Page 78 of Sworn to the Shadow Throne

I pulled on my boots and went looking for something other than myself to break. The training yard was empty when I arrived, the ground still slick with heavy frost. Skin prickling with chill, I conjured a war hammer.

I didn’t have the finesse in me for blade work. Hammers didn’t require you to think—just to mean it. And I needed to fucking hit things.

I drove myself until my breath burned and sweat soaked through my clothes despite the cold. My strikes were powerful, vicious even, but off. My eager swings went too wide. The first few were almost clean, but the conjuration slipped like a knot falling loose. Twice, my grip on the hammer’s shape went soft, like I was gripping wet clay.

So I drove harder. If I stopped, I’d have to feel it.

The war hammer’s shaft turned into a second blade as I thrust. It sliced right through the heavy oak practice target, shattering it into a thousand splinters.

I swore, and what was left of my control fled me completely. Magic devoured the light around me as sweat dripped onto the straw underfoot. With a roar that never seemed to end, I beat the stump left behind into pulp.

My chest heaved. The rage emptied out of me, and something far more dangerous rushed in to take its place. It started with imagining her face, the dusting of freckles on her cheeks. This, as it always did, spurred my magic to rise to the surface of my skin.

She could help him.

The thought arrived wrapped in something that almost felt like reason.

Her power is unparalleled, and Berian is very sick.

These were simply facts, laid side by side.

I could send a carefully worded letter along with an escort. Give her a choice and all the help she needed to come…

Except she wouldn’t.

Yet the part of me that had stopped sleeping, that had been dragging the hammer too wide all morning, didn’t care. That part had already moved past letters.

The thought slithered up my spine like a snake, its fangs leaking venom into my mind with horrifying ease. Though at the time, I only saw it as strategy.

I could send for her.

Just a small detachment. An escort, really—men who would kill or die to protect her on the road.

For Berian. Of course it would be for Berian. A perfectly legal royal decree that conveyed how grave his condition was. She was a Larethian citizen. It was her duty to serve when called. And if I got to see her again, what was the harm in that?

Compassion guided Lunette. She couldn’t bear to see others suffer when she had the power to make a difference. Once she understood the stakes, she would come willingly. There was no reason to imagine otherwise.

I didn’t dwell on what would happen if she refused.

Berian wasn’t dying yet. I didn’t have to decide anything today.

The thought sat patiently waiting in the back of my mind while I drove the hammer down hard enough to split the frost-crusted earth. Muscles trembling with exhaustion, I turned toward the lake just south of the stables. The water was covered with a thin sheet of ice, tendrils of mist gracefully curling up from its frigid surface.

I didn’t hesitate. I stripped down and plunged in.

The cold stole my breath instantly. It sank into muscle and bone until my thoughts scattered.

Let it scour me clean. Let it punish the weakness I couldn’t seem to excise any other way.

This would only be for Berian. Her wanting one night with you doesn’t grant you any claim on her, Owain.

Acknowledging that didn’t make me want it any less.

I stayed until my teeth chattered and my limbs went numb. Even my shadows recoiled, pulling in as the cold swallowed me. Only then did I drag myself out and dress with clumsy fingers, skin aching, shadows subdued at last into a sullen, exhausted quiet.

By the time I reached the warriors’ hall for luncheon, I had changed, but I was still half-frozen and barely holding myself together.

The hall was loud with conversation and the clatter of plates. Familiar faces greeted me with nods and murmured respect as I crossed to the raised dais. Berian’s chair sat empty beside mine, a cup of mulled wine already poured and waiting at its place by habit, long gone cold. It was a reminder of everything pressing down on my shoulders—of the man I was supposed to be while their king lay insensate.