Thief With No Shadow Read Online Free

him.
    Bastian tightened his grip. He shook her again, more fiercely, making her stumble. “Where is it?”
    She raised her eyes and met his gaze boldly. “Where is what?” Her voice was unafraid.
    “The necklace, you filthy vermin.”
    The wraith’s chin rose slightly. She stood swaying in his grip and said nothing.
    “ Where? ” He bared his teeth at her, snarling.
    She tried to pull away.
    Bastian shook her a third time, making her head snap back on her neck.
    “I don’t have it,” she said hoarsely.
    Fear stabbed in his chest, sharp and cold, and he pushed her from him. He heard the outrush of her breath as she fell hard on the dirt. “What have you done with it? What? ” But even as he asked the question, he knew.
    The wraith raised herself on one hand. She turned her head. Her eyes were like chips of gray stone, the eyes of a creature with no soul. “I gave it to the salamanders.”
    The utterness of the catastrophe took Bastian’s breath. As well to have cast the necklace off the edge of the world. No one, common man or king or magical beast, could make the salamanders give it back.
    He was blind and deaf. He heard nothing. Saw nothing. He was aware only of horror. No. It couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t. No .
    Bastian inhaled a shuddering breath and blinked. Vision came back more clearly than before, sound more loudly. He saw a beetle scurry across the bare dirt, its carapace shining blackly. He heard the wraith breathe with quick and shallow inhalations. He saw her with the clarity of hatred: the scratches on her pale skin beaded with dried blood, the smears of mud and dust, the ragged clothes, the filthy bloodstained bandages around her feet, the bold defiance in her eyes.
    The wraith scrambled to stand.
    “Do you know what you’ve done?” He clenched his hands. “Do you have any idea? ”
    She raised her chin and stood as haughtily as a queen in her rags and her dirt.
    “You have destroyed us.” His voice was hoarse with fear.
    The wraith shrugged lightly.
    “You —” Bastian snatched at her hair, knotting his fingers in the tangled braid. He twisted it tightly, baring his teeth at her...and could go no further. He couldn’t hit her, couldn’t punish her as she deserved.
    She. Smaller and shorter and lighter than him. A woman. A wraith.
    Bastian saw the silvery tracks of dried tears on her dirty cheeks.
    He spat. The wraith flinched slightly as the spittle hit her ragged shirt, landing over her heart. He released his hold on her hair and she staggered and almost fell. Her chin rose high as she regained her balance. Her stance was proud and unrepentant.
    “My parents died for that necklace.” His voice choked on the words.
    The wraith’s mouth tightened. She shrugged again, a tiny movement of her shoulders.
    Her utter lack of remorse, of compassion, drove the air from his lungs. Bastian turned away, breathless. His hands trembled with the need to hit her.
    “You will steal it back,” he said harshly, to the meadow.
    The wraith made no reply.
    He turned swiftly, almost stumbling, but the wraith was still there, still visible. She knelt on the bare dirt, bent over the man’s body, her fingers touching his throat. Endal stood at her back.
    “You will steal it from the salamanders,” Bastian told her, more loudly.
    The wraith didn’t bother to turn her head. “No.” Her voice was flat.
    “Yes!” He crossed the distance between them in one stride and clenched his hand in her plait again, jerking her head up and around to look at him.
    She met his gaze unflinchingly. “Nothing you can do to me will make me steal it back.”
    He read the truth of the words in her eyes, in her expression. She was unafraid of him, unafraid of his size and strength, his rage, his hatred. Unafraid of Endal standing behind her.
    Bastian released her hair.
    The wraith turned her attention again to the man’s body. “Go away,” she said, dismissing him.
    Bastian swayed on his feet. Failure pressed so