From SHADOW OF THE WOLF:Robin drew a short-feathered flight arrow. The soldiers were three hundred paces away if he was going to do it he would have to do it now. He nocked the arrow. As he did so a creeping sensation began in his bow hand--the way cold liquid seeps through your chest, or when fear makes your blood run cold. The feeling grew more intense and began to spread. Something was moving across his skin--no, beneath his skin. Black threads, thin as the veins in a leaf, were spreading upwards from his left hand. He felt them flow quicker, up past his elbow, twining around his shoulder--he heard them making a splintering noise, the way an iced lake cracks before it gives way beneath your feet.

Robin thought he had discarded the shadow weapon, but now he understood a shard of it remained. It had seeped inside and lurked there, waiting . The shadow veins continued to spread, at first gossamer thin, but then beginning to pulse and swell, like rootlets drinking in the rain. They rippled across his chest, down his right arm. He felt them leak deeper, into his muscles and his bones. They tugged tight--a puppet master pulling strings--Robin's bow rose. His right arm drew the bowstring. He took aim at Will Scarlett.