Page 10 of The Shadow Heir

Then she slammed a fist into the blankets, and a muffled scream reached my ears.

A flicker of dread filled my chest. She might be angry now, but she too would break. She too would die. Mortals loved to talk of their heart, their driving beliefs, and their passions, but in the face of death, they all cracked.

My father made sure they did. No, not him anymore. While he was away, breaking mortals was my responsibility.

As I flew away from her house, my eyes traced the forest, penetrating the darkness better than a cat’s, but I couldn’t focus on the hunched duendes, the tall dryads, or the tiny pixies scurrying about. My mind filled with the image of the curly-haired woman’s eyes as she’d pressed an iron blade into my stomach.

Her little stunt had proved that the many years of building up a resistance to the magic-stifling metal had paid off. And now she knew it. Anger flared in my chest as I angled toward the place where Felipe waited. She could not discover anything else about me that might give her an edge in what was about to take place. Father had been clear: no mortal can prevail in the games.

They all must die.

And given what I’d seen of her so far, I fully believed this mortal, when given the chance to choose her fate, would elect to enter the games. The proud ones always chose the games.

But I couldn’t let myself be concerned with her for the next several hours.

Felipe yawned dramatically as I landed silently on the forest floor, shifting back into my physical form. “Ready, princess?” he asked.

I rolled my eyes and tossed my hand out toward the empty space between two large pines. A crack appeared in the very air as my magic split the worlds and opened up a fissure in the shape of a rectangular door, blacker than the night, a door to Nightsong.

“I needed to make sure she wouldn’t run. She seemed the type to try it,” I replied, flexing and curling my fingers as a dull ache throbbed in my bones.

Felipe nodded and stood up from his seat on the coffin. “That she did. If she chooses to entertain, she’ll be a favorite, I’m certain.”

My mouth curled into a sneer. “She’ll burn out like all the rest. I give her two trials and she’ll crack.”

The mortal still chained to the coffin looked between us, confused.

“Let’s go,” Felipe said, tugging the man to his feet.

“Did you give him the choice?”

Felipe nodded and jostled the man. “We’ve got us an entertainer.”

Only then did I notice the man was crying quietly, and I whirled away from the sight of his foul tears. I couldn’t stand the sight of tears streaking a human’s face, as if they had no ability to control themselves, no capacity to staunch their emotions and get on with their short lives.

And now he’d chosen a path that would end his life much sooner. Likely before the sun ever rose.

A brief notion pricked at me—this man likely had a family he was leaving behind. We’d taken him from a gambling hall, so I hadn’t seen his dwelling or any family who might be waiting for his return.

These people will live and die before a fae child ever casts his first spell,Father had frequently reminded me when I was young enough to still question him, young enough that most of his ire was directed toward Velazques, the brother I’d barely known, older even than Augustín. After Velazques died, all my questions had stopped.

I shook away the memories and stormed forward, grabbing one end of the coffin by its embedded handle. Felipe bent to collect the second handle. The chained mortal moved with us, his reddened eyes fixed on me, as if he could plead with nothing but his repulsive tears.

Even if he was leaving a family behind, he was the one who’d made the deal with my father. Anyone desperate enough for that had to pay the price. Leaving him here, the bargain unfulfilled, would be a death sentence as much as bringing him with us.

We walked awkwardly toward the doorway I’d opened, the coffin and the bound man between us. Felipe angled so he could back through the door first and tossed a smirk at the human.

“Ready to enter the Shadow Court?”

The man shook his head.

“No one ever is,” Felipe replied with a broad smile.

We passed through the cleft between worlds, and darkness swallowed us.

The surge in my magic as we returned home felt like a plunge into a cool, refreshing lake. I breathed deeply as my feet touched the smooth rock surface of the hall buried deep underground. Two stairwells branched off from the wide hall, leading up on each side, and a dark passage ahead led toward the human servants’ quarters. The hall was empty, save for the fae guard waiting here to collect the mortals I was supposed to bring with me.

Without a word, the guard, Farrin, raced forward to collect the chained man. The briefest of frowns crossed Farrin’s face as he eyed the coffin, but he said nothing. I strode toward the stairwell leading up to the right.

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