Page 1 of Taken By the Shadow Prince

Prologue

where we stand

I've been in meetings with Queen Mair all day long.

She’s only been Queen for a few weeks, and keeps telling her closest friends that we don’t have to be so formal with her. That it just stresses her out even more at the moment, so we're trying.

I’m not just meeting with her, of course. There’s also Leven, Auley, Isa, Lillian, my twin Ellis, Finch, and sometimes Ender and Saile, too. Being around so many people for such a long amount of time has me about ready to pull my hair out one strand at a time, but I force myself to swallow my complaints.

I’ll be longing for this soon enough, when we’re facing off in a war with our own people.

Sometimes I wonder what Mair and Saile’s mother, Queen Lethe, did to these people a little more than a decade ago now. To have Aligrians so viciously turning against other Aligrians, to completely discard the generations before them that built the country up happy and together… there’s no way she did that with just a few proclamations.

Fixing this country will take time. A lot of it. We only just got started a few months ago, when Ender killed Queen Lethe. That was the tip of the iceberg, though; discovery her heritage as a demon-witch, and realizing that her family line can’t be the only one with demon blood laced through it…

It makes me wonder just how many more are out there. Makes me wonder what kind of power ratio there is between them and fae, and them and witches. Six to one, maybe?

We’ve assembled the team that’ll go with Kal—the foolish Iuelan soldier that grates against my nerves—and me to seek the sanctuaries to try to convince the witches to fight. Without them, we don’t stand a chance. Not when most of our population hates us and is probably gathering their own forces to try and figure out how to kill everyone in the castle and make Aligris much a deadlier place.

Mair clears her throat and turns her head to look at Auley. “What numbers are we looking at now? How many soldiers do we have?”

He recites the number off the top of his head. “We have two hundred and thirty-six trained soldiers in the castle. But depending on how many other staff members will fight, we could have up to five-hundred soldiers in total.”

Mair nods. “Okay. That’s not a bad start, right? Especially once the witches come?”

Auley waves with his hands. “Depends on how many witches agree to fight, but… it’s still going to be hard to amount to the might of Aligris. I’m sure some citizens will decide to fight with us, too, but… I’m also sure more will decide to fight against us.” He shakes his head. “It’s too early to tell how badly we’ll be outnumbered, but at least right now, there’s little doubt that we will.”

“Even with the Iulean soldiers?” Leven asks.

Auley frowns. “It’s hard to say. They’re not due to arrive until next week, and your mother never explicitly told me how many she was sending before she left. But I doubt she sent every troop she had, right? I’m sure it’ll increase our chances greatly, no matter how many soldiers she’s recruited for us, but… but we’ve possibly got an entire country willing to fight against us. I don’t know how we’ll be able to beat that.”

I can see the panic rise in her features as Mair tries to think of what we could do to possibly fix this situation.

Leven speaks up to distract everyone from that look on Mair’s face, the hopelessness, the anxiety of it all. He says, “But if we had a better strategy? What then?”

Auley shrugs. “If we had a better strategy, sure. No problem. But it’s hard as hell to strategize when you’re not the one coordinating the attacks. Since our only plan is to defend, to only strike when and if they do, then we can’t really make a strategy. Not one that we can ensure is effective.” He huffs out a breath and scratches a hand through his short beard. “Don’t get me wrong, we do have defense plans in place—we’ve been training staff members who are willing to fight on where to go and what to do and how to do it when they can spare the time. It’ll become more effective once Mavey’s convinced some witches to join us, but… it’s not nothing, I guess.”

“We’ll win, alright?” Isa’s words are a loud whisper, said on a hard note with a breathy tone—as if trying to manifest it and afraid of being a jinx all at once. “We’ve got no other choice.”

I nod. She’s right. We don’t have another choice. Either we win—or we die.

Mair blows out a breath and shakes her head, clearing it of whatever thoughts linger in her mind. “Mavey,” she says, though my eyes were already on her. “Have you talked with Kal about what you plan to say to convince the witches, about the route you’re going to take—anything?”

I fight the urge to grit my teeth and nod.

“And?” Mair prompts.

“And what?”

“What are your thoughts? On—on everything?”

Vague words, but I’m pretty sure I know what she means, anyway. “As long as we stick to the schedule to the best of our abilities, allowing for roughly a week in delays, we will make the circuit around the country to try to convince all known sanctuaries to join us in this fight. But I couldn’t tell you how many witches we’re going to recruit. Not only do we not know what their answers will be, but we also don’t know the size or population of these sanctuaries.” The words leave my lips in awkward bites—I’m not used to saying so much at once. Not that it never happens, I do sometimes say more than a word or two—but I always feel awkward doing it.

I’m not a fan.

Mair nods, thinking. “Right. Okay. So, basically, our best hopes lie in figuring out which gods favor us the most and praying to them like our lives depend on it.”

Lillian tries to grin. “Because, technically, they do.”

---