Sundown woke from her bedroll in the inn with a start. She could feel it again. Something watching her.

  She sat up with her fists clenched, searching the room. Every shadow was suspect.

  Then she woke more fully, and realized this was not the same instinct as before. She was not in danger. But she was being watched.

  She stood and looked around the room again. “Hello?” she said softly.

  “You too, huh?” came a small voice behind her.

  She whirled towards the window filling with the dawn’s light, and saw a figure curled up in the windowsill.

  “What?” Sundown asked. “Me too?”

  “No shadow.”

  The figure climbed down from the window, a girl of perhaps ten, bundled in a thick blanket. The girl cast no shadow, despite standing in the direct line of the window’s light.

  “Hard to get warm, isn’t it?” the girl said.

  Sundown stared at her. Then she nodded. “It is. I haven’t felt warm in weeks. How long has it been for you?”

  “I don’t know. A week? A month? It’s hard to remember.” She wrapped herself tightly in her blanket. “They said I was going to die. But I don’t feel like I’m dying. Do you feel that way? Are you afraid of dying? I’m not afraid.” She stopped talking, a deep frown on her face.

  Sundown looked away. She herself was in over her head. This wasn’t something she could help with.

  And yet…damn, she couldn’t stop herself from trying.

  “How did it happen?” she asked the girl. “You losing your shadow, I mean.”

  She shrugged. “It happened while I slept. I like to go camping. One time I camped a whole week on my own before my mom and dad found me. They don’t let me go camping that long anymore. Anyway, I was sleeping in the woodcutter’s shed, and when I woke up in the morning, I didn’t have a shadow anymore. It was just gone.”

  “Do you know of others? Others like us?”

  The girl nodded. “The baker lost hers just last week. She says she actually saw what took it.”

  “Oh. That’s good. I mean, that’s bad that she lost her shadow, but good that there’s somebody we can talk to with more information. We’re looking for the Thaelun.”

  The girl shuddered “How do you catch something like that? Something that steals people’s souls? I’ll bet it’s dangerous. What are you even chasing it for?”

  “I want my shadow back,” Sundown said. “Chane is upstairs, he’s a—he’s able to hunt animals like a Thaelun.”

  “A Thaelun’s an Immortal, not an animal,” the girl said. “Chane’s the big man you came with last night? He looks scary. How does he hunt Immortals? Is he really good at killing things? Actually, I don’t want to know. What’s your name anyway?”

  Sundown was lost for a moment before she caught up to the girl’s final question. “I’m Sundown.”

  “I’m Constant.” She pointed outside. “I saw your marven. Did you know they can eat things as big as a hound? Mom said that direluns ate our gorehound, but I think she and Dad just didn’t want to keep feeding him and they sold him to the traveling minstrels. The minstrels are coming again in the spring, but Mom won’t let me join until I’m older. I want to be a dancer. Do you like to dance?”

  Sundown weathered a steady stream of one-sided conversation from Constant while she pulled on her boots and packed up her bedroll. The girl didn’t seem to mind that Sundown endured rather than participated in the conversation. She had more information in her head than her mouth could process, and the topics changed so rapidly that Sundown felt dizzy by the time she was finished packing.

  “Where are you going?” Constant asked.

  “To hunt the Thaelun.” As soon as Chane wakes his royal highness from his royal sleep, she added silently.

  “Thaeluns are weird,” Constant said. “And scary. I’ve seen two Immortals—an Eolere when I was four, and an Idrion when I was six. I don’t remember the Eolere, but mom says I saw it when we were caught out in a big storm—”

  A door opened upstairs, and Constant suddenly went quiet.

  “I should go,” she said.

  “Is the innkeeper not fond of you?” Sundown asked.

  The girl hesitated. “He just has a thing about people staying in his inn without paying. It’s not like I slept here all night, though. But Mom says he doesn’t like kids playing around him, either.”

  Constant shot out the door with her blanket trailing behind her. Sundown breathed a sigh, then felt bad about being relieved. She actually liked children, but she wasn’t up for that level of energy that morning.

  Chane descended from the stairs, a damnable smile on his face. He had paid for an actual bed, and probably had slept like a king. Sundown wasn’t about to fritter her money away on needless extravagances. Especially when she only had ten piths or so to work with.

  “Sleep well?” he asked.

  His chipper attitude only soured Sundown’s mood further.

