Page 5 of Cursed By the Dawn

Five.

“Let me in or I will wear the skins of everyone you love.”

Mithras gritted his teeth as he shouldered the door open, barely suppressing a scream. Raelion’s claws were cruel against his mind, raking fiery lines down his skull.

“Get out of my head,” Mithras gasped.

“I will wear them one by one until their minds rot and their souls forsake them. I will require another body to bear the rest of the bargain. Will it be yours? Or—”

Mithras could hear Erebus from a nearby hallway.

“What is that voice I hear?” the demon wondered, curious.

“There is no one else,” Mithras said quickly, demanding Raelion’s attention. “Look at me. What better body to inhabit than that of a prince?”

“A prince no longer,” the demon mused, a smile creeping in the edges of his oily voice. Mithras shuddered.“For as soon as I left the husk of your father, you became a king.”

“Then choose me,” Mithras heard himself say. “I will welcome you in my father’s stead.”

Raelion crashed into him without hesitation, pinning his soul down with horrible, heavy weight.

“Five hundred years,” the demon promised.“Then I will burn your kingdom and feast on its remains.”

Mithras threw up on the citadel’s floor, the contents of his stomach mixing with the blood and wine stains already on his boots. He could feel the demon rising within him, aching to take control of his mind, but Mithras shoved the parasite back down. Raelion was weak from being torn from King Gabriel and searching for a new body to inhabit. But Mithras was strong. He burned with rage and despair.

He imagined grabbing the demon’s filthy spirit and shoving it in a locked chest.

Raelion did not speak again.

Mithras stumbled forward, hastily swiping the bile from his mouth. He had to pull himself together. He couldn’t be seen like this. No one could know what he had just done. He needed to find Theia.

And honor his father, even after Gabriel’s betrayal.

But how?

He turned a corner and ran into a tall, dark-haired man dressed in black.

“I’ve been looking for you,” Erebus greeted his friend, storm-gray eyes calm and serious. He was an anchor; Mithras was a gale. “We need to prepare for the Revel. I was thinking that…” His voice drifted off as he studied Mithras’s face. Mithras wasn’t sure what Erebus saw there, but it couldn’t be anything good. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” Mithras said stiffly, trying to sound unaffected. As if his father hadn’t just died. As if a demon wasn’t lurking under his skin. As if his world would ever be normal or right or safe again. “I’ll meet you in the Dream Realm shortly. We’ll talk there.”

And Mithras spun around, a plan frantically forming as he staggered to his bedchamber.

PART ONE

Through Shadows Forged, We Rise

500 Years Later

If looks could kill, Somnus would have been dead on the ground, tangled in a web of his own silken hair.

“Shadow Weavers,” Erebus and I both bit out, echoing Somnus’s shocking declaration.

Shadow Weavers.

Plural.

The onyx crown atop my head suddenly felt heavy and strange. A symbol meant for someone else. Not me. The boots on my feet, laced up to my knees, seemed too tight; my dress, layered with scales and satin, too heavy. I was in a costume fit for a queen. But who was I, Esmer Havenfall, to command such a title?