Chapter 3
three
Rune Kalygorn
The shadows escaped me.
They were slippery, exactly like shadows weren’t supposed to be, but every time I gripped them in my hands, they slipped right through my fingers, disobeying my orders.
Like they could not feel my power. Like they could not feel the magic coursing through my veins, and my need, bright as day, to bring her back to me.
Now.
My eyes were open, but there was only darkness around me. I was on one knee in the middle of that drawing of shadows on the floor, and I refused to let it retreat. I refused to let go of the magic that had wrapped around her, those shadows that had taken her away. Banished her.
The same shadows that had banished me when I was six years old.
And I knew there was no taking them back. The ritual was completed. A king’s banishment was irreversible. I’d read a lot about it when I was young and had nights to kill. It would take a massive amount of power to undo it—and even then, it would require physical contact.
These shadows were not going to bring Nilah back to me no matter how forcefully I ordered them or how much magic I used.
“Rune.”
Colors against the darkness.
Raja stepped into the shadows only halfway, her eyes wide, bloodshot.
“That’s enough,” she told me.
And it was. This was not the way to get her back, not now. And before I lost my mind and tried to go after her through the shadows, I stood up.
The shadows retreated the same moment I pulled back my magic, and the throne room of the Midnight Palace came into view again.
We were not alone.
Soldiers with armor splattered with blood, wounds all over their bodies. Dead ones sprawled on the marble floor.
The king on the stairs of the dais still, the top of his head touching the floor, his eyes half open, my knife that I’d made with my bare hands still buried in his chest.
And a group of six Midnight fae who wore no armor, but uniforms. Dark purple velvet that looked near black, with plaques decorating their chests.
The doors to the throne room were open. I wished they were closed.
That’s all I did—wished they were closed so that nobody could spy on me without my knowledge, and the doors swung the very next second. I used no magic. I used no will. Simply a wish, and the throne room answered.
Sick.
My insides were on fire. I looked at the group of newcomers I’d never seen before, all of them Midnight.
How strange was it that I was one of them, yet it surprised me to see so many dark-haired people in the same place like this.
Must have been because I hadn’t had a place in my own home because of the very man who lay dead on those stairs now.
My father.
Nobody spoke. Raja stood with her chin up near the last stair of the dais, her unblinking eyes on the newcomers. I went around her and to the body of the Midnight King.
Former Midnight King.
The shadows moved even if I wasn’t fully aware of my own thoughts—of anything that wasn’t Nilah.
The throne room held an abundance of them, all over the floor and walls.
They were advanced royal protection, sources of their own, ready to be used by the king or queen, and any member of the royal family when needed.
Of course, I never knew this until I was here. Until I tried.
It hadn’t been so easy before, though. The shadows hadn’t been able to read my mind like they were doing now, detach from the floor, and rise toward the fallen Midnight King.
I was half surprised myself to find them pulling him up and straightening his body, moving him just off the side of the dais, holding him up over a box of complete darkness—just like I’d imagined it in my head a moment ago. Eyes closed. Hands folded over his chest.
The former king looked asleep.
Something moved inside me, but I wasn’t sure if it was regret. I wasn’t sure if it was sorry. I wasn’t sure if it was the nothing I felt for this man.
Nobody said a single word as they watched me. All their eyes were on me. If I’d only had my ears, I’d have though I was alone. The sound of my footsteps as I climbed up the dais and to the throne chair was the only sound in the room.
A throne.
A fucking throne made of shadows.
I sat on it before my legs gave, or before I exploded and broke the bones of every person watching me with that shock and that disgust, which really wasn’t anything new. I sat on the throne and looked down at them, burning still. Under my skin. In my very bones.
“The…the…”
A man spoke.
He was older than the rest of the group, if I had to guess, a short beard over his cheeks, his hair sleeked back, his dark eyes gleaming.
“The king is dead.”
Those were the words he said. The king is dead.
I looked at the body of the fallen king, still lying peacefully over the box of shadows.
“Your king is not dead. He is very much alive.”
Raja, who was standing at the bottom of the dais with her back turned to me, looking at the newcomers—who could only be high-borns, generals and advisors and whatever else a king was supposed to keep around himself as a council or assembly, to rule a court—turned and waved a hand at me.
