Page 141 of Bound to the Shadow Prince

This is what has happened to Lios. Tears prick my eyes and I lean over the broken window, as if pushing my face out into the light will somehow enable me to see more. I stare with sick horror at the mass graves, praying that my sister and her children aren’t in any of them. That both Nurse and Riza are safe. That those I love somehow made it away from this place.

I want to leave. I need to leave.

Now.

Something flutters in the breeze. There’s a heap of rags at the feet of the goddess, with a pair of swords sticking upright, the ends shoved through the rags and into the ground below. I wonder why these particular rags…and then I see a leg bone. And the tiny bones that make up a hand, shattered and scattered in the mud. It takes me a moment longer to see the skull, and for me to realize one of the swords pierces it through the eye.

And resting upon that particular sword’s hilt is a tarnished crown.

I recognize that crown. Recognize the spot where a fat, garish ruby sat on Lionel’s brow like a giant red wart. It looked ridiculous against his pale skin and pale hair, and I’d spent many a night at court wishing the crown was upon any head but his.

That body…those remains must be his.

Gods. I cannot even celebrate this death. I hated Lionel, but his death fills me with fear for my sister and their children.

“Nemeth,” I cry out, turning away from the window and racing down the stairs. “Nemeth!” I fling myself down the hall, ignoring the skid of my feet on the perpetually damp floors. “Nemeth!”

The shadows coalesce in front of me, and then my mate is there, grabbing my arms and shaking me. There’s a look of fright in his gaze. “Candra? What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Graves,” I choke. “I found the graves.”

And then I fall into his arms, weeping.

We don’t bury Lionel.After the initial horror fades, I’m left with a deep, burning anger in my gut.

This is his fault. These deaths are upon him. Lios and Darkfell have co-existed in an uneasy truce for ages. He was the one that pushed for the war. He was the one that insisted I go to the tower, and quickly, so he could set off to conquer the mountains of the Fellians.

These deaths are on him.

While the meat from the horse smokes on racks in the kitchen (we burn the broken frame of a once-elegant poster bed), we head down to the shore and look for a ship. There are several wrecked vessels, but we manage to find a small craft with a broken mast. It’s terrifyingly small for an ocean journey, perhaps the size of two horse-lengths, but Nemeth assures me we don’t need more than that.

We spend the rest of the day working on making her seaworthy. Nemeth replaces the mast with wreckage fromanother ship and I sew a large piece of fabric that will act as a sail. As if the goddess likes the idea of us fleeing this place, the sun remains out, the rains temporarily banished. We erect a small tent-like shelter at one end of the ship that we can rest under when the sun is high, and Nemeth will cast a spell in the morning to enchant the sail itself. As long as it’s on the ship, it will steer us toward the Alabaster Citadel.

And from there, to Darkfell itself.

I’m ready. I want answers, and all signs point that Darkfell will have them.

Chapter

Seventy-One

Six Weeks Later

The ship bobson the water, the air disgustingly still and humid under the shelter at the far end of the ship. I’ve torn a few pages out of one of Nemeth’s books and fan myself with them, because sweating day and night makes me dehydrated and we’ve precious little extra water as it is. It rains often enough to fill the barrel we have on deck, but we keep that for drinking water.

I thought I loathed the tower, but it turns out I loathe the sea even more. Weeks of endless travel. Weeks of rolling waves and storms that shake our tiny craft. Weeks of everything tasting like saltwater. Weeks of raw fish for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Nemeth can spark fire with a spell, but without anything to burn, it’s not very useful.

“I can see the mountains,” Nemeth tells me as he lands on the front of our ship, making the entire thing sway in the water. “We should be there in a few hours.”

I sit up, lacing the top of my bodice in case some Fellian flies overhead. It gets so hot on the water that I try not to wear much, but if we’re going to land soon… “I never thought I’d be excitedto see Darkfell’s borders, but after spending the last several weeks on a ship, I’m more than ready for land.” I glance over at my mate. “You don’t think they’ll treat us like the Alabaster Citadel, do you?”

Nemeth shakes his wings out, flicking away droplets of water, and then settles to a crouch next to me. “We’ll be welcomed. It’s different than with the citadel.”

Is it? I’m not so certain. We’d hoped the Alabaster Citadel would welcome us and give us food and supplies. Instead, they’d turned us away at the harbor, keeping the holy temple closed to us.

“Traitors,” the archbishop had cried, pointing a shaking finger in our direction. “It is your fault we have had two years of misery. It is your fault the goddess sends her wrath down upon us. You will receive no welcome here.”

They’d refused to let us leave the docks themselves, keeping us at bay with pitchforks and angry cries. It was only later, after we’d changed the sail’s spell and left the Alabaster Citadel that we were able to think properly about what we’d seen. That the men there had been of the clergy, and yet they’d been thin and dirty and unkempt. Whatever famine that was wrecking the land in Lios was no doubt wrecking the arid, desert lands of the Alabaster Citadel as well.

---