Page 3 of Essence of the Throne

The pressure in my head reaches a crescendo. Blood pours from every orifice as my body fails to contain the corrupted essence they’re pumping into me. I try one last time to pray to the Angel, but I can’t form coherent thoughts any longer.

Through the haze of agony and aberrant memories, I watch the king’s expression shift from desperate hope to bitter disappointment. He turns away with a disgusted sound, already walking toward the door.

“Another failure,” he spits. “Dispose of it like the others.”

The king’s advisor hurries after him, his voice soothing. “We’re learning more with each attempt, Your Majesty. Raine was our strongest subject yet—his survival time was nearly double the others. We’re getting closer.”

Their voices fade as they leave, abandoning me to my fate. The pressure in my head is impossible now. Something has to give. My skull feels like it’s being crushed and expanded in a simultaneous rhythm.

With my last moments of clarity, I realize I’m going to die. Not in glorious combat like I always imagined, but strapped to a table as a failed experiment—a mere statistic. Will anyone even know what happened to me? Or will I just become another disappearance, explained as one more mysterious death during the trials?

The final surge of essence hits me like a large wave. My back arches one last time as the pressure reaches its peak. Through eyes that no longer feel like my own, I watch those unyielding colors explode outward.

Then everything goes dark.

“Clean this up,” someone says distantly. “And someone fetch the staff—there’s brain matter on the ceiling again.”

Chapter One

Ariella

Shadows consume me as I slip behind a bookcase and pinch my nose from the onslaught of dust that invades my senses, lest I sneeze and give away my presence. I reach into my core, locating my psionic strand to send out a pulse through the too quiet library. This strand from the ethereal affinity allows me to slip into the head of others to hear their thoughts, give my own, control their bodies, or even influence them a certain way. But weaved in this manner, it touches the mind of any living presence, offering me a count of how many others are in the vicinity. The relief I feel when my essence confirms there’s only one other being is short-lived as my target turns to walk in my direction.

I crouch, scrunching my left eye closed to better see through the infinitesimal space between two books that haven’t felt the warm touch of another since the Angel walked this realm. The loud hammering of my heart threatens my concealment, and it takes great effort to keep my breathing slow and shallow.

My target shelves the small book he was holding, his lip quirking at whatever he finds amusing on its thin spine. His hand lifts to trace his fingers across a few of the other books with reverence before he decides to return to his deskempty-handed.

I stand, only to freeze mid-step when my boot scuffs against the tile that makes up the majority of the castle floor. The resulting sound is small. Barely audible. But that is no excuse for my thoughtless behavior. This last week I spent at the guild—not only to search for answers, but to get a break from this damned castle—has coated me in a level of comfort I cannot afford to give in to. The competition may be over, but that was never the threat to begin with. I almost laugh; the embarrassing manner in which my plan to kill the king played out grates on my nerves every single day. My jaw clenches—images of unwanted sympathy flit through my head. Marek watching me with a sharp, calculated focus, more so than he ever has. Jaxon’s inability to look me in the eye. Even Isolde was in visible pain as she bit her tongue to keep from making stupid, mediocre remarks to me.

Fuck all of them.

Isaiah is gone, and there is nothing I can do to bring him back. Feeling sorry for me is the worst way to uphold his memory. Not that they understand that.

And even then, thoughts of reaching out to him haunt my every lonely moment. I haven’t attempted to call on my spectral strand in two decades, but that hasn’t ceased the bone-deep need inside me that begs to try. It would be easy—in theory—reaching out to the Aether in search of the one soul I seek. But would Isaiah be the one that answers?

I’m unsure if my hesitation is a result of my nervousness at seeing Isaiah in such a manner, or that I wouldn’t be able to call to him at all. Regularly engaging my forbidden essence has beenimpossible my entire life…and as much as it pains me to admit, I’m not certain I could weave most strands with confidence. I’m comfortable with my kinetic strand as I use it often, but I’ve spent more time with a blade than I have with the rest of my essence combined.

Well, aside from my umbral strand.

I’ve found a comfortability with the shadows, as they have with me. A mutually beneficial understanding.

Rustling papers snap me from the adverse thoughts I fell into. I focus my trained senses on the other side of the shelf, shuffling forward when nothing seems amiss. My feet carry me without a sound to the back of the room, darkness steadying my breathing the more it covers me. This shouldn’t be difficult. I’ve played this game a thousand times, not having lost once. I curse the unsettling feeling in my stomach and press my back against the end of the bookshelf. Peering over my right shoulder, I tense as my teeth grip my bottom lip at the sight of my target.

Foolish idiot—he hasn’t a clue that I’m here. Has he learned nothing?

My body straightens once more, and I stretch my neck in each direction. Some may call it stalling—I call it being prepared.

I am stalling, though.

I will berate myself for hesitating later; right now, I must concentrate. Not allowing any more wayward thoughts to seep through the cracks that have appeared in my mind uninvited, I step my left foot over my right and spin to stalk down the aisle that will lead to my target.

My jaw drops on a breathless gasp as a blade slides into my abdomen with a questionable force the moment I turn. If this were anyone else, their heads would already be on the ground. But the purpose of my current mission is entirely different—not to harm, but to teach. My eyes drag up the wrinkled, black shirt, pausing for a moment at the expanse of skin showing through the half that remains unbuttoned.

The prince’s face is a mirror to mine; though instead of meeting my gaze, his horror-stricken irises are fixated on the hand that still grips the blade he just impaled me with.

“By the Angel,” Caspian whispers through a cracked voice. I tense as his hand begins to tremble, causing the tip of his blade to cut me further. “Ariella…I—I didn’t know it was you…” My hand snaps out to grab his wrist, forcing him to still so that I may focus on something other than the pain. “I mean, of course I knew it was you, I just didn’t think—oh, fuck, I’m so—”

“Prince,” I bark, effectively shutting him up, and his eyes slide to meet mine. For a moment, I forget about my potentially fatal wound as I look at him for the first time since returning to the castle.

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