Page 1 of Sworn to the Shadow Throne

Chapter 1

Owain

The dark magic in my blood knew what was coming before the guards pushed the boy to his knees. The square was full, even in this foul weather. A thousand bodies moved with a shared, restless energy that only death could calm. I had seen war. I had seen the things men did in the dark when they thought no one was watching.

None of it made my skin crawl the way a crowd in a good mood did.

To my left, a woman hoisted her son up for a better view of the crying boy and the demon prince. Coins changed hands as men wagered whether there’d be a second, surprise execution. I heard it all.

Chill autumn rain pelted the boards of the scaffold, washing the blood from the kneeling boy’s wrists in thin pink rivers toward the gutter, as if even the rain were trying to hide what we were doing here. The pool of dark magic in my body twitched, drawn to inspect it even as his hitching sobs made me want to step out of my own skin to escape all of this.

I shifted my stance to avoid the blood and the pull, but all that did was make the condemned boy lose what little control he had left over his emotions. He began sobbing. Wrists shackled, brown hair plastered to his skull, his frantic eyes darted between those in the jeering crowd, each face contorted in disgust as they spat at him.

They called me corrupted, yet they salivated for death. In truth, part of me did too—the part I always kept tightly controlled—but not like this. Not when cruelty was the point.

I stood above the boy, magic restless under my skin, trying not to look too closely at his face. If I did, I’d see the tremor, the lack of lines from age, from experience. And it didn’t matter. I would have to end him.

The crowd pressed close to the platform. A group of boys a few years younger than the condemned were whispering about me, about Berian—unaware that my hearing was better than a full human’s.

“He’s the younger one,” the dark-haired one said, tilting his head in my direction. “Tainted, just like the stories.”

Another: “At least he does more than sit on his royal arse gettin’ fat like the king.”

The first responded, “True… Good this demon’s on our side.”

“Is he?” the second challenged.

I glared at the blond-haired boy who’d posed that last question.

As if hoping to answer it, black wisps that writhed like living smoke slithered out of my palm. I snatched them back instantly, but not fast enough. The blond-haired boy took a panicked step back.

Hold it in, Owain. Breathe.

At moments like these, when duty forced me to act against my conscience, part of me wanted to show him, to show them all, what a true demon looked like.

It would be so easy.

But I already had one head awaiting its removal. I counted my breaths, cool air filling my lungs as I forced a mask of patience. The boy on the platform was watching me now like a rabbit caught in a snare.

That makes two of us.

King Berian’s smooth tenor carried over the square, polished with magic until every word sounded righteous. “Larethia is safe because we are vigilant. We embrace the magically gifted, but only when they use those abilities for the betterment of all! This man used magic to attack one of our border villages.”

My stomach turned. The boy about to fall under my sword was no man. He was young enough to be new to his magic, fumbling with powers he’d been pressured to use before he even understood them.

And I would have to kill him for it.

“The condemned is a Gelidian raider. The law is clear on his punishment—death.”

The crowd erupted, mothers clutching children as if the mere mention of raiders would make berserkers erupt from the ground to snatch them away.

A purple-robed sycophant with a sick taste for others’ suffering sat beside my brother, clapping politely. If anyone’s head should’ve been on the chopping block, it was Vaustin Maeron’s—the rotten scion of the Mage Assembly’s longtime Chancellor.

Berian gestured to me, his smile as frigid as a midwinter wind. “Today, justice will be carried out by the Shadow of Larethia.”

I forced my jaw to relax, trying to wipe away any hint of emotion there. Not “brother” or even Crown Prince Owain. He hadn’t called me by my proper title or name in public in a decade.

No one clapped. Some even leaned back as if my presence might infect them with my taint. Yet where the crowd flinched, my men loomed like a wall of steel. Ringing the square, they stood a bit straighter, shoulders squaring and chins lifting in silent, unwavering defiance of the crowd’s fear. A few veterans touched two fingers to the steel over their hearts—a soldier’s salute older than our grandfather’s reign. The gesture was subtle, but it passed down the line all the same. My aunt Reina met my gaze and gave the smallest nod.