  “Ah. I see.” He cleared his throat. “Sorry. Are you ready for breakfast?”

  “I have a lead,” Sundown said.

  “It will have to wait until after breakfast.” He patted his stomach. “I’m starving.”

  “Actually, I think this will take branch and root. We need to visit the baker. I heard she lost her shadow.”

  Chane brightened. “Excellent!”

  Happily chewing the remnants of a sweet roll, Chane led Sundown and the marven up a forest path. He wanted to whistle a tune, but the plague-cloth over his face got in the way of his lips, so he hummed instead.

  The baker had given them the location she had lost her shadow—a spring not far from the town. She claimed at least one other being, a gorehound, had lost its shadow there as well.

  Chane could feel it rising, somewhere deep within him, the thrill of the hunt, and he allowed himself a small taste of it before locking it away in a sitting room of his mind. He was allowing it to stay, but not allowing it to direct his decisions. Hunting an Immortal was not something to approach on instinct.

  Some other instincts of his were acting up, but he was trying to temper them with kindness. Sundown had lost her shadow, and she’d had a hard life. It was only natural she’d be a bit…odd.

  But that didn’t explain the unease he felt around her.

  “Where did you grow up?” Chane asked, trying to break the silence.

  Sundown looked strangely at him. “Here and there.”

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  “I was raised in Hadelburg, back before it was sacked.”

  “Fancy,” she said, with a slight hint of derision.

  “Not the part that I grew up in.”

  “Oh. That part of the city.”

  He gave a grim nod. “You’ve been to the slums, I see.”

  “Not of Hadelburg, but other cities, yes. Dangerous places.”

  “Dark places. Rotten places. I don’t miss them.” He was silent a moment. “I learned shadow hunting at a young age just to stay alive. Started as a defensive tactic. Then it started paying for my meals and rent.”

  “And then it got you into trouble and you had to go on the run, I’ll bet.”

  “The one constant of magic—it always creates more problems than it solves. Did sangremancy do the same thing to you?”

  She opened her mouth to talk, then closed it.

  “I got myself into trouble without it,” she said at last.

  “I understand. I’ve built up my fair share of debts and enemies just by living.”

  “Something like that.” She turned her attention back to the path they were walking.

  Damn, he’d been so close. What would it take to get her to open up?

  He’d need more information before he could decide what the issue was with her.

  And whether he needed to do something about it.

  The smell of the spring was just coming through the trees when Sundown felt it again. Something tugging her head to check behind her, to make sure she wasn’t being followed.

  The path looked clear. Nothing hid in the shadows. So why was she suddenly on high alert?

  “Stop that,” Chane said.

  “Stop what?”

  “Checking your blind spot. It’s making me nervous.”

  She bit her lip. Her gut hadn’t lied to her yet, and it was telling her to run.

  “Relax,” Chane said. “There isn’t anything close by that poses any level of threat to us. Trust me, I can sense shadows.”

  Sundown considered this. Chane was convinced they were safe. Maybe it was all in her head.

  And maybe the moor was dry today, but she wasn’t going to fool herself into believing it without doing a thorough check.

  She forced her head to stay forward, paying attention to her periphery. She checked on the marven, but it didn’t seem perturbed, just its usual belligerent self. Its four talon-clawed feet padded in an easy but slow gait.

  Was she the only who could sense something dangerous nearby?

  The spring came into view as the trees opened up. A large cutout of a rocky cliff formed the backdrop of the exit of an underground river. The river slipped nearly silently from the rocks out into a wide, crystalline pool that claimed most of the clearing.

  Much of the plant life around the spring had already retreated into hibernation, and though the leaves on the trees still stubbornly clung to their perch, they had nearly all turned red and brown.

  Sundown scanned the brush around the spring, but could sense nothing. Her instincts were not assuaged.

  “Peaceful,” Chane said, and Sundown turned to look at him. He was taking in the scene with a serene smile.

  “What?”

  “It really is peaceful,” he repeated.

  “If you say so. Let’s look for signs of the Thaelun.”

  “Let me enjoy this, please? Just for a moment. I haven’t had a good dose of nature for nearly two weeks, being in prison and all.”

  She should have felt pity. She only felt annoyed. He shouldn’t be enjoying nature. He was a murderer. He was a soul-thief. He—

  Sundown’s nostrils tingled, and she dropped the reins of the marven. It took her a moment to process what she was sensing.

