Perfect Shadow_ A Night Angel Novella - Brent Weeks [27]
“What?”
“I’m not just some drafter. My father loved me. I had plans. A girl. A life.”
“I don’t—”
“You will.” The color wight put the green spectacles on; they fit perfectly, tight to his face, lenses sweeping to either side so that wherever he looked, he would be looking through a green filter. “Now get out of here.”
As the sun touched the horizon, Gaspar sighed. It was as if Kip had ceased to exist. It was like watching his mother take that first deep breath of haze. Between the sparkling spars of darker green, the whites of Gaspar’s eyes swirled like droplets of green blood hitting water, first dispersing, then staining the whole. The emerald green of luxin ballooned through his eyes, thickened until it was solid, and then spread. Through his cheeks, up to his hairline, then down his neck, standing out starkly when it finally filled his lighter fingernails as if they’d been painted in radiant jade.
Gaspar started laughing. It was a low, unreasoning cackle, unrelenting. Mad. Not a pretense this time.
Kip ran.
He reached the funerary hill where the sentry had been, taking care to stay on the far side from thearmy. He had to get to Master Danavis. Master Danavis always knew what to do.
There was no sentry on the hill now. Kip turned around in time to see Gaspar change, transform. Green luxin spilled out of his hands onto his body, covering every part of him like a shell, like an enormous suit of armor. Kip couldn’t see the soldiers or the red drafter approaching Gaspar, but he did see a fireball the size of his head streak toward the color wight, hit his chest, and burst apart, throwing flames everywhere.
Gaspar rammed through it, flaming red luxin sticking to his green armor. He was magnificent, terrible, powerful. He ran toward the soldiers, screaming defiance, and disappeared from Kip’s view.
Kip fled, the vermilion sun setting fire to the mists.
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Copyright © 2011 by Brent Weeks
Excerpt from Black Prism copyright © 2010 by Brent Weeks
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
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First eBook edition: June 2011
ISBN: 978-0-316-19648-2
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Meet the Author
Bonus Material
About Orbit Short Fiction