Page 167 of Sworn to the Shadow Throne

He continued, as if it were nothing of consequence. “I’ve already ordered an elixir to clear any…complications. We’ll need a clean start for the succession.”

Her body would never be his decision if I had anything to say about it.

Berian stopped speaking and was watching me with something I could only label proprietary satisfaction.

He wants to control me through my anger if he can’t control me through my shame.

I looked at my brother, past the king. At the boy I’d trailed around this castle, hoping he’d finally notice me but only gave me scorn. At the man who’d locked me in my room for days on end, who wanted to give me to the Assembly, who let them drain him of his birthright while convincing himself it was righteous, who cared nothing for his wife’s death, and now lay in his sickbed making plans for a woman whose name he didn’t even deign to use.

I stood there, and the thin, stubborn lifeline I’d been gripping since I was eight years old—convinced that if I held on long enough, if I was useful enough, good enough, careful enough, he would eventually see me—finally give way.

The break inside me was silent and clean. There was no wild thumping in my chest. My breaths remained steady and controlled. I felt nothing where the grief for such a loss should’ve been. What came instead was far more dangerous: Clarity.

“Rest well, Your Majesty.”

I walked out and, for the first time in my life, I didn’t look back.

Chapter 44

Lunette

I groaned inside my mind before I even realized I was awake. The familiar ache of magical exhaustion had become a constant companion in my life. But now the hollow, brittle feeling left inside my chest was tempered by the steady heat sinking into my tired muscles. Everything around me felt perfect. I didn’t want to move. The scent of oakmoss, cedar, and dark tea filled my senses in the best way.

Scratch—pause—scratch.

That wasn’t Muffin scratching at the door or shutters to be let in. I was reluctant to open my eyes, but it was so out of place that I had to take a peek.

The first thing I saw was a ceiling that wasn’t mine. Dark wood paneling lined the room. The curtains covering the windows on the opposite wall were black velvet. Gold traced everything in the same sweeping lines as my room, but the design was less fluid, more…aggressive. Off to the side, a wardrobe was hung with weapons instead of the heaps of gowns Reina had buried me under—sword belts draped where dress hooks should’ve been, a quiver of arrows propped in the corner.

It was a room that had been built for survival, not comfort. And somehow, I felt safer in it than anywhere I could remember.

Reclined against the headboard beside me, knees bent beneath the furs, a lap desk balanced across his thighs with an inkpot and what appeared to be a truly punishing stack of documents was Owain. He was working through them with quiet focus—reading, signing, moving on. His face bore a faint scowl, deeply unsatisfied with the administrative labor.

And he wasn’t wearing a shirt. My brain latched onto that fact immediately.

The fire highlighted his shoulders, traced the lines of his chest, dipped into the shadows between lengths of muscle. When he moved his arm to write, the cords in his forearm shifted with it. A lock of dark hair had fallen across his forehead.

Gods below.

I blinked at the ceiling for a moment longer, cataloguing this fact without the inner battle I might’ve expected from myself a week before. The scratch of his quill continued until I shifted.

Owain glanced down. My being awake and watching him was apparently not what he’d expected to find when he looked over. His expression opened like a window thrown wide on the first warm day of spring. The smile that replaced his frown was immediate and unguarded and so purely happy that it landed behind my sternum with an answering pull.

The sight of him made something in me settle. The old grievance no longer stood between us, and I didn’t need to keep searching for evidence that it might return.

I was just a woman lying in a warm bed, looking at a man she—

“Hey,” he said softly.

What a time to realize my throat felt like sandpaper.

He set the quill aside and reached past the documents to the bedside table and returned with a cup of water. Exactly the thing I needed.

A mind reader with the body of a god.

I pushed myself up onto one elbow and drank like I was dying of thirst. The water was cool, impossibly fresh, and laced with something faintly electric that spread through me as I swallowed.

“Gods,” I croaked when it was gone, clutching the empty cup. “What was in that?”