Page 129 of Sworn to the Shadow Throne

“My rooms.”

Her chambers were as opulent as mine, though colder in tone. Black velvet draped the walls. Silver trim traced the edges of furniture and doorframes in swooping lines. The hearth was carved with snarling wolves instead of flowers. Her family crest maybe? Even the rugs were dark—midnight threaded with moonlight.

It fit her perfectly.

Inside, Reina dismissed the lingering servants with a flick of her fingers. The door shut behind them, and shadows slid the heavy bar into place with a decisive thud. By this point, my nerves were in tatters. I started sweating as if it were midsummer.

I didn’t think Reina would harm me, but it felt like she was planning on harming someone.

She moved to her desk, where stacks of letters, wax seals cracked and some only partially answered, lay scattered. Then motioned to the chair facing her. “Sit.”

I sat.

“So,” she began, folding her hands atop the desk, “you saw an enchanted device being used on our king and didn’t think to tell me?”

I clasped my fists beneath the table so tightly my nails bit into my palms. “I have been a bit busy since this morning, Duchess Reina.”

Her brows lifted. “Fair… And at my doing. My apologies.”

I was so taken aback by the concession that a grin crept across my face. I pointed at the mantel. “You’re something of a dire wolf when it comes to your family. I like it.”

A corner of her mouth twitched. “I deserve that characterization.”

“It was that or a badger with very long claws. Thought you might like the wolf better.”

She shrugged, unbothered. Then leaned back slightly, eyes narrowing. “As you so graciously educated my nephew, I display the stereotypical traits of a Nocthel. I was simply…trained to fight a different kind of war. One fought with secrets and strategy instead of conjured weapons. And to do that, I need information.”

I told her then, in full, what I’d witnessed in the king’s chamber. I described the slender black instrument with a silver lattice pattern. Its discordant low hum as Thibault passed it over the king’s sleeping form. The way the king’s magic had felt thin and frayed when it had been so much stronger just the night before.

With each word, Reina’s tension visibly mounted, her breathing shallow. Her fingers tapped once, twice, against the desk before flattening, palm down, as if holding back something violent.

“He didn’t even try to hide it from me,” I finished. I refused to be small. I made myself sit straighter and ask the question I’d been circling since we left the jeweler. “What I don’t understand is why you care so much. If Berian died, Owain would be king. And—forgive my bluntness—your relationship with the king seems rather…one-sided.”

Her gaze locked with mine.

“You are correct on all counts,” she replied slowly. “The problem is that right now, Owain does not want to be king. His brother has spent the last twenty years convincing him that he’s a stain on the royal family, that he’s beneath them, a failure. And, Lunette, a reluctant king is vulnerable. Weakness—even if it is only in his mind—invites all manner of ambitious vultures to circle the throne.”

I suddenly understood. The worried look Owain had worn the first time his eyes flashed black in my presence, how he’d seemed to think I’d cringe from his magic. He’d been convinced he was less because he was Nocthel. When the exact opposite was true—he was more.

Reina studied my face. “What had me telling you to shut your mouth back at the jeweler is that I believe the device you described is the same sort that killed Owain’s mother.”

The words dropped like boulders into deep water.

She spoke then of Queen Amara and the problems plaguing her pregnancy with Owain. How the Fae and human blood in the child had warred inside her, destabilizing her magic, threatening them both. How the queen had gone to the Assembly seeking help to stop the unraveling.

Reina’s voice stayed even as she spoke, like somebody who’d told a grief so many times it had worn smooth, but her hands, folded on the tabletop, had gone white at the knuckles. “They said they could only treat her in Caervorn.”

“Reina,” I said cautiously, “the Assembly lied to you. Owain’s strong Fae ancestry meant nothing. Humans and Fae breed without problem. I’ve never heard of a Fae woman having more problems with her pregnancy than human females.”

“Of course,” she said, her voice heavy with defeat that hadn’t softened with age. “So…it was an excuse to get her into their clutches.”

I listened as the fresh grief poured out of her. Yet even in this, she preserved her dignified air.

“I didn’t suspect they were draining her magic and her blood until she returned to us a shell. Gruffid wanted her better, so he invited them to come to the Tir or she visited Caervorn again and again.” She let out a faint, humorless breath. “Amara held on for eight years—through what I suspect was torture—for Owain. Their healers swore to Gruffid that they needed privacy for their magic. And Amara was given sleeping draughts every time they treated her, so she couldn’t tell us exactly what they did.”

Reina’s unsparing eyes met mine. “Throughout it all, I watched my sister deteriorate. I knew they were bleeding her, but they called that ‘healing.’ I couldn’t stop it because the leading magical minds were there to save the queen. Without evidence, I couldn’t prove that they were killing her.”

By the time she finished, it was hard to breathe from the emotion spilling over onto me.