Page 20 of The Crowned Queen

Finn flinched, swearing as the shadows spilled out from under Loren’s cloak. But he didn’t move, his shoulder bumping Loren’s as the darkness took Loren’s intention and made it a reality, rising in front of them like a dark curtain.

The patrol turned the corner.

Aetherlight swept across the mouth of the alley, the soldier wielding it laughing as he said something to one of his companions. Loren held his breath as it skimmed the wall a breath from his face, warping where it struck the shadows. The soldiers were so close he could see the gold stitching on their black coats. Could smell them, the burnt stench of stolen magic mingling with the sour tang of unwashed human.

Don’t look. Loren’s heart hammered against his ribs, making him suddenly grateful humans had such poor hearing. There’s nothing to see here. Just a darker patch of shadows⁠—

They walked right past them.

“Fuck.” Finn let out a shaky breath, sagging against the wall. “That was too close.”

“Good thing the fae monarch was here to save you,” Loren grumbled.

“I am a royalist,” Finn snapped, brushing dust off his clothes. “But the people you’re about to ask for help aren’t. All that time you spent in chains? These people spent those years suffering under Arcanum rule. Keep that in mind before you start making demands.”

They didn’t speak again, cutting through another narrow alley choked with refuse and following a winding side street toward the sound of crashing waves. Finally, Finn turned, sidling between two of the leaning buildings and stopping in front of a boarded-up door just like the dozens of others they’d passed.

Finn raised his hand, but before he could knock the board covering the door shifted. A child peered through the gap, her violet eyes bright in the darkness.

“You’re late,” she said.

Finn scowled. “Good evening to you too, Maya. Are you going to let us in?”

The child studied them a beat longer than necessary, her bright eyes flicking past Finn to Loren’s hooded shape. Then she stepped back, pulling the board aside just enough for them to slip into the cramped entryway.

“I made you three blocks back,” the child—Maya—said, crossing her arms. “I thought that patrol was going to catch you.”

“They almost did,” Finn said. “That’s why you shouldn’t be out after curfew.”

The child scoffed. “They never see me,” she boasted. “I’m faster and smaller than you. It’s what makes me the best lookout.”

“You’re a lookout?” Loren stared at her, trying to reconcile the child standing in front of him with the idea. She couldn’t have been older than ten—all sharp angles and bones, her slight frame far too thin. Someone had shorn her silver hair off at her chin, the ends as ragged as her clothes. Goddess save him, she wasn’t even old enough to have come fully into her magic yet. She had no business tracking trained Arcanum soldiers through the streets.

“You’re a king?” she retorted, her violet gaze flicking down to where the shadows curled around his boots. Her lip curled, not a flash of fear on her small face. “You could have killed those soldiers with your shadows, but you hid instead. Are you some sort of coward?”

Loren opened his mouth, a hundred good answers dancing on the tip of his tongue—too many civilians in the surrounding buildings, the destruction the Arcanum would have unleashed on the district when they discovered the deaths—but they all stuck in his throat.

Because even he wasn’t sure if it was the truth.

“That’s enough, Maya.” A fae female who shared the same silver hair and violet eyes stepped through the tattered curtain at the back of the entryway. “Go see if that patrol doubled back. And make sure you record it. They’re changing the schedule again.”

“Yes, Mother,” Maya said, straightening immediately. She cast one glance back at Loren—searching for an answer he didn’t have—before vanishing through the crack in the boards like she’d never been there at all.

“Did you just send your own child back out there knowing there’s an Arcanum patrol?” Loren stared at the silver-haired female, trying to reconcile the thin, worn-down female in front of him with the rebel leader Finn had wasted so much breath cautioning him about. “She could be captured⁠—”

“As judgmental as your friend, I see.” Maerin smiled, the expression a little lopsided thanks to the scar running down the side of her face. “Maya was born and raised under Arcanum rule. Don’t you think she has as much right as you and I to fight back against them?”

“She’s a child.” Loren shook off Finn’s warning touch, unable to stop the words tumbling out of his mouth. “She hasn’t even come into her magic⁠—”

“None of us have our magic, Shadowbane,” Maerin said coolly. “Or we didn’t, until your friend Kai Sterling started coming to visit.”

Loren bristled, a retort hovering on the tip of his tongue. But snapping that Kai Sterling wasn’t his friend wasn’t the way to ingratiate himself with these people. The shadows muttered angrily around his feet, hissing their displeasure.

“You have to admit, Maerin,” Finn said, always the mediator. “It’s hard to see a child playing scout. You can’t blame him for being shocked.” He stepped forward, moving between Loren and the rebel leader. “We’re here to talk, not to fight.”

Maerin hummed noncommittally, still staring at Loren. She wasn’t smiling now. “Come. We can speak privately in the back.”

They followed her past the tattered curtain and down a long, narrow hall, its sagging walls braced with scavenged planks. The floor dipped under Loren’s boots, warped and rotted.