Chapter 63 Strings in the Dark
“Love hurts, doesn’t it?” Crow’s voice slid across the room like a knife dipped in poison. I clutched Onyx in my arms, her weight grounding in a mont where my heart felt hollow and dry, tears refusing to flow any longer. My grief had hardened into sothing uglier, and with nothing left in , I hurled my empty gun at him. It passed through, scattering into useless clatter against the floor as his form dissolved into shadows and feathers. He was taunting … always out of reach, always beyond my hand.
I pressed one hand against the rope binding Onyx, phasing it away. She stumbled forward with a gasp of relief, fury sparking in her eyes. Without hesitation, she grabbed a chair and swung it with all her strength, hurling it at the bastard that just recently reford. It split the air, shattering into splinters as it passed through his flickering shadow form. Black feathers burst outward as if mocking her defiance.
I followed up with a storm of cards, my fingers flicking one after another in a seamless motion. They cut across the room, sharp, deadly, imbued with my anger. The blades of cardboard pierced where he appeared for a mont, but again he vanished, dissolving into darkness. It wasn’t teleportation. My mind latched onto the detail as I tracked him… his Umbrakinesis, his manipulation of shadows, maybe a layering of tricks that made him feel untouchable. The thought only made my blood boil.
“This is pointless,” Crow declared, his voice echoing as though it ca from everywhere at once.
Onyx didn’t care. She scread, raw and unrestrained, “I will kill you!” Her cry wasn’t just a threat. It was pain, desperation, and fury bundled into one sound that rattled my bones.
But before she could do anything more, the shadows swirled, feathers filling the air like a storm. Crow erged behind her in a blink, his hand gripping her, a fork pressed cruelly against her throat. I froze. My hand twitched with the instinct to throw more cards, but my body refused to obey. It wasn’t fear alone, sothing else bound .
And then I felt them. Arms wrapping around , warm and achingly familiar. My mother’s voice whispered soothingly in my ear, Silver’s gentle tone following like a duet of ghosts. They held close, soft and magnetic, and for one fleeting, unbearable second I wanted nothing more than to sink into their embrace. My chest tightened, my breath stilled, and I couldn’t move.
“Snap out of it!” Onyx cried, her voice breaking through the haze. She was still alive, struggling, bleeding, and I was wasting ti, trapped in a dream of shadows.
I thrashed against the phantom touch, gritting my teeth, clawing at the illusion, but the sensation of their presence was like an anchor digging into my chest. It pulled down, deeper, urging to surrender.
Crow’s voice cut through with venomous disappointnt. “You’ve let down, Nicholas. Even when I’ve given you the chance to correct your mistakes, you spit in my face. Again and again, you refuse to learn.” His tone carried the weight of a teacher whose student had failed the final lesson, and yet, underneath, there was triumph. He was enjoying every second of breaking down.
“Let her go,” I demanded, though my voice cracked, weak against his grip on reality.
Crow chuckled, and his fork pressed harder against Onyx’s skin, drawing a thin crimson line. “I could do you better. I could offer you the love of your life back,” he said, almost tenderly. His free hand gestured, and I saw Silver’s face flicker in the corner of my vision, the image of her crying, pleading for . “And your dear mother too. Both of them. Isn’t that a tempting bargain? It isn’t such a bad deal, is it?”
I clenched my fists until my nails dug into my palms. My teeth ground together, every muscle in my body burning with rage. I wanted to tell him to burn, to rot, but Onyx’s trembling, wide eyes kept chained. “Fine,” I spat, the word bitter on my tongue.
Crow’s smile evaporated. His shadowed face tilted, and in his eyes I saw sothing sharper than mockery. “I know when soone is lying to , boy.”
He pressed the fork deeper, and Onyx’s scream tore through the room. Blood welled against the steel, and her voice broke as she cried out, “Please, don’t… I’m sorry, I lied!”
Crow’s smile returned, cruel and triumphant. “That’s better.”
FUCK!
I badly wanted to get in his arm’s length, and rip his heart out, but clearly, that would be an impossible endeavor.
“What do you even want from ?” My voice cracked with a mixture of rage and exhaustion, every word clawing out of like a demand for sanity in a room that had none. “I’m disobedient, I don’t follow orders. You went so far as to stage this circus, a show of force with Silver, Onyx, even my mom’s mory… all for what? To make work for you? Through coercion?” I spat the word like it was poison. “Isn’t it enough that you hire , that you send on your errands and dirty work? I’ve killed people for you. I thought we had a working relationship, and now this? None of this makes sense.”
Crow leaned lazily against the desk as though my fury amused him. His shadowed outline bent with the dim light, feathers fluttering unnaturally from nowhere. His smile was wrong, sharp, patient, and suffocating.
“You wouldn’t understand,” he replied softly, almost tender, like a father explaining to a stubborn child. “Because you don’t see the bigger picture. You’re reckless, violent, and deluded, but it doesn’t matter.” His voice hardened as he straightened, feathers spilling outward. “What matters is you’re effective. Imagine my surprise when you killed Sunstrider? Do you know what he was to ? He was supposed to be the solution to this conundrum that plagues the cape world. This endless divide between hero and villain, born from the cage of perception demanded by mundanes.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What the hell are you talking about?”
