Page 9 of The Stolen Throne
Eidolon unclenches his hands. I hadn’t even noticed they were fisted, hiding the purple glow. Darkness unwraps from around her body, and her eyes flood with tears. She makes a gagging sound, and more shadow pours out of her mouth, like a black silk swath.
She’s been bound and subdued and silenced by his darkness this entire time. I know why. So we couldn’t try to communicate with each other. Warn each other. Try to think of some way out of this together.
Without a word, Quinten takes her roughly by the arm and drags her to the door.
“I’m sorry, domina,” she whimpers as they pass us.
As she disappears into the hallway beyond, I lunge after her.
To do what, I don’t know. Stop him. Help her. Give her a chance to run. Except a new rope of darkness wraps around me, pinning my arms to my sides, Eidolon’s violet light competing with the glow of the fires in the room now that he’s no longer hiding it from me.
I’m lifted into the air and deposited on the other side of the room. Before I can protest, Quinten returns, not with Achlys, but with the head butler here in the palace. Ushi. He’s been a servant here for three generations of my family. He used to sneak Tabra—or me, when I was standing in for her—sweet treats at dinner, knowing she loved anything with sugar. His cragged face, aged by time and our hot, dry climate, is as familiar to me as any in the palace.
Ushi is bound and gagged not with shadow but with linen strips. Quinten leaves, the door closing behind him with finality.
“What is Ushi doing here?” I demand. Or try to demand. Panic laces my voice like poison.
Darkness snaps out from the corners of the room and wraps around Ushi’s neck so violently his sunken eyes bulge and his face immediately turns purple.
“Stop!” I struggle against my own bonds. “Stop! You said—”
“I said the truth would save Achlys. For now.” Eidolon isn’t looking at Ushi, but at me. “However, I can’t let this transgression go unpunished. Someone must be the example.”
The example? Goddess. Ushi is the head of the servants here. He is beloved and respected and old enough that the younger servants try to help him. We tried to get him to retire, offered him a permanent home here in the palace to enjoy the end of his days. He refused.
Eidolon picked him because without him, the workings of the household will suffer. Because Ushi is familiar enough to me that I’ll feel the loss personally. And…because Ushi is old enough that his death won’t be questioned by anyone in the palace.
A secret threat for Eidolon to hold over me.
I reach toward him. “No—”
The shadows writhe, and with an audible pop, Ushi’s neck snaps. He goes suddenly, sickeningly limp. Then the shadow disappears like smoke in the wind, and he drops to the floor in a heap of twisted limbs.
4
We All Fall Down
The king steps over the corpse, closing in on me, and I flinch. I can’t help it.
Every scrap of the veneer of his charm is gone. The churning bile surges up my throat, choking me. The man before me isn’t human. He’s evil in a skin suit.
Reven was right to steal all of Eidolon’s Shadows when the king shed them the last time. Someone had to try to stop him.
“I guess that sand nymph’s curse didn’t bind our souls after all.” He says it almost casually.
Immediately, an image of the day the curse snapped into place—the first time we locked eyes—flashes through my mind. A line of glittering sand connected us, and then shadow swirled over and around those grains like dense smoke until it obliterated the light.
I thought I saw a hint of my own death in that moment. Suffocated. Annihilated.
Is that what he’s about to do to me?
Eidolon’s hand flashes out, and he yanks the amulet—his amulet—from around my neck in a painful snap of the chain. Then he shoves it in a pocket. “It’s time for us to be completely honest with each other, Mereneith. Starting with you making me a portal.”
The first time Eidolon saw me, I used my powers over sand to create a magical glass portal that could take us anywhere. It’s how I got my sister and Reven away from him and to safety.
“I can’t.”
“Stop lying.” The “p” comes out like a pop of sound, and he rolls his shoulders like he’s having to hold himself in check. Now he’s letting me see the blistering anger underneath.
