Anastasia is a killer, but she does not consider herself a murderer. She does not have the guilt and shame that came with such a word—she does not have the conscience to support it. Her father had taught her how to take joy in spilling life and the freedom in power, and she reveled in it as all wild, feral things did. She appreciated the skill it took to hunt, and she found there was satisfaction in the way bones could break in her mouth if she applied the right amount of pressure in the right angle. And she did not feel guilt that she often left the bodies behind, blood slowly draining from them.

She was not made normal.

She did not hunger for grass or wheat or flesh. She did not hunger for anything. In the past, there were times when she had forced herself to try it—driven by curiosity rather than the drumming beats of a needy stomach. She had forced herself to chew. Forced her jaw to work through the hide and skin. Forced herself to swallow and had not liked the way that it had hit her empty, useless stomach. Had not like the way she had felt afterward—full and unnatural—the meat sitting there without purpose.

So there were times when she ate, but she did not like it.

Today is not one of those days. Today, she is enjoying the meadow, jumping through portals and bouncing from edge to edge. In these moments, she is distinctly child-like, yellow eyes bright with amusement. She does not stop until she sees him, and like anything that drew her attention, she moved toward him. She threw up portal after portal and jumped in a zig-zag pattern toward him, following no logical trail.

It was not until she was several yards away that she paused, inky body stilling for a second, eyes narrowing at the sun that beat down. “Bad taste,” she finally calls, shaking her head. “Sun is bad.” She wrinkles her nose at it, exaggerating her features to get the point across. She motions to the shadows that are beginning to swirl at his feet, feeling herself drawn to them. “They know.” She nods again. “They know.”

like the moon, we borrow our light
{I am nothing but a shadow in the night}

Her lack of social graces also mean that she does not comprehend conversations well. She does not pick up on the subtle cues of someone who would rather be alone or someone who is wrestling with internal conflicts. After all, she does not comprehend the concept. Life was so simple—so black and white. Things were either a yes or no; she either liked something or she did not. You were dead or you were alive. There was no room for areas of gray in her world. She did not understand those shades.

She frowns at his denial, and her lips pull back over her sharp teeth. “Liar,” she hisses in her broken tongue, her voice thick in her mouth. Her yellow eyes wander toward the shadows that scamper up his legs and cling to his coat, and she feels sympathy for them—feels sorry that they have claimed this stallion as a master when he so clearly wants nothing to do with them. For a second, she feels anger.

It is not foreign, but it is rare. The way it flares in her belly.

“Say sor-ry,” she demands, as she portals near him, at his side in a blink of an eye, baring her teeth at him as she nudges the shadows around his neck, her own way of comforting them. “Apol-o-gize.” Her ears pin back against her skull, and she considers ripping into his throat, but she also knows what that would mean for the shadows. They were given life by something inside of him, and ripping that from him would mean that she was destroying them. To Anastasia, they were innocent in this. They did not deserve death for it. “Sha-dows like you,” she hisses. “Why you no like them?”

like the moon, we borrow our light
{I am nothing but a shadow in the night}

She cannot pick apart the threads of his internal war, she just knows that there is something boiling within him—something that keeps him from accepting the shadows as his own children. His power over them is so similar to Rhonan, but he is nothing like the other stallion. Rhonan loved the darkness; he asked the shadows and made no demands of them. He wrapped himself in them willingly. There was a give and take to his relationship, and she understood that. Theirs was a natural synergy—the same balance that made up the entirety of her world. But Shahrizai? She could not understand his relationship with the shadows. This was different. This was wrong.

He did not give, and he did not take. He simply was at the receiving end of the shadow’s battering affection. She frowned, confused by the entire ordeal. “Be-cause you are them,” she growls, frustrated. She did not like feeling unsure of her surroundings, and she felt her fuse getting shorter and shorter. Anastasia was not a particularly cruel beast, but she was completely feral; she was not above killing something just to make it quiet. “Are you stu-pid?” she finally asks, blunt to the end, eyes narrowed at him.

She nudges him again, looking at the shadows like small, mewling creatures. Her ears are pinned against her skull, and she fidgets underneath his wild gaze. He was becoming more and more of an unknown, a variable she could not control, and she did not like it—did not like it for one second. “Be-cause you are act-ing stu-pid.” She clucks her tongue against her teeth as she reaches down to the ground, letting the darkness wrap around the inky blackness of her own nose. “You hurt them. Stop.”

like the moon, we borrow our light
{I am nothing but a shadow in the night}

She is more predator than prey—designed from birth to be one with the darkness and uniquely adept at hunting things she would never want. So when she sees that she has him, at least partly, retreating, every instinct in her rears its head and gnashes its teeth. She lowers her head, bright yellow eyes narrowing, and she follows him. She snaps her sharply pointed teeth near his feet and drives him backward. “Stu-pid,” she hisses in her thick tongue, her mouth wrapping around the syllables. “Stu-pid boy. Stu-pid.”

The shadows are jerking now, dancing around between them, and while she feels affection for them—her kindred spirits—she knows he does not feel the same, and a rare anger heats her breast. “Do not. They love you.” Her voice is brittle now, and she shakes her head when he comes to a stubborn stop, the shadows of the trees calling to them. “They love you and you hurt them. Stu-pid boy. Mean boy.”

Anastasia opens up a portal next to them, the darkness sucking into it, and she lets him stare at it, the seemingly endless blackness of it mirroring the own shade of her coat. “Stop figh-ting.” She takes a step forward, letting the portal stay open for several minutes, and she presses herself against him. The motion lacked any sexual edges and was instead a motion dripping in frustration and confusion. “Stop be-ing stu-pid.” She noses his neck, his jaw, sniffing at him and trying to understand him. “Foll-ow me.”

And then she steps into the portal, hoping he would follow her into the darkness.

like the moon, we borrow our light
{I am nothing but a shadow in the night}

She is pleased that he follows her; she had not expected him to. Truthfully, there had been a part of her that was hoping that he would resist. She did love a good fight—and it had been a long time since she had been able to do just that—but she could not deny that she is happy that he makes the journey easier by simply following her through the portal. Together, they are spat out deeper into the tangling trees of the meadow, the darkness more complete here with light barely filtering to where they stood.

Here, Anastasia is in her element, her body blending perfectly into the shadows. The only part of her that is visible at all are the round, yellow eyes that peer out at him—even her inky black teeth lost in the shadows that sweep over the both of them. “Good,” she huffs lightly, visibly relaxing in this environment. Taking a step away, she circles around him, measuring him up. “Good.”

She had no real experience controlling shadows—only what she had seen Rhonan perform in their time together. After all, she did not wield any power over the darkness, she simply lived among it as its equal. She was dangerous, but in a completely different way than the shadow manipulators that she was beginning to accumulate. It helped that acid bubbled beneath the surface of her skin.

“Prac-tice,” she demands, motioning toward the darkness that covered the ground. “Ask sha-dow to move there.” It was a start—albeit a small one—but if focused, she was sure that he would be able to accomplish it. “Ask. No tell,” she warns him with a frown, lips pulling back slightly. “Sha-dow no like when you tell. Be nice to sha-dow.”

like the moon, we borrow our light
{I am nothing but a shadow in the night}