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Stopping short, I swivel to face her. “When?”
“Yesterday.” She studies her nails, expression bored. As if she isn’t the one who initiated this conversation. “He nearly killed a man in one of my border towns while he was tending to his goats.”
“What did you do with the beast?”
Aeris rolls her eyes. “I did what you should’ve done. I took care of it.”
My eyes narrow, and I take a menacing step forward. Aeris, to her credit, has the good sense to look somewhat cowed.
“Apologies, my lord. I—”
“I don’t want your apologies. I want to know I can trust the members of my court not to withhold information from me.” I motion for silence when she begins to speak. “Next time you find a forest guardian wandering that far from the veil, I want to be informed in seconds, not hours or days. Understand?”
She gives a curt nod, disappearing in a shimmer. I could summon her back, remind her of her manners and protocol, but Aeris has never been one for curtsies. And I don’t care about the empty etiquette nearly as much as my brother does.
The energy of new souls arriving washes over me, drawing me to a wide staircase and down. New arrivals always seem to give the realm a boost. A momentary reprieve from the way the power seems to be leeching from the land no matter what I do.
Torches line the wall every few paces in this part of the palace, but it doesn’t do much to make up for the lack of windows. Not that there’s much light in my realm. We exist in the shadows.
I like the dark, the anonymity of it. It suits me.
The hum of energy and voices gets louder as I draw closer to the large chamber at the end of the hall. New souls mill about the back of the room, facing a table where three men with dark skin and long white locs tied back with leather cords are seated.
Railan, the oldest of the triplets, bangs a gavel against black marble and motions a soul forward. Souls in the Shadow Realm look like normal mortals until they catch the light just right. This one passes in front of a torch and becomes momentarily translucent before solidifying again.
The judges are responsible for determining a soul’s placement in the Shadow Realm based on how they lived their mortal lives. The process is quick and painless.
Unless the soul is found to be unredeemable. Unredeemable souls belong only to me, relegated to Síra until I decide their method of torture for all eternity. It is a weighty responsibility, and one I enjoy entirely too much.
When the judgment is made, Railan bangs the gavel and the soul disappears. Off to heal or to live or to work or to suffer, depending. When the room is nearly empty, he notices me in the doorway and inclines his head.
The souls follow his gaze, and one by one, they all gasp and drop into deep curtsies or bows. I bid them rise with a flick of my wrist and wait until Railan and his brothers are finished with their judgments before sweeping into the room.
“Perfect timing,” Hayle says, pushing away from the table. “Several unredeemables in this batch.”
A slow smile tugs at my lips. That is perfect. My session with the rapist earlier wasn’t enough to erase all my tension at the new breach I found this morning. Likely the same one Aeris’s guardian slipped through. Assigning eternal torture might be just what I need.
“I’ll go with you,” Railan says, but I don’t wait for him, shifting quickly to the edge of Síra’s boundary.
He appears beside me on the craggy mountain face, and a moment later, so do three souls. In this light they all appear solid. I look at Railan with raised brows when I see one of Pramis’s high priests among the dead. He nods, and the look on his face tells me all I need to know. I decide to save that soul for last.
“You’ve been judged,” I say, infusing power into my voice and rousing the breeze to whip the edges of my robes.
Railan hides a grin while two of the three men cower. The priest’s head remains high, his gaze unflinching, though I smell the fear on him.
“Lord Thieran,” the man closest to me mutters, dropping to his knees.
“Silence,” I command. “You’ve been judged, and your actions in life have condemned your souls to Síra. Your fate is eternal torture.”
The first man moves to speak again, and I silence him with a thought. I want to add a layer of punishment simply for his disobedience. You cannot bargain your fate in my realm. I tilt my head and call up his life, sifting through his deeds, good and bad.
I’ve never had cause to doubt Railan’s or his brothers’ judgments, and they haven’t failed me here either. This man has been murdering innocent people and stealing from them for years. Not because he needed what they had, but because he enjoyed it.
With a snap of my fingers, I send him off to be sealed into a cave. He’ll live in total darkness, the cave steadily filling up with water until he drowns. Every single day for eternity.
The next man is an abuser of children. He delighted in breaking their bones and hearing them scream. I send him to receive the same fate. Every single bone in his body broken and then slowly knit back together with excruciating pain until it begins again.
The last soul stands before me, his bright white robes starkly contrasting the black rock he stands on. His chin lifts higher when I meet his gaze, but his mouth trembles. It’s not often we get a high priest condemned to Síra. I can only recall one other. A woman who captured and sold young girls into slavery under the guise of helping them.
