Page 30 of Sworn to the Shadow Throne

I started to sit fully up, and the world lurched.

Lunette stepped forward as if to steady me, dough-covered hands forgotten.

“Don’t,” I said, stupidly stubborn, every muscle going rigid. “Please.”

She stilled, eyes narrowed, assessing me back. “If you fall,” she said mildly, “that’s on you,” and under her breath, “Men.”

Gods help me, I almost laughed. As she walked away, her magic brushed the air in a gentle ripple that felt like reassurance. My shadows tried to leave my skin, tugged in her direction. I closed my eyes briefly, mastering the instinct to follow their lead.

Ridiculous. Maddening. And far too dangerous.

I was a cripple. A man who couldn’t defend himself, who couldn’t even seem to control his urges. Being seen like this, being tended to was humiliating. It was my job to be strong, to protect, to serve.

But her compassion made me want to stay. Her kindness had stripped away the armor I wore to keep the darkness contained. She made me feel…normal. And that, that I could never afford.

I managed to sit all the way up on my own—though I’d had to close my eyes from the pain. When I opened them again, she was watching with that amused calm. “Remember the house rules?”

Both sides of my lips curved despite my shame, despite everything within me screaming to be careful. “No dying. No killing.”

“Good boy,” she said primly.

I’d always wanted approval but hearing it from her was something I could become addicted to. Our eyes met then, a crackle of something electric humming between us.

“If you’re not Assembly, then where am I?” I asked. Anything to keep my mind from coming up with scenarios that would get her to praise me again. She’d said she was a Larethian citizen, so maybe I was closer to home than I’d dared hope.

“My home. Just outside a village called Selmont.” The dough was off to the side, rising now. Her hands were working to peel a potato. “Less than two miles from where the path turns to ice.”

I’d never heard of this village, so it was probably a small place…or perhaps a pretty fiction.

I had nothing but time. So I watched her, hoping to catch her out in a lie. Yet the more I did, the more I became convinced that this was simply too much effort to go through to get me to…whatever they wanted from me.

Eventually, my stomach growled, exposing just how awake I truly was. Lunette sat at the tiny table where she’d made bread earlier, holding out a piece of gristle to the veska, who obediently took it from her hands like a trained dog.

She looked over. My mental walls were up before the full force of her smile could hit me. But it didn’t help me resist the tug toward her…at all.

As she turned away, humming softly, the firelight reflecting off her hair, I realized with rising dread that the feeling in my chest had nothing to do with my fever and everything to do with a want that just kept growing. Not for her body—though that was undeniable—but for the quiet comfort she represented, and the thrilling yet terrifying thought that she might let me have more of it.

Chapter 11

Lunette

Sleeping on the hard wooden floor at thirty-four was nothing like it had been at eighteen.

It had seemed like a considerate choice at bedtime. He needed the rest, and I doubted he would appreciate me climbing into the bed beside him. But the uneven wooden slats were a poor substitute for the pillow of muscles I’d enjoyed before. By the time I awoke before dawn, my spine had locked rigidly in protest. Thankfully, Rowan slept through the mortifying contortions I’d performed just to stand up.

After a bit of stretching, I threw on my shawl and gloves and spent an hour outside, listening to the gentle breeze rustling through the leaves while working on my little vegetable patch. Muffin scampered off at some point to chase a wood mouse, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

Rowan wasn’t actually “Rowan,” I would’ve staked my own name on that. Plus, his questions about the Assembly? About Gelidian rebels? I was so, so tempted to ask, but not getting involved in other people’s problems was always safest.

Maybe if I didn’t know, trouble wouldn’t come my way. Or maybe that was just another lie added to the ever-growing pile.

My parents had warned me away from anything official when it came to being a mage. The less the wider world, and the Mage Assembly, knew about me, the better.

I was eleven when my mother sat me down and told me that a Fae girl on the other side of the mountain had been taken. Her voice had stayed level the entire time she spoke, but her hands, wrapped around mine, had not. The girl was a little older than me with a gift for growing things. A traveling group of mages had offered her family coin and assurances that her magical tutelage would be the finest in the world if she just came with them.

The family had refused.

The next day their cabin was found in ruins, the patriarch murdered inside the collapsed structure. Both children and the mother were gone, never to be seen again.