Shades Of Grey Novels & Stories

The Perimeter-Rim was a graveyard of "What-Ifs." As the Nebula-Shard drifted into the sector, the vibrant, star-stitched velvet of the Expansion gave way to a grainy, desaturated haze. Here, the universe looked like a sketch that had been abandoned halfway through. The "Ice" of the Grey-Rink wasn't solid; it was a half-formed slurry of pixels that crunched like broken glass under their mag-lev boots.

Grey. The name hit her like a punch to the chest. It was familiar. Not from her past. Not from the trauma. But in a strange way, it fit. She hadn’t asked for his name. And yet, hearing it now… Grey. The color of twilight. Of ash. Of the space between light and dark. She didn’t realize she was gripping the clipboard until her knuckles turned white. “Keep monitoring him,” she said quietly. “Page me if there’s any change.”

I didn’t take my eyes off Lex. “Talk,” I said. Lex exhaled slowly, almost like he was bored. “Ghostshade grows in two nearly identical strains. One heals. One accelerates blood corruption. The difference is in the root coloration after harvest.” Maeve froze. “That’s not in any known record.” “No,” Lex agreed calmly. “Because most healers die before they can record it.” Silence hit the room like a physical force and my wolf surged hard beneath my skin, pressing against control I was barely maintaining.

Grey walls. Grey carpet. Grey desk top. Everywhere I look in my office there's grey. Well it's not so much an office as a cubical. Okay fine, it's a cubical. Why are cubical farms so gloomy? If they force employees to work on Saturdays, the least they could do is add a little color. It's depressing.

"You saw those shadows, right? Those are from you. You are supernatural, just like the man you encountered earlier in the marketplace." "No. I must be dreaming, right? I am still trapped in that dream with the shadows. I just need to wake up completely—" "Ah, right, the dream. Everything you saw there is the reality, everything really happened. It is proof that your ability has been activated. Those shadows were your eyes. What you underwent during those two weeks of unconsciousness is the process called shading. The shading usually lasts for months but your record shocked us. The shading allows your body to completely integrate your ability called Nyx and for you to overcome it in less than

The blood starts pouring out of my mouth uncontrollably, I cough while splashes of blood defile the ground under me. “Don't be scared, I'm not going to hurt you”, the shade rubs the back of its hand down my cheek, “I'm just going to drain your body of its worthless life”. The shadow figure laughed maniacally in my face. I sense the thirst for blood and the hatred towards me. I start to turn to run, but my body immediately falls limp. I start to military crawl, dragging my legs across the floor.

Shadow stepped in front of it and the fire dissolved against his shimmery blue protective shield. I made a mental note to practice using my hands when I was alone. “So, what about the rest of you? What types of hybrids are you? Grey, you’re half witch and half…?” “Cougar shifter.” He growled, the noise decidedly more feline than canine. That explained his yellow-green eyes that had instantly reminded me of a cat’s. “That’s cool.” I turned my attention to Shadow and lifted a brow in question. “Witch and raven shifter,” the quiet second-in-command said.

What does grey mean? Maya capped the pen then held it there for a moment. The base moved behind her: crates, voices, Marcus laughing quietly at something, Eli somewhere near the south shutter, the new light over medical humming with stolen sunshine. Grey sat on the map. Not danger. Not unknown. Not cleared. A place from another life. A wound with coordinates. “Not yet,” she said.

“Surely they’re displacing the balance anyway.” “Because they have been called upon by the grey.” Grandma Rosie shook her head and looked up, as though untangling her explanation and putting it into simple terms we would understand. “Grey will still exist in many shades, be it darker or lighter at any given moment. The fluctuation of the souls that live here can make it darker or lighter anyway. But white cannot be grey, and neither can black. Creatures from the above or below cannot travel to that which they did not come from.”

In front of them, facing away from the viewer, a woman stood with her back straight and her head up, her face never shown, just the long line of her spine and the fall of dark hair down it. I knew that color before I let myself admit I recognized anything else about it. That particular blue-grey bleeding into the shadows behind the kneeling figures wasn't a color you pulled out of imagination. It was a color you remembered. I'd stood in a room painted almost exactly that shade once, five years ago, the day I walked into that apartment and told all four of them exactly what I thought of them. The day my whole life changed. My hand found the stem of my wine glass and held on tighter than I mea