He chuckled, ignoring as though my words were gnats in the air. “I’ve been collecting capes, shaping them, pruning the ones that stand in my way. I thought you would be one of those obstacles, Nicholas. A wild dog too rabid to be worth taming. But then you surprised . You weren’t just manageable… you were useful. More effective than Sunstrider ever was. And unlike him, whose leash was fraying with every year, you’re different. So easily manipulated. So vulnerable. I couldn’t believe how open you left yourself the first ti we t. And Nicole…” His smile widened, curling cruelly. “I thought she would have taught you better. Taught you to be wary of .”
My fists tightened until the bones ached. He dared to say her na.
Crow let out a mocking sigh, like a perforr reaching the crescendo of his act. “Poetic, isn’t it? The woman who ruined my plans a year ago, your mother, that self-righteous thorn, turned out to be the sa person who brought my solution. You.”
I wanted to deny it. To tell him he was wrong, that my mother hadn’t handed to him. But deep down, I felt the truth of it twist in my gut. My eting with Crow, my unraveling since then… It hadn’t been coincidence.
He reached into the folds of shadow and tossed sothing toward . I caught it out of reflex. Cold tal bit into my palm. I opened my hand and stared at it… a ring, heavy and tarnished, engraved with a single letter: M. The sa insignia I’d seen before. The sa one Sunstrider had worn in his fingers.
Crow’s voice dropped to a whisper that filled the entire room. “Before Sunstrider beca the Vanguard’s shining speedster, their reliable hero, their obedient lapdog, he was mine. He was a crow. My second.” His eyes glead with satisfaction. “Now I offer you the sa chance. One final ti. You can have that position. You can stand where he once stood. What do you think?”
The ring sat in my palm like a curse, heavier than it had any right to be.
So that was what ‘M’ stood for, after all.
Murder of Crows.
The ring felt heavier than it should have. Cold tal pressed against my palm as I turned it between my fingers. That M symbol caught the dim light and refused to let go of my gaze. I couldn’t stop myself from rembering the day I killed my first cape. The sound of the body hitting the ground, the stink of blood and smoke clinging to my clothes, the hollow pit in my chest I pretended was victory. That was the day I crossed the line. And now Crow wanted to wear a ring like it was a dal.
“Conflicted?” Crow’s voice carried no judgnt, only amusent. His feathers stirred and whispered against the air like restless ghosts. “You should be. But listen, Nicholas. This isn’t just about being my second. I can give you more than that. A clean life. A second chance. You want out of the shadows? I can put you in the light. A deal with the SRC, official papers burned clean, your na polished until it shines.”
He continued, speaking as if he were offering salvation. “You’ll be installed within the Watch program, the people will adore you, and the caras will love you. You will be a superhero, Eclipse. A real one. Fa, power, respect. No one will ever look down on you again. No one will fear you… They’ll revere you. Of course, you will have to do a bit of rebranding, but it shouldn’t be that hard.”
The words slithered into , wrapping tight around old wounds I didn’t even know still bled. For a mont, I almost saw it. Standing on a stage, people cheering my na, not because they feared but because they believed in .
Then it hit . That was what the dia coverage was for. All those buzz, the carefully frad reports, and the sudden shift in how I was painted. It wasn’t coincidence. It was Crow. He’d been orchestrating it, stirring the public, crafting the narrative like a conductor with an orchestra. Every headline, every angle, every lie… It was his hand pulling the strings.
And ? I’d been dancing to his tune.
The murders. The jobs he sent on, every target I thought was my choice to eliminate… They weren’t mine. They were his. His obstacles, removed by my hand. I thought I had free will, thought I was making decisions for myself, but it was always Crow. From the mont I t him, he had his claws buried deep in my back, pulling strings until I twitched exactly how he wanted.
I clenched the ring tight in my fist, hating it, hating him, and hating myself.
Crow’s smile didn’t falter. If anything, it widened as if he could read every thought racing through my skull. “Take your ti, Eclipse. I’ll wait for your answer. You’re free to go, if that’s what you want. Run, flee Markend, like you did before soti ago.” His eyes glimred with sothing darker. “Rember? Oxygen tank strapped to your back, and desperation in your lungs. I couldn’t stop you then, and I couldn’t stop you now.”
For a second, I felt hope. A crack in his grip. But then he tilted his head, feathers fluttering behind him, and his voice dropped into sothing sharp and cruel.
“But Onyx here will be staying with .”
My heart seized.
“If you want the job I’m offering, then feel free to take the Great Serpent’s head as a start,” he said, almost casually, as though he were asking to fetch bread from the corner store. Shadows curled tight around him, binding Onyx in their grasp as her wide, terrified eyes locked with mine.
Then he was gone. A burst of feathers, a rush of cold wind, and silence.
His words lingered like poison, echoing in the emptiness he left behind.
“Good job with taking out Janah,” his voice carried faintly, everywhere and nowhere. “I am expecting great things from you.”
The ring dug into my palm as I stood frozen, staring at the space Onyx had vanished from.
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