Page 31 of The Shadow Heir

“King’s crown, Cas,” she cursed. The shadows fell away from her frame, and she marched into the light coming from the fire and the glowing orb above my head. She had her fists on her hips and a pair of antlers protruding from her head.

I shoved the nearest moveable item into my book—a quill—and snapped it shut to peer up at Alba. “Don’t tell me the antlers are permanent.”

My sister made a face. “I’m practicing affixing.”

Relieved, I nodded and angled my chair outward, studying my sister’s expression to see if I could predict her reason for interrupting me.

“What’s plaguing you, brother?” she asked before I could so much as inhale.

“Nothing of consequence.” Thinking about a mortal was the same as thinking about nothing, so it wasn’t a lie.

Alba huffed. “You read that same line at least twice. I saw your hand go back to the beginning. And your magical barrier felt weaker, the way it does when you’re distracted or doing magic elsewhere.”

“I’m always doing magic in many places.”

She crossed her arms and lifted her brows.

“Fine.” I leaned forward and propped my elbows on my knees. “The other mortals who survived their first night did so by playing it safe. And each one of them, in turn, welcomed the help of one of our courtiers in return for protection in the next game.”

“Yes, and?”

“The woman who arrived last night did neither of those things.”

It was a cycle. A predictable, repeatable cycle. Those who played it safe survived, then voraciously accepted the help of a fae in exchange for anything from a single night’s company to playing spy for that fae for a matter of months. Eventually, the courtiers withdrew their protection and the mortals died before their year elapsed.

Alba clapped her hands. “She refused help? I like her.”

“She chose to entertain, Alba. She has to die.”

My sister pouted. “Father is the one who made up the one-year rule for the entertainers. He had to knowsomeof them would survive.”

The look I sent my sister silenced her objections. Father liked the idea of offering hope but never allowing a mortal to collect on that which was hoped for. Survival for those who chose entertainment was not an option.

“Well,” she said, “I still plan to duel with her. Whenever those brutes let her have a day off from the arena.”

I lifted a brow. “Be sure to use the wooden training weapons, or you’ll kill her without even meaning to. Sheismortal, you know.”

Alba hung her head, as if chastised. I hadn’t meant to speak so harshly.

My mind flashed with memories of her standing in my room, head hung low like this, when I’d explained what had happened to our older brothers, Velasquez and Augustín, and so many before them. She’d only been a small child then, perhaps tooyoung to learn of such things. The memory rocked through me, and I sensed my magic faltering in every place it consumed energy. In this room, where I held a thin glamour over my scars, in the halls and stairwells around the library, where I watched for approaching visitors, in my distant Shadow form, where I was currently interrogating aduendeon the whereabouts of two Moon Court spies who’d been traipsing around the border of our mountain.

I quickly suppressed the memories of the day I’d told Alba of our brothers’ murders, reestablishing my spells in the halls first. Far away in the forest, my shadow form faded momentarily, but the little creature I spoke with only stared at me with wider, more terrified eyes. In my study, where my physical form remained, my glamour slipped. The sensation was freeing, until I noted Alba’s gaze affixed to my scars.

I reached out to muss her hair between the absurd antlers, but Alba’s body vanished from within reach and reappeared several steps away, a few pale strands of hair looped over a prong of one antler. She beamed at me, triumphant.

“Very good,” I lauded her. “Not many grown Shadow lords can transport so precisely like that.”

Her smile brightened and faded in the span of a breath. “I know you’re thinking about them,” Alba said, backing out of my embrace. “Your face tightens and you look to the left when you remember them.”

My jaw tensed. For a fae without telepathic magic, she could read me better than the books on the shelves. My father had tried for millennia to forge an heir powerful enough and obedient enough to do what he’d always wanted to do: bring the Shadow Court into Rivenmark, making it an official fae court among the other four courts. But when the time came to test the heirs on their ability to lead the court, not one had satisfied the Shadow King.

I pressed my hands down into my pockets so Alba couldn’t see the black lines forming on the backs of my hands.

If I hadn’t had to watch two brothers murdered by our father, I might never have felt the surge of protectiveness that washed over me the first time I met Alba. I’d seen her face, and I’d known what fate awaited her. Death. As it did for every Shadow heir.

Unless I could stop the cycle.

“Alba,” I said, careful to calm my heartrate before the curse in my veins ran out of control. “I won’t let you meet the same fate.”

---