Perfect Shadow: A Night Angel Novella

illusory Jade circled all the way to Gaelan, intent on spinning her staff.
    At Gaelan’s touch, the illusion fell apart.
    When Gaelan turned again, Jade was dead. Her illusions had outlived her.
    Not so different, are we?
    The Marions’ little boy, Hubert, came running into the yard with a little, child-sized crossbow in his hands, crying. “Father! Faather!”
    Not ten paces away, wrapped in shadows, gathered in the arms of the night, Gaelan watched. With one hand, he rubbed his temples.
    “Mother! Mother!” The boy, the orphan, ran to her corpse.
    Darkness.

    * * *
    Gwinvere guided Gaelan to the basin, washed the blood off his hands. He knew he should snap out of it, but he was wooden, leaden, numb. Dead.
    Jade, blond hair stained into a black halo around her head, neck cut at a sharp upward angle from collarbone to chin.
    Jerissa, petite Cenarian with brown eyes, expression blank, never again to show her quirky grin, dress matted with blood from a single sword stroke through her heart.
    Ysel, round Ymmuri face angelic, chest crushed, every rib snapped.
    Lithel, kinky Ladeshian hair pulled into many small braids, eyes open, blackballed from the blow that had crushed the back of her skull.
    Hannan, still a beauty at seventy, hair like ivory, smile lines by the dozen. The bruise prints of strangling hands around her neck.
    Direla, her dusky Sethi skin fine, nose patrician, hair almost blue-black. The violence that had killed her hadn’t left any marks – at least not on her face.
    Fayima, features so demolished he wouldn’t have been able to recognize the young princess if not for the little mole on the side of her neck.
    Platinum-blond Ahnuwk. Aelin, the fire dancer. Kir, exiled duchess turned pirate.
    And on it went. A line of women, young and old. His wives and lovers from over the centuries. All dead. All dead because of him. One way or the other.
    He turned and saw a line of dead children. His children. His dead. His fault.
    Gwinvere pulled his tunic over his head like he was a child. He was standing beside a steaming tub of water. He hadn’t even noticed it being brought in.

    * * *
    “You’ve come a long way, Tal Drakkan – or is it Gaelan Starfire now? So hard to run from the past, isn’t it?” The man sat astride his fine midnight warhorse. A self-satisfied smirker. He was the kind of man you knew was headed for a fall, but not for a while.
    Gaelan sneered. Said nothing. Continued walking home.
    “You’re a duke, not a dirt farmer. This is beneath you. You’re a warrior! I want you to fight for me, Gaelan Starfire,” Baron Rikku said, “and I won’t take no for an answer.”
    “Oh yes you will.”

    * * *
    Gaelan was working in the field, repairing his fence after the heaving and shifting of the ground in the winter, stacking the big, flat rocks back into their places while his big, shaggy aurochs looked at him quizzically.
    “Sure,” he told the big one he called Oren. “Pretend you won’t try to jump this soon as I turn my back.”
    Gaelan found one of the boulders that had slipped and rolled from its place. He looked left and right to see if any of the neighboring farmers were within sight. They already wondered how he was able to do so much of the heavy work by himself.
    No one.
    He grabbed the boulder and, with his Talent surging, picked it up and set it back in place.
    “Not bad? Huh?” he said, slapping his hands free of dirt and mud.
    Oren didn’t seem impressed.
    Gaelan liked being a farmer. Enough physical labor to keep him fit without the use of body magic. The imposition of order on the chaos of nature. The straight lines of plowing. The simplicity of his neighbors, who didn’t ask anything of him except a helping hand once in a while for a barn raising.
    He fixed a full league of fence before darkfall. And walked home, dirty, sweaty, and happy.
    When he got home, on the big oak out front, he found his daughter and his pregnant wife. Hanged.
    He dropped to his knees. Screamed.

    * * *
    “Seraene. Alinaea.” The names came out as sobs.
    “Shh. Shh.”
    Gwinvere held him in her bed, her arms around him, protective. She stroked his hair over his temples.
    When he woke in the morning, Gwinvere was already up. She looked at him with what he swore was real desire in her eyes. “Take me,” she said. “You’ll feel like yourself again afterward.”
    Truth was, he already felt better. He’d slept the memories off like a bad batch of mushrooms. But only a fool would