  The marven sensed it, too, and it gave a startled cry and bolted for the water.

  Sundown swung her sword off of her back and unsheathed it in a fluid motion. She burned the blood within her muscles as a dark gray shadow burst from the undergrowth with a growl.

  Sundown’s heart leapt to her throat in spite of the adrenalin. She held her sword true, and a direlun slammed into it, almost tearing the blade from her hands.

  “Look out!” Chane cried, a full second too late.

  The scent of rancid blood blasted Sundown in the face as the enormous cat-like beast shrieked and clawed at her with vicious paws, saber-like fangs clashing against her sword.

  Sundown adjusted her stance to angle her sword forward.

  The move opened her defenses. The beast’s claws caught her, and white-hot pain streaked down her arm.

  She ignored the pain and shoved the blade forward. It sank in deep and hit something soft.

  The direlun screamed at her and thrashed, throwing her off balance. She kept hold of the sword hilt and pressed forward, close enough that flecks of the beast’s own blood sprayed across her face, close enough to earn another swipe from its claws ripping into her pack.

  With an exertive cry, Sundown flared her blood and shoved hard. The sword sank all the way through, coming out of the animal’s back.

  It finally collapsed to its side, twitching as its steaming blood drained into the cold soil.

  Sundown breathed heavily, still processing the sudden attack. She noticed herself still burning blood, and she directed the burn towards her wounded arm, slowing the flow from the claw marks.

  Four full ounces of blood, gone in a flash. Just what she needed.

  She glared at Chane.

  “I prefer house cats myself,” Chane said nonchalantly.

  “You could have helped!”

  “You had it handled.”

  “Barely.” She grunted as she pulled her sword out of the direlun’s corpse. “I didn’t have time to take a proper stance. I could have killed it with a single stroke if I had been prepared.”

  She circled the direlun and checked the underbrush, making sure the beast wasn’t hiding a cub. It could have been acting in defense of its young, but Sundown doubted it.

  No, this one had come hunting.

  “I did notice one thing in all of that,” Chane said.

  “What?”

  “The direlun had no shadow.”

  She looked down, but she couldn’t tell the difference. Her vision was getting a bit blurry.

  “We must be in the right location, then. What do the other shadows—” She staggered, lightheaded.

  “Here.” Chane pulled out a bandage from his pack and tried to wrap her arm in it.

  “I’m fine,” she said, pushing him away. “I just lost a bit of blood is all.”

  “You’re losing a bit more.”

  “It will clot in a moment; I’m still burning some blood to heal faster.”

  “Suit yourself. While we have it, why don’t you see what you can divine from the direlun’s blood?”

  Sundown wiped down her sword with the bandage Chane had given her, then took a look at the blood. Burning just a little of it, she could access faint traces of the direlun’s memories.

  “It was scared,” she said. “It was running from something.”

  Her vision flashed with dark images, and the blood slowly disappeared from the bandage in her hand.

  “Something large found it. After that…it seems disoriented. Wandering out of its territory. Hunting strange prey.”

  The blood evaporated at last from the bandage, and the memories dimmed until they were gone.

  “I’m glad we qualify as ‘strange prey,’” Chane said. “How in the shades did you even see it before it attacked?”

  “I smelled the blood on its breath. Sangremancy trick.”

  He huffed. “Maybe I should learn some sangremancy. I usually sense threats by their shadows, except this thing didn’t have one, so I relaxed my guard.”

  “Careless,” Sundown said, shaking her head. “I knew something was—”

  The world reeled, and Sundown found her face in the dirt before she could tell up from down.

  “Sundown?” Chane put a hand on her shoulder, and she flinched and tried to shove him off.

  “Don’t touch me!”

  “You need a doctor.”

  “I just…need some air.”

  “You’ve lost too much blood, and you need stitches.”

  “The Thaelun…”

  “It will wait. Let me pull the marven out of the spring and we’ll get you back to town.”

  He lifted her, and she tried to protest that she was fine, but she found it very hard to form words.

  She managed to slur out a curse.

  “You’re welcome,” Chane said, and she wasn’t sure if he had misheard her or was being sarcastic.

  She tried to curse him again, but instead came the words, “I’m sorry.”

  Her head collapsed onto his arm, and then she was lost to the world.