The Sinuous Bargain of a Cowardly Prince (The Shadowed Throne Chronicles #1)

Prologue

Lady Bernadette Ferle held the mewling babe in her arms, fresh from his mother’s womb. She lulled him against her warm bosom and cradled his red, delicate head in her small palm. He was such a handsome infant, for having been born only an hour prior.

The birthing room smelled of crushed rose and peony, the scents associated with life and novelty. The lady continued to soothe the child, refusing to let her thoughts linger on the prophetic whisperings concerning his birth that passed between the maids.

The eldest nurse took the babe from the lady, nestling his little body into the crook of her elbow. A tear spilled from Bernadette’s red-rimmed eyes as she wrestled with a smile.

“Prince Ramiel, would you like to see your mother?” the nurse whispered as she turned to the birthing bed.

The woman in the king’s bed was not the queen, nor a lady of human nobility. But those who saw her would never believe she had no title to her name, for her beauty was beyond comprehension and ethereal in its loveliness.

Black hair spilt in thick waves around her, pooling across her bed in a deluge of onyx. Exhausted, her hazel eyes drifted to her son sleeping in the arms of the nurse. A pained smile plastered over her pale face as she lifted her hands and received her child.

His body was warm and soft and vulnerable, his head of brown, curly hair like his father’s.

She beheld his vulnerability, the beautiful innocence of his dimpled knuckles, the bow of his full lips, and knew something so precious wouldn’t last long in the world he was born into.

Her sorrows spilled over high-boned cheeks and wetted her bare breasts.

Through sobs, she held him close and breathed in his scent.

“Ramiel,” she said, no happy note to her lament, “life will be difficult for you. A prophecy calls death down over your head and around your neck, strangling your heart and mind.” Her chapped lips curled in on themselves as she swallowed back more tears.

“But we mustn’t allow this to happen, my child.

You’ve been born to me pure and true, so your royal blood will protect you for as long as you live. ”

The baby prince’s mother had barely finished speaking when the doors to the room slammed open.

The maids and nurses bent their backs and receded to the walls, eyes trained on the stone floor.

With the child still cradled in her arms, the obsidian-haired beauty watched warily as the heavily armored royal moved to her bedside.

The king, who’d impregnated her, was not her husband but someone she once loved.

She searched his glassy eyes for the kindness she once knew intimately, but all she saw was lingering anger.

The memory of their encounters was darkened by what he’d done to her against her will, out of malice, out of hate.

A crooked smile lifted his brown beard, and his eyebrows hung over his shadowed expression.

His hand folded rough and heavy around her arm, sending a tense shudder through her. She shifted the infant to her other side so the king could entwine his fingers with hers. Her blood pumped thickly through her at his touch.

“You’ve heard the prophecy,” he said, softer than she’d heard him speak in a long time.

She offered a stiff nod as his gray eyes traveled to the baby in her arms. His expression lightened with something that might have been love, if she hadn’t known he was incapable of feeling it. “Let me hold him.”

She trembled, afraid her refusal would earn her more torment. For in the past, whenever she’d refused him, he’d proven that her word meant nothing to him. Tears dried on her cheeks now, her arms so tired and weak from hours of strenuous labor that she could not struggle against his prying hands.

He took the baby, frowning when it began to cry. A thought wrinkled his forehead as he quickly returned the sobbing prince to his mother. She warmed the infant in her thin arms, hushing him with a cheek pressed to his forehead.

When she glanced at her child’s father, the cruel shadows had already returned to his face, stinging her heart with hurt.

“He is now your curse,” the king began, his voice the harsh one she’d grown to know well.

“He will receive no help. No martial training. He will remain in the castle his entire life, and then he will be married off to a distant kingdom when he is of age.” His fingers slinked around hers, crushing her bones.

“You will remain quiet about who you are, and you will not challenge the throne. The only value you now hold is in mothering the abomination you hold to your breast.”

“We cannot protect ourselves from that which is destined,” she whispered, lips shaking. “If a son is to crush his father’s skull, he will crush his father’s skull. If he is prophesied to rule over the land, he will rule over the land.”

“How dare you?” The king growled. His robes whipped around him as he stormed toward a cowering nurse, displacing his anger elsewhere.

Of course he would not deign to punish his mistress outright for speaking against him.

He’d punish the nurse who delivered her child or the servant who brought her towels for her neck.

But never her. He was loath to touch her ever since he disgraced her body with a child against her will.

It was then the newborn’s mother saw the elder prince, only three years old, peeking from behind his father.

Dressed in hosiery and a bright orange tunic, he already carried himself like a crown prince.

No longer the age to be nursed by his mother, Karmin, the Queen of Arioch, he now followed his father on errands around the castle.

Could the prophecy have been about him ? No, for the witches had revealed the centuries-old prophecy only when she was pregnant with Ramiel, years after the legitimate prince had been born.

“Speak so much as a word, and the baby’s life will end by his mother’s hands,” the king threatened, his eyes flickering with malice.

He presented a fat silver coin for the elder nurse, then dismissed all but the noble lady.

