1. Chapter 1
Owain
The dark magic in my blood knew what was coming before the guards pushed the boy to his knees.
The square was full, even in this foul weather.
A thousand bodies moved with a shared, restless energy that only death could calm.
I had seen war. I had seen the things men did in the dark when they thought no one was watching.
None of it made my skin crawl the way a crowd in a good mood did.
To my left, a woman hoisted her son up for a better view of the crying boy and the demon prince. Coins changed hands as men wagered whether there’d be a second, surprise execution. I heard it all.
Chill autumn rain pelted the boards of the scaffold, washing the blood from the kneeling boy’s wrists in thin pink rivers toward the gutter, as if even the rain were trying to hide what we were doing here.
The pool of dark magic in my body twitched, drawn to inspect it even as his hitching sobs made me want to step out of my own skin to escape all of this.
I shifted my stance to avoid the blood and the pull, but all that did was make the condemned boy lose what little control he had left over his emotions.
He began sobbing. Wrists shackled, brown hair plastered to his skull, his frantic eyes darted between those in the jeering crowd, each face contorted in disgust as they spat at him.
They called me corrupted, yet they salivated for death. In truth, part of me did too—the part I always kept tightly controlled—but not like this. Not when cruelty was the point.
I stood above the boy, magic restless under my skin, trying not to look too closely at his face. If I did, I’d see the tremor, the lack of lines from age, from experience. And it didn’t matter. I would have to end him.
The crowd pressed close to the platform. A group of boys a few years younger than the condemned were whispering about me, about Berian—unaware that my hearing was better than a full human’s.
“He’s the younger one,” the dark-haired one said, tilting his head in my direction. “Tainted, just like the stories.”
Another: “At least he does more than sit on his royal arse gettin’ fat like the king.”
The first responded, “True… Good this demon’s on our side.”
“Is he?” the second challenged.
I glared at the blond-haired boy who’d posed that last question.
As if hoping to answer it, black wisps that writhed like living smoke slithered out of my palm. I snatched them back instantly, but not fast enough. The blond-haired boy took a panicked step back.
Hold it in, Owain. Breathe.
At moments like these, when duty forced me to act against my conscience, part of me wanted to show him, to show them all, what a true demon looked like.
It would be so easy.
But I already had one head awaiting its removal. I counted my breaths, cool air filling my lungs as I forced a mask of patience. The boy on the platform was watching me now like a rabbit caught in a snare.
That makes two of us.
King Berian’s smooth tenor carried over the square, polished with magic until every word sounded righteous.
“Larethia is safe because we are vigilant. We embrace the magically gifted, but only when they use those abilities for the betterment of all! This man used magic to attack one of our border villages.”
My stomach turned. The boy about to fall under my sword was no man. He was young enough to be new to his magic, fumbling with powers he’d been pressured to use before he even understood them.
And I would have to kill him for it.
“The condemned is a Gelidian raider. The law is clear on his punishment—death.”
The crowd erupted, mothers clutching children as if the mere mention of raiders would make berserkers erupt from the ground to snatch them away.
A purple-robed sycophant with a sick taste for others’ suffering sat beside my brother, clapping politely. If anyone’s head should’ve been on the chopping block, it was Vaustin Maeron’s—the rotten scion of the Mage Assembly’s longtime Chancellor.
Berian gestured to me, his smile as frigid as a midwinter wind. “Today, justice will be carried out by the Shadow of Larethia.”
I forced my jaw to relax, trying to wipe away any hint of emotion there. Not “brother” or even Crown Prince Owain. He hadn’t called me by my proper title or name in public in a decade.
No one clapped. Some even leaned back as if my presence might infect them with my taint.
Yet where the crowd flinched, my men loomed like a wall of steel.
Ringing the square, they stood a bit straighter, shoulders squaring and chins lifting in silent, unwavering defiance of the crowd’s fear.
A few veterans touched two fingers to the steel over their hearts—a soldier’s salute older than our grandfather’s reign.
The gesture was subtle, but it passed down the line all the same.
My aunt Reina met my gaze and gave the smallest nod.
I unclenched my fist, and steel made of midnight shadows streamed outward inch by inch. I took my time conjuring the broadsword. To the crowd, it probably looked like I was concentrating, but I could’ve summoned a flurry of blades in less than a heartbeat.
