A Realm of Shadows Read Free

hand came again, nudging her shoulder.
    Dierdre looked up
and there, to her immense relief, was Marco. He was alive, she was overjoyed to
see. He looked beaten up, haggard, too pale, and he looked as if he had aged a
hundred years. Yet he was alive. Somehow, he had managed to survive.
    Marco knelt
beside her, smiling yet looking down at her with sad eyes, eyes not shining with
the life they once held.
    “Marco,” she answered
weakly, startled at how raspy her own voice was.
    She noticed a
gash on the side of his face and, concerned, reached out to touch it.
    “You look as bad
as I feel,” she said.
    He helped her up
and she rose to her feet, her body wracked with pain from all the aches and
bruises, scratches and cuts all up and down her arms and legs. Yet as she
tested each limb, at least nothing was broken.
    Dierdre took a
deep breath and steeled herself as she turned and looked behind her. As she
feared, it was a nightmare: her beloved city was gone, now nothing but a part
of the sea, the only thing sticking up a small part of the bell tower. On the
horizon beyond it she saw a fleet of black Pandesian ships, making their way deeper
and deeper inland.
    “We can’t stay
here,” Marco said with urgency. “They’re coming.”
    “Where can we go?”
she asked, feeling hopeless.
    Marco stared
back, blank, clearly not knowing either.
    Dierdre stared out
at the sunset, trying to think, blood pounding in her ears. Everyone she knew and
loved was dead. She felt she had nothing left to live for, nowhere left to go.
Where could you go when your home city was destroyed? When the weight of the
world was bearing down on you?
    Dierdre closed
her eyes and shook her head in grief, wishing it all away. Her father, she
knew, was back there, dead. His soldiers were all dead. People she had known
and loved all her life, all of them dead, all thanks to these Pandesian monsters.
Now there was no one left to stop them. What cause was there to go on?
    Dierdre, despite
herself, broke down weeping. Thinking of her father, she dropped to her knees,
feeling devastated. She wept and wept, wanting to die here herself, wishing she had died, cursing the heavens for allowing her to live. Why couldn’t she
have just drowned in that wave? Why couldn’t she just have been killed with the
others? Why had she been cursed with life?
    She felt a soothing
hand on her shoulder.
    “It’s okay,
Dierdre,” Marco said softly.
    Dierdre flinched,
embarrassed.
    “I’m sorry,” she
finally said, weeping. “It’s just that… my father… Now I have nothing.”
    “You’ve lost everything,”
Marco said, his voice heavy, too. “I have, too. I don’t want to go on, either.
But we have to. We can’t lie here and die. It would dishonor them. It
would dishonor everything they lived and fought for.”
    In the long silence
that followed, Dierdre slowly pulled herself upright, realizing he was right.
Besides, as she looked up at Marco’s brown eyes, staring back at her with
compassion, she realized she did have someone. She had Marco. She also
had the spirit of her father, looking down, watching over her, wishing her to
be strong.
    She forced
herself to shake out of it. She had to be strong. Her father would want her to
be strong. Self-pity, she realized, would help no one. And neither would her
death.
    She stared back
at Marco, and she could see more than compassion—she could also see the love in
his eyes for her.
    Not even fully
aware of what she was doing, Dierdre, her heart pounding, leaned in and met
Marco’s lips in an unexpected kiss. For a moment, she felt herself transported
to another world, and all her worries disappeared.
    She slowly pulled
back, staring at him, shocked. Marco looked equally surprised. He took her
hand.
    As he did,
encouraged, filled with hope, she was able to think clearly again—and a thought
came to her. There was someone else, a place to go, a person to turn to.
    Kyra.
    Dierdre felt a sudden
rush of hope.
    “I know where