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CHAPTER1
Malachi
Isaiah’s blood-curdling screams ripped through the stone walls of the dungeons under the castle of Rewyth. He sat on the cold floor, chained to the damp wall behind him. His sun-yellow hair was hidden now, stained red along with most of his skin.
I lifted my arm and wiped the splattered blood off my face with my sleeve.
“You can scream all you want,” I spat. He did. Isaiah screamed and screamed and screamed. After the weeks he had spent being tortured, I was surprised he still had a voice left. “Nobody will help you. Nobody is coming.”
“You are a monster,” he mumbled, although his words mostly blended together with his swollen lips and missing teeth.
I stepped forward with my small dagger. I had missed that dagger. Many warriors chose swords or large blades first, but there was something beautiful about the thin, sharp steel working its way through human skin inch by inch.
Much more painful, too.
I let the blade trail horizontally across the traitor’s forehead as he thrashed against the chains. Blood fell into his eyes as he screamed once more and tried to flinch backward.
What a fool. Isaiah had nowhere to go.
A monster.I laughed quietly, pulling back and pacing the small cell. Being called a monster might have offended me once, lifetimes ago. Saints, I might have even started a fight over it. But now? Amonster?
A wicked, feral piece of my soul flickered in delight. In recognition.
I was a monster, yes. Isaiah wasfinallyseeing that.Finallyunderstanding.
So many peopledid notunderstand.
So many people hadforgotten.
They had forgotten who I was.
They forgot what I had done.
The fire of pain and chaos from my past ripped through my mind in the form of a distant memory. I saw all of it at once—all of the destruction. All of the evil.
The Prince of Shadows had been my identity for decades now, defining me before I even had a chance to speak in any room I entered.
Soldiers envied me. Children feared me. My father wielded me as his own personal weapon.
But I was no longer the Prince of Shadows.
Good.
I turned my back on Isaiah. What was left of him, at least.
King of Shadows.
Those who forgot what I would do to them would now remember. The King of Shadows walked the halls of this castle.
And he would not arrive quietly.
CHAPTER2
Jade
“Don’t,” Sadie whispered as I entered her cell. “If they catch you in here, they’ll punish you for this.”
I knelt on the ground next to her and emptied my pockets. A loaf of bread was the only thing I managed to sneak away this time, but it would be enough for her.