Berian’s smile tightened. He knew I was stalling. The message rang loud and clear: get on with it.
But the boy was praying.
“Please, Divine Mother,” he whispered, voice cracking from a body striving to grow into a manhood that would never come, “I didn’t mean to…”
Turning my head so the crowd couldn’t see my lips move, I whispered, my throat thick with bile, “It’ll be quick. I promise.”
I’d long ago accepted that duty would never be sweet, but I’d never expected it to feel so often like sinning.
Berian’s smile widened as the boy’s sobbing crescendoed.
I raised my conjured sword. “For what it’s worth,” I said softly, “I believe you.”
I locked my emotions behind the walls I’d built as a child. If I let myself feel too much—now, ever—I couldn’t serve my people.
Yet something broke through those walls just as my blade emerged on the other side of the boy’s neck.
Chains rattled against the blood-soaked boards as his body crumpled sideways.
I nearly did the same—right there in front of the crowd—as prickles of awareness danced across my skin, making all the fine hairs on my body stand on end.
I eyed Vaustin with suspicion. But it wasn’t an attack. There was no telltale vibration or hum in the air of magic.
A tug. At first, I thought it was my shadows stirring, finally breaking free of their human cage, but the sensation was as soft as a sigh against my skin.
Then another, distant and unseen, pulling insistently at the heart of my magic. It was so sudden and soul-deep that it nearly rocked me off my feet a second time. When I looked at the crowd, thinking the source might be there, I found nothing.
Whatever it was, it unsettled something in me I hadn’t known could be stirred. The sensation settled into a strange and oddly comforting warmth—a quiet stillness that didn’t belong on a scaffold. Didn’t belong to a sinner like me.
The feeling passed, swallowed by the clattering of rain and the stench of death.
I shook off the lingering doubt. There would be no forgiveness for this. It was probably my guilt coming to life in a new way, ready to cast its shadow over my thoughts like it always did, donning the disguise of mercy I didn’t deserve.
The last drops of an innocent life soaking my blade fell to the ground as I released the magic that had formed the weapon.
Clenching my hands at my sides to keep them from trembling with pent-up rage and powerlessness, I turned to face the audience instead of the child I’d just beheaded according to my brother’s orders.
Whispers of the Shadow Prince and Shadowborn erupted, now louder after my display. Some praised my swiftness, but the venomous words of others surely would’ve poisoned me if I hadn’t fortified myself against them years ago.
I could force my shadows down dozens of throats at once. Could stop their insults forever. I could break half this crowd in the time between heartbeats… But I wouldn’t—ever.
I kept my face carefully blank. Emotion was a luxury I could never afford in public. I shoved the guilt down, burying it with all the other fractured parts of myself so deep that I wasn’t even certain who I was anymore.
“Justice has been served!” Berian cheered above the din of the crowd.
My men watched me in silence. Only a few heads bowed in reverence to the dead. The silent struggle that raged inside me forced me to move my clenched hands behind my back.
Yet I was too slow. Camrick, my top general and best friend, stood next to my aunt Reina.
Judging by the expressions on their faces, they’d both seen the agitated wisps jumping off my palms. Vaustin had seen them too.
A smile crossed his face at my frailty. He collected a list of weaknesses the way other men collected jewels, polishing each one until it could be set into a blade.
If the Assembly knew what made me crack, it wouldn’t be long before they pressed a jeweled knife to my throat.
My death would be one fewer obstacle to getting exactly what they wanted: control over all of Avanfell.
It was a mystery to me why my brother was entertaining him.
The Mage Assembly claimed neutrality in anything not related to the governance of magic.
Neutrality, in the Assembly’s mouth, meant waiting until their mark bled enough to welcome a leash.
Every crown that invited them to advise found its laws rewritten in purple ink.
So why had I, next in line to the throne, been left out of the discussions they’d had behind closed doors recently?
Bow. Breathe. Mask on, Owain.
Soaked to the skin with rain that had a whisper of winter in it, I allowed the world to mistake my obedience for cruelty. I bowed my head to the king while an innocent boy’s blood mingled with the rainwater around my boots.