Page 17 of Sworn to the Shadow Throne

Nearby, Cam slammed a palm into the ground, cracking the earth and swallowing a knot of men with a sickening crunch. He stumbled, his face slick with sweat. My heart stopped beating until he was back on his feet.

This wasn’t sustainable. For every kill, it seemed like two more raiders pressed forward.

“Retreat!” I roared, flinging a spear through a raider’s chest. “Fall back! South road—go!”

The men broke formation in ranks, running under Cam’s cover of flame and stone. I turned to guard their retreat. Unsteady from using so much magic so quickly, I swayed as a mounted raider thundered toward me on a stolen horse, spear leveled.

I conjured a pike in answer, but the surge of magic coming from an already overtaxed body made my shadows waver. Despite its weightlessness, my weapon wobbled in my quivering arms.

I calculated the timing. Raised the point to intercept the horse’s charge.

And failed on both counts.

Pain exploded, blurring out all other sensations as the raider’s spear punched through my side, tearing armor, flesh, and bone. I staggered, choking on the blood pooling in my lungs and pouring down my side.

A morbid, blood-stained smile spread across my face as a chilling numbness stretched across my torso. At least I would die with my weapon in hand, holding the line for my men.

A good ending.

I had nothing left to lose, so I shrugged off the last chain I kept around my magic and poured every shred of myself into channeling it. It answered as if it had been waiting for permission all along. Its attack was instinctive and unrefined, but it still shredded the raider, making chunks of his body rain down on the ground.

More. Anyone I could reach who was chasing the Larethian tabards in the distance was snared by my magic.

The retreat’s noise made it difficult to hear Cam’s desperate cry. “Move it, Owain!” He hadn’t seen me get hit.

Still, it was enough to set me in motion. He would risk himself and many others to retrieve my body if I fell here. I had to make the task easier by moving closer. I wouldn’t let my death take another with it if I could do anything about it.

My stallion was ready to bolt as I braced to pull myself onto the saddle. Excruciating pain erased all memory of the feat, but somehow, I clawed my way up with numb fingers.

Darkness crept in as the world blurred. As my senses failed, my magic thrashed uncontrolled from my palms. One thread of mist lashed at my poor horse, and he took it as an order to gallop—in the wrong direction. I had no strength left to turn us around. I barely clung onto the saddle as the roar of our convoy’s retreat faded.

Soon, I was only aware of pain, my horse’s hoofbeats, and the iron taste of blood in my mouth. Each breath was a fresh dagger thrust through my chest.

My thoughts whispered of my death, of chains, of duty. I wouldn’t leave my kingdom a better place. I’d failed in so many ways.

Eventually, the expected storm broke, soaking me to my skin with ice-cold rain. The morose thoughts ceased as I fought my body’s instinct to shiver. The farther we traveled, the more a strange sense of something stirred within me. It felt like I was standing on a precipice with arms outstretched, absolutely giddy with the relief that leaping would bring.

Either the blood loss had completely addled my brain, or I was dying.

When I next roused to full awareness, a faint melody cut through the tempest’s roar and the drum of hooves—something no living man had any right to hear. I’d always imagined Death would come quietly, summoning me from the depths of the Otherworld. Instead, she sang.

Her voice wasn’t the whisper of a cold grave. It was lovely, and so full of hope in a place that had only seen strife and suffering. My heart ached at the sound of it, defying the agony racking my body.

Against all logic, against everything proper and ordered that made me Owain, it felt like the prayer I’d kept locked away in my chest had finally been answered. For the first time in my life, someone called to me without fear, as though they already knew what I was and chose me anyway.

Just as I accepted oblivion, just as I accepted that I’d be meeting my end, I found myself certain of one impossible thing: Death’s face, when I finally saw it, would be the most beautiful one I’d ever seen.

Then everything around me went black.

Chapter 7

Lunette

Three small wooden pails sat in their familiar spots, containing the worst of the leaks. I no longer had to think about where to place them. Rain hammered the shutters as the ash bread finished rising on the hearth, filling the cabin with the warm scent of flour and salt.

Louie had stopped by earlier, waking me from a deep slumber. He was soaked to the bone and eager to yap about the attack that had sent smoke into the air while I was warding. He said the traffic on the road below our ridge had been a royal convoy from Tir Larethia. That explained the mage powerful enough to shock me from a distance.

He’d bragged that his papa might let him join the scavenging once the storm passed, like a boy dreaming of his first hunt rather than looting bodies. Another child eager to learn how to pick through the leavings of violence. Another parent who would pretend it was simply work.