing more than to die.
    Her dreams were full of fear and grief, the pain of so many others leaking into her head like rain through a rotting ceiling. Each drop eroded a tiny bit more of her, until there was nothing left but a raw, exposed emptiness, a void where there had once been warmth.
    Please don’t leave me here alone. Please.
    Finally, she felt herself shutting down. Her heart simply couldn’t take any more. She had nothing left—no power, no love, no strength, no will to continue. There was no reason to fight her way back from the abyss. The agony of the world was all she had; perhaps it was all she had ever truly had. In the end all her power had changed nothing. She was dying alone in the dark the same way she almost had in that alley so long ago. The circle was at last complete.
    She could sense something at the edge of her being: something trying desperately to reach her, to catch her. Something kept trying to wrap itself around her and draw a veil of peace over the gaping wounds.
    She turned away from it. She couldn’t fight anymore.
    “. . . trying, Lark. But this isn’t really my area. She’s too strong for me—even both of us together aren’t enough.”
    A familiar voice, a thousand miles away on the other side of the flood, tight with fear and exertion:
    “Come on, Miranda. Don’t give up. You can do this.”
    The thought of letting go and sliding down into the black was so inviting, promising silence . . . yet she was curious . . .
    “Damn it, Stella, you’re going to kill yourself—”
    It was true. The first voice was growing weaker, the energy that was attempting to hold on to Miranda failing. That power was considerable, and the talent was there, but confronted with the enormity of the damage to Miranda’s shields and psyche, it simply couldn’t succeed. A mortal hand wasn’t strong enough for this, but the Witch had thrown herself into it recklessly and fully, not realizing that it was too late, that Miranda was too far gone . . .
    And now Stella was, too. The young human was willing to give her life to save someone she didn’t even know, purely out of love.
    “Stella! Stell, stay with me, goddamn it, don’t you fucking leave me—”
    Please don’t leave me here alone. Please.
    So much fear, and so much pain in the world she wanted to leave behind . . . but so much love, and courage . . . and no matter what she had lost, no matter how much she was bleeding and screaming inside, she had taken up the responsibility . . . she wore it around her neck.
    She had chosen once to return from the edge and claim the Signet for her own. She had fought her way up through freezing cold water, lungs burning, and hauled herself onto the riverbank to save those she loved.
    It was who she was. She had told Cora—what felt like a thousand years ago—that nothing could take that away from them . . . and nothing could . . .
    . . . not even death.
    She wouldn’t allow it. Not in that alley, not in the black water, and not now.
    She came back to herself in a roar, a surge of strength filling her and spilling over into the frail young creature who lay unconscious beside her.
    Miranda sucked in a deep, hard breath and sat bolt upright, her fingers clenched in Stella’s. She poured energy into the Witch—and through her into her friend—replenishing what Stella had so selflessly given her. Then she kept pulling, drawing more and more power into herself from a seemingly inexhaustible source somewhere beyond any place she could name, until