Page 104 of Sworn to the Shadow Throne

She wore white, and the candlelight loved her for it. Gold traced her neckline and hems, glinting at her elbows, cinched at her waist. Healer’s garb made regal. Made dangerous, because now every man at this table could see exactly what I saw.

She and Reina walked the length of the table. I realized with dawning horror what the second empty seat was for: to torture me.

The only reason Luna would be here now was that the secret of her presence had already gotten out. I turned away, pressing a napkin to my mouth, pretending a cough, desperate to hide the ink already flooding my irises.

But then the bond ignited with a full, violent surge that drove the rest of the breath from my lungs. The edges of my vision dimmed as the Nocthel blood in my veins demanded I move to cover her, shield her, remove every set of eyes that dared to look her way.

I anchored myself to my seat, my knuckles white and the chair-frame complaining under my grip, fighting the urge to let the monster out of its cage. If they wanted a demon, I was currently one thought away from giving them one.

I dragged air into my lungs and forced my face to slacken. She wasn’t mine to react to. Not here. Not yet. Maybe not ever if I couldn’t figure out how to keep her out of the Assembly’s clutches long enough to give her the choice.

Reina reached her place closest to me first and executed a flawless curtsy. Lunette’s following curtsy was measured, albeit a bit stiff. She must’ve been practicing. Reina would never allow her to walk onto a battlefield unarmed.

All eyes tracked them as they sat. Mine most of all. Unfortunately, the plan was for me to act as if I barely knew her.

Reina smiled with calculated warmth. “My lords and ladies, may I present Lady Lunette, grand magus of healing. She’s graciously agreed to lend her considerable gifts to our beloved king.”

A ripple traveled down the table. It wasn’t that they’d expected an excuse for tardiness out of Reina—that would never happen. It was shock.

“Grand magus?” someone murmured.

“So young,” another said.

“Been harboring beautiful miracles in shepherd villages now, have we?” Lord Coryanthus, sitting next to Camrick, drawled, stroking his short beard. “And keeping them secret from the rest of us?”

Reina’s smile sharpened. “It was not secrecy, Coryanthus, but protection.”

Several pairs of eyes shifted to me.

I kept my expression pleasantly neutral.

Coryanthus wasn’t so disciplined. His gaze lingered on Lunette a fraction too long—tracking the line of her shoulders, the curve of her waist.

Dangerous heat built around my magic. Under the table, where no one would see, shadows pooled around my feet like gallons of spilled ink. They bled across the stone and curled toward Coryanthus’s chair.

My body knew what Coryanthus was and wanted to solve the problem with a brutality the Tir hadn’t seen since before my grandfather’s reign. Holding back my magic felt like trying to crush a blade with my bare hands. This was the part they’d warned of in Luna’s illuminated book—how unrestrained we could be.

The worst part of this instinct was how right the horrible intentions felt. It was clean compared to every political calculation I’d made in the last hour of small talk.

But this dinner was about allaying their worries about the succession, not my overbearing, possessive infatuation. So I kept smiling even as my face ached from the pressure, my cheeks stretched taut until they might split.

Fortunately, I could cut some of this short. The thing about being a wild creature with the biggest claws in the room was that people listened when you spoke. That was doubly true when they heard exactly what they wanted to hear. “Thanks to our healers, King Berian is on the mend.”

The entire room exhaled a sigh of relief. Nobility only wanted strife when they knew it would garner them more money or power. The rapidity of Berian’s decline hadn’t given anyone enough time to scheme it to their benefit.

Conversations immediately turned lighter. Lunette answered questions with composed brevity despite the intense scrutiny she was under. She was avoiding looking at me.

Couldn’t blame her. If only I was half as disciplined.

She hid it well, but she wasn’t happy to be at this dinner and still very angry with me. It was written in the faint tension in the lines at the corners of her mouth. In the way her fingers curled around her napkin when someone mentioned the “good fortune” of her relocation to the Tir.

I lifted my goblet to hide the tightening of my jaw. Except that only revealed that I was white-knuckling the stem.

“Prince Regent Owain,” Lord Coryanthus pressed smoothly, “it seems you have secured a remarkable asset for Larethia.”

How many times had I heard similar words applied to myself? Not openly, of course, but in the spaces between sentences. The Shadowborn Prince is useful, if contained. A weapon, if properly aimed. My entire value to this kingdom had always been contingent on my willingness to be pointed at something and released.

I’d tried to prove them wrong with my alliance with Darreth, but Berian had successfully diminished my role in the telling.