Page 1 of The Stolen Throne
PART 1
THE ISOLATED PAWNS
1
THE BROKEN
SHADOWRAITH
Reven
You’d think stealing a queen would be easy for a Shadowraith.
Considering I once kidnapped a princess from this very palace and no one stopped me, it should be. But that was before Eidolon, the king of Tyndra, moved in. He is why, instead of using my power over shadow to get to her unseen, I’m standing in a forgotten room at the top of a set of dark stairs that lead down into an underground cistern. He’d know if I used my shadows.
As my maker, he can use them, too.
“Goddess help me,” a voice whispers in the darkness, and for a heavy second, I think it’s her.
Meren.
My heart surges to life as I listen, waiting, straining to hear that voice again. To make sure it was actually her.
Nothing.
The breath of hope I’d been holding rattles out of my chest. Who am I kidding? I’m not that lucky. Besides, there are plenty of other things that whisper to me. Most aren’t good.
I don’t think it was one of Eidolon’s Shadows—the fractured, evil pieces of the king’s soul that I carry inside me. The voice would have sounded like my own because I’m one of those Shadows, too. The one to get away. To stand against him.
It could have been a desperate stranger crying out for help. I hear them every night, their voices coming from all over the six dominions of Nova—despairing people who whisper pleas into the dark that they think go unheard, but the shadows carry their words to me. I used to find them—the Vanished, people would call them—and take them to the safety of the Shadowood for a chance at a new life, but the Shadowood isn’t safe anymore. I can’t save anyone.
“Pathetic.” A new voice rings in my head. This one I recognize, because it comes from within. This is one of Eidolon’s Shadows. “If you can’t save them, why could you save her?”
“Shut up,” I mutter.
That sets the other Shadows off. Their voices in my head blend and blur as they talk over one another. The foul things I carry fight for control every second of every hour of every day. If my tenuous control slips, the Shadows will gleefully bury my consciousness down deep in a tomb made of my own body and take over. There’s no telling what they’d do after that.
Tightening my hands into fists, I force them back down.
It works—for now.
Luckily, Cain, who is with me down here, doesn’t seem to notice any of that. He’s too pissed off about what we’re about to do.
In the history of bad ideas, kidnapping the woman everyone believes to be the queen of the dominion of Aryd out from under the nose of the powerful king they think she’s married to, especially when I can’t use my powers to do it, ranks right at the top.
But it’s the best we could come up with.
I refuse to wait even a second longer to get Meren out of there. I’ve been hiding and waiting for what has felt like an eternity—every plodding, torturous minute spent healing after the wounds I sustained in the last battle with the king. The battle where I lost Meren.
We’ve been hunted the whole way, constantly having to evade Eidolon’s soldiers, keeping out of their grasp by moving all over the blasted dominion. Almost every single one of Aryd’s different deserts, in their varied colors and landscapes, has seen our ragtag band of misfits. The king’s men have been relentless.
Granted, I have Eidolon’s Shadows…and a few other things he needs. He wants them back.
But he has something I want back, too.
Standing beside me, Cain snorts an unamused laugh. “This is a joke, right?”
I grit my teeth.
