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Light Walkers.

Here, on my land. And not just one but two—a guy and a girl.

Shadow Walkers belonged on Shadowland. Light Walkers belonged in the city. Period. But these two, they thought they could just wander around Shadowland like they owned the place?

I narrowed my eyes and clenched my jaw. No. That wasn’t happening.
They’d been here for over four hours already, just walking around, waving their flames like beacons. They might as well have screamed ‘attack me, attack me!’.

Were they out of their minds?

Following them closely, I never let them out of my sight for more than a second or two as I jumped from tree to tree and watched, waited, wondered. They’d overstayed their welcome in the first twenty seconds of being here. Something had kept me from stopping them long before now, and it took a while, but I finally realized it was because of one thing: curiosity.

Light Walkers were brash, and they were often stupid, but they weren’t usually crazy enough to come so far into Shadowland without being in a large group.

There were only a few reasons why any of them would risk it. One, they were guards patrolling the wall that separated Shadowland from the city, Carden. Two, they were hunters looking for adult Shadow Walkers. Three, they were suicidal and knew they couldn’t last more than a day or two on Shadowland. Or four, they…

Actually, I couldn’t think of a fourth option. The first three were the only scenarios I had seen for myself, and even then, it only covered the adults. But these weren’t adults. They were teenagers, like me, probably sixteen, or seventeen.

So what in the world did they want? And why did they have bags with them? They weren’t likely hunters or guards, and they didn’t seem suicidal.

I let out a growl and moved, merging out of one tree and then shadowing into another only feet away from the Light Walkers. Peering out of the shadows, I studied their hands, legs, body language—any and everything that would help me learn something about them.

The guy’s back was rigid. A small ball of fire hovered an inch above the palm of his left hand, providing them with a small amount of light. Or maybe protection. From me. From my kind. Here, where shadows could trap you.

Moving again, I went to a tree ahead of them to get a better glance. The guy’s flames gave me enough light to see them clearly.

The guy was tall, lean without being scrawny, and well built. He had hair the color of fallen leaves and his eyes were green, a few shades lighter than grass.

In the distance, a shadowcat roared. The guy’s flames rose instantly, then slowly faded back to a small glow as the roar died out. Yeah, he was jumpy—no denying that—but there was arrogance etched into his face like lines in tree bark. Not fear.

He knew he didn’t belong here—he just didn’t care.

The other one, the girl…she was harder to describe. Her gaze took in everything, but not like the guy’s, not like she expected to run into some Shadow Walkers and feared it, but almost like she hoped she would find us.

I shook my head. For people who created fire out of nothing, I figured they could be a bit brighter.

After a few more minutes, when they came within a couple of miles of one of my camps, I shadowed out of the tree, leaving only a few feet between myself and them. “You Light Walkers lost?” I stepped forward until I was in their line of sight.

A smile curved my lips when I heard an unmistakable gasp from the girl and the sounds of their bags hitting the ground. She took an instinctive step back while the guy put himself in front of her, as if to shield her. He glared. The flame in his hand flickered before he tossed it to the ground. The fire spread left and right, following the movements of his arms, until it made a circle around them. He raised his arms and the flames rose higher.

Hissing, I narrowed my eyes into thin slits and jumped to the side, using a tree to block some of the nearly blinding light. After years in the dark, my eyes were sensitive.

Nice trick, but you’ll have to do a lot better than that. “Do you think that’s going to protect you?”

“It’ll do the job, Shadow Walker,” the guy said. He turned his head to one side, spat on the ground. “You can’t Shadow through it, can you?” The sides of his lips rose in a cocky grin.

I wanted to smack that look off his face, even if Glare-boy was almost right. Shadow Walkers couldn’t shadow through Light Walker flames. Still, it didn’t stop me from grinning back. In quick procession, I stomped my right foot twice, waited half a beat, and then stomped the left once. “Moshey!”

The darkness responded to my call. Four large shadows rolled in on the ground, covering it like the front of a nasty storm. In the next blink, the shadows rose from the ground in smoke-like vines and took form, producing four flesh-and-blood bodies. I made a show of counting heads. “Five against two.” I glanced at my friends, pleased as they all balled their hands into fists and wore similar grins to mine. I turned back. “You’re going to need a lot more than that little circle.”