She was a mess. Grey dress torn and stained with blood. Hair all over the place—but her eyes were as fierce as ever. Her spirit was bright.
“But if you mean that, then…” She turned to the other side, to the body of the fallen king, and flinched. On purpose, for all of them to see. “Yes, Helem is very much dead.”
“This is…” A shaking head from a woman who stepped forward, a thick black braid over her shoulder. She had the layers of her velvet dress in her shaking fists as she looked up at me. “This is outrageous! To come here and to challenge the king—”
The soldiers moved.
Two of them broke formation and stepped forward, closer to the dais, hands on their swords, eyes on the woman who had planned to take another step closer.
She stopped speaking, the look on her face that of horror as she watched the guards.
Any other day, I might have smiled.
“I did not challenge the king.” My voice echoed in the room, the sound of it cleaner. “He challenged me.” And I’d known the moment the throne disappeared that his challenge took. The palace recognized me as a potential heir, bastard or not.
Then it accepted me as king.
Which was wrong—so fucking wrong. This was not how it was supposed to be. None of this was how it was supposed to be.
“A challenge cannot merely be held. There are rules—there needs to be a process, and-and witnesses—” Again, that same man.
“Don’t speak to me about rules. A king can ask for a duel any time he pleases. All that is required is two eyewitnesses. Here, there were seven,” said Raja, waving a hand at the soldiers with a small smile on her face.
She was enjoying this, Raja. Thoroughly.
Meanwhile, I was trying to keep myself from throwing up.
Until I saw the animal.
He looked so small in the distance, there by the wall near the doors, sitting on his back legs and watching in silence. Vair, the Ice Queen’s pet. A lynx that had Nilah’s eyes. A lynx that could speak to her—and only her.
More talk. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, or who was speaking, because that animal had Nilah’s eyes.
What were the odds that she would be able to see through them from Nerith?
Because that’s where she’d gone. That’s where King Helem had banished her to—home.
Far away from here. Far enough that I couldn’t go after her. Couldn’t chase her at all.
Why? He wanted to kill her. He was going to kill her—why did he change his mind?
“…know who I am!”
The woman was shouting when I came to my senses and back into the present again.
And before Raja could speak, I said, “Enough.” Just like the old king had.
Enough, and they all stopped.
Whatever had taken over me, whatever was happening underneath my skin, I didn’t know how to stop it. But I knew exactly how to stop this.
“I don’t care if you’re marshals or chancellors or advisors—from this moment forward, Raja is my second in command and she is in charge of everything,” I said. “That means she’s in charge of all of you. You want to talk to me, you go to her.”
For a moment, the whole room held their breath.
Then one of the men who’d stuck to the back of the group stepped forward with his chin raised, shadows on his hands, his mustache as black as his eyes.
He looked at Raja, and he pretended to be disgusted at the sight of her. “Outrageous,” he spit. “This is not acceptable. You are in no position—”
That was as far as he made it.
Raja moved too fast for my eyes to catch, spun and raised her sword and cut half his neck with such precision, that when she stepped back in front of the dais again, I was tempted to believe I’d imagined the last two seconds.
The man choked. Raised his shadow-covered hands to his neck. Touched it, and when the shadows faded, we saw the blood on his fingers that was invisible underneath his black velvet jacket.
His mouth opened and closed a couple of times. He fell and didn’t move again.
Raja said, “Anyone else have a problem with His Highness’s decision?”
His Highness.
Bile rose in my mouth. The others looked shocked—at Raja, and at me, then back again.
I barely forced myself to speak again. “You will be called upon when we have settled. Dismissed.”
All of this I knew to say because I’d been in the room when the Seelie Queen gave her orders to her people countless times, with Lyall. That’s how she’d spoken to them, and it had been fast, efficient in getting them to leave.
I needed fast and efficient now.
They wanted to argue. The way they looked at one another and at their friend on the floor, dead. The way they tried to give it a moment, to see if someone else would be brave enough to speak again—but one look at Raja, and they thought better of it.