With a turn of his head, he glared at the woman he’d bedded.

When she winced beneath his gaze, the wicked smile returned to his crinkled eyes.

“I’ve still one curse at my disposal. Shall I spare you the details of how I’d like to use it? ”

His mistress prickled at his words, holding the infant tighter to her breast. The notion that she could steal her own child’s life was not something she’d ever considered. Magic used for such evil was never meant for her pure heart.

She never should have fallen for the cold-hearted king.

A king who would only keep her and her son alive to torture them, to satisfy his wicked desire for amusement.

“Lady Ferle,” the king addressed the noblewoman in the room.

His eyebrows knitted over stern features as he considered his next words.

“You are burdened with an excess of knowledge, and as you are fond of the woman who has birthed my second son, you shall be bound to her. I henceforth remove you from your station. Serve her as a maid would, and when the boy is of age, serve him with your life. You are to be his attendant. See to it he never discovers the damning purpose the gods have given him. In return, your life shall be spared.”

The woman fell to her knees, her impressive skirts tumbling around her.

She could not refuse an order from the king, no matter how the loss of her title shocked her or the threat over her friend’s life affected her.

Her hands slid in front of her, disguising her collapse as the most respectful bow and pledge to her king.

“With my life, I shall serve he who bears half the heritage of the Faundor bloodline,” Bernadette swore, her forehead pressed to the marble.

“Good, now recite the divination once, as the gods have decreed. Speaking it aloud will nullify its truth, and after today it shall never be spoken again,” he ordered, placing a stained sheet of parchment before her.

Bernadette pressed her lips together and looked to her friend, who nodded meekly. Both of them knew that only someone without royal blood could read the prophecy aloud without consequence. She was the only one in the room who could do it, since the other servants had left.

She hesitated only a moment before withdrawing the parchment from the king’s hand and reciting the omen from the words inscribed in gold script:

“In Arioch ‘tis reasoned, a prophecy foretold,

A tarnished Faundor son, a destiny bold.

Appraising the throne, his father’s life to sever,

He’ll reign with vengeance, his fortune’s endeavor.

“Born of darkness, his identity concealed,

He’ll gather allies, his power revealed.

With sword in hand, and facing father’s might,

He’ll take his rightful throne, ushering justice and light.”

As she finished the recitation, the king departed. The mother, her child, and her friend remained in silence as the paper began to magically disappear, the words never to be heard again. The curse, supposedly, rescinded.

She cared not if Ramiel ever heard of the prophecy, but for her son to be “born of darkness” was too much for her to bear. Her body would never be the same, forever scarred and ruined. But her son was pure and innocent.

Bernadette crawled to her friend and wrapped a comforting arm around mother and child. “I see in your eyes the pain this child brings you, but have mercy upon him. Love him with your entire spirit.”

If only Bernadette knew the true source of the mother’s agony. But she could never speak of it, not even to the only person she trusted.

The woman wept, tilting her head back to gulp down flowing tears. “He is no child I could loathe. Can’t you see I already love him with my whole being?”

She lifted her blushing son above her, arms shaking. Bernadette reached for the child to receive him. His eyes closed, and he made a small noise that pulled sighs from both women.

“I love him too,” the maid said, a little surprised at her own words. “Let us burn such a prophecy from our minds, so that it never existed. Just as King Azriel has ordered. Let us hope it has truly vanished from the will of the gods.”

“We must do everything we can to protect my son,” the woman choked. Wishing to hold her son again, she outstretched her arms.

Bernadette returned the child to his mother, and he soon fell asleep on her breast. “No foul word nor sharp weapon will tarnish his brow, I swear it. Let him learn the ways of nobility, but not of war. As the king has proclaimed over him, he will never stand in battle. He will not follow in the bloodstained footsteps of the kings before him,” the maid said, her tongue sharp.

“What has been ordained cannot be undone,” the king’s mistress said with deep melancholy.

“Speaking the prophecy aloud may wither the magical parchment, but the enchantment is written in the stars. The only thing we can do is postpone the magic from blooming in his bones, if even by a few years, so the king does not view him as a threat. He must believe Ramiel to be harmless until the day he departs from this kingdom.”

Bernadette brushed the mother’s shoulder with a hand and offered the enchanted ring made specifically for the baby, forged during his gestation using his mother’s blood.

Taking the thin silver band from Bernadette, she smiled at her son and touched her nose to his tiny head.

“Little Ramiel, this ring will protect you. It bears the history of Arioch. The twin dragons that once ruled this land join at the center.” The woman winced as she spoke, like something had bitten her, but she knew the enchantment stinging her own hands meant it was working.

Because the ring was too big for the infant’s hands, she’d fastened a cord of twine through its center so it would easily slip over the boy’s red ankle.

“It will conceal your identity, hiding your mixed heritage. May the heavens will that my life lasts, but if I must die before you come of age, let this amulet perform the job in my stead.”

With this covenant secured to his skinny leg, mother and son slept through the late afternoon, enjoying their first day of peace together.

But it was a comfort not meant to last.