Finally, they turned around and walked away. It only took a thought in my head to get the doors open for them, and then closed. A thought, that was all.
“Clean up this mess and leave,” Raja said, waving a hand at the soldiers. She meant the dead bodies—of the other soldiers and the man she’d just killed, not the old king. I wanted him here still for a while longer.
I wanted to understand.
My skin was melting, though when I looked at my blood-coated hands, it seemed intact.
“Yes, Regent,” said one solder or the other, and they moved.
While I analyzed my hands, my fingers, my torso, they wrapped their shadows around the bodies, and carried them toward the doors.
I wasn't sure how long it took them, or if my impatience got the throne room to help them, because the shadows carrying the dead looked darker at one point, but I didn’t really care. I was finding that my limbs were locking down more and more, and this wasn’t exhaustion. It was something else.
“Raja,” I said, but I wasn’t sure how to explain it to her when the doors closed and we were all alone with the dead king.
“Now is not the time to rest, boy,” she said, and when I met her eyes, hers were wide and terrified.
“I need to—”
“She’s coming.”
Raja’s words hung in the air for a moment, refusing to connect with me, to make any kind of sense.
The next second, the doors of the throne room opened for the third time—only this time, I didn’t wish for it. They opened all by themselves—or at the hands of the woman who stepped inside with her chin up, bright blue eyes on me, a small smile playing on her thin lips.
Her wrinkles were deep. Her dress that changed color like the fabric of it was made of different kinds of shadows floated about her as she moved deeper into the throne room.
I had never met this woman before, but I’d practically seen her when Nilah described her to me. It was the Seer of Shadows, and the energy that was coming from her made me uneasy.
The doors closed once more, and the lynx who’d been sitting by the wall came forward, following the seer.
Somehow, I’d made it down the stairs of the dais, too.
It was an unusual throne, the Midnight one, and the old king had created this dais on purpose—seven stairs up, and just enough space at the top for a single chair.
The message of it would be clear to anyone who entered this room—he ruled alone.
“Your Highness, congratulations. I see the throne has already accepted you. I am glad.”
The seer spoke. She stopped a few feet away from me and bowed her head, both hands to her chest.
“Raja, you’ve taken your place, too—good, good.”
The Seer of Shadows was the most powerful seer in the realm, and didn’t all of Verenthia know that she was loyal to the old king, had been for decades?
Because right now she seemed pleased, not an ounce of sorry flashing in her eyes when they skimmed over the dead body lying on the box of shadows to her right.
In fact, she seemed more curious about the lynx who’d stopped just at her side and watched her with those eyes that were the exact same color as Nilah’s. The exact same.
And I continued to burn.
“Helem challenged him to a duel.” Raja’s voice was dry, hushed. “He won—”
“With the help of Nilah Dune, yes. A fair win, nonetheless.” The seer smiled. “If it weren’t, the throne room wouldn’t have accepted you as the new Midnight King, Your Highness.” Again, she bowed her head.
“Nilah,” I said, and I found my jaws were locked. I wasn’t only burning—I was also freezing. My limbs were heavy, my bones cold.
“A banishment from Verenthia. Such a cruel fate.” The seer stepped forward and raised a hand. “But it is time, Your Highness.”
Those words.
I couldn’t stomach those two words. I’d be tempted to think they were making me sick if any of this was normal. If I’d felt it before, even in my darkest hour.
I hadn’t.
“Time for what?” Raja asked as the view in front of me turned darker and darker.
The seer looked at her as if surprised. “To remember, of course.” And she’d been much closer to me than I’d realized. That’s why, when she tapped me with her fingertips on my forehead, my body jerked back on instinct.
I was moving again, climbing up the dais backward, looking at the seer, trying to get myself to speak once more, but I couldn’t. It was impossible.
The back of my legs hit something, and I fell back on the throne chair.
Raja spoke—I could just see her waving her hands about as she told the seer something, but their voices were lost on me.
Nilah’s face was the only clear memory in my mind—and that awful thought: I lost her.
She was a world away from me and I couldn’t even force myself to stand up.
Then the darkness claimed even the memory of her and showed me another that had been stolen from me a long time ago.