Prologue
"Your Majesty?"
Dara’elcurled around King Corwin, its shadows at his feet like hungry, restless serpents. He barely noticed. His hands remained pressed against the unyielding stone of his mate’s tomb, the chill seeping into his skin, into his bones, just as it had on the day they sealed her away. The crown weighed on his head, its once-brilliant luster dulled. He should have left it behind. It wasn’t a king who knelt here, only a grieving male.
Two years.
How had it been two years since the light of his life fell protecting their people? Since she gave her last breath to shield the Eldergreen from the humans who would desecrate it?
“Corwinth.”
Elric’s use of his true name snapped Corwin from his thoughts. With Lysa gone, it had been years since anyone had dared to speak it—but if anyone had the right, it was the male who had stood at his side for a lifetime.
“What is it?” Corwin dragged himself to his feet, turning to face his oldest friend.
Elric’s breath was ragged, his face lined with exhaustion, etched with grief. He had lost his own wife and the mother of his child, the human Healer who had been one of Lysa’s closest friends.
“They crossed the ridge,” Elric said. “They took the bait. They’ll be at the gates by nightfall.”
The bait.What a thing to call the bones of the female he loved.
“One last time,” he whispered.Let me protect you one last time.
The shadows moved with him as he ascended the worn stone steps beside Elric, coiling and uncoiling in restless waves, their edges fraying like tattered silk. They wound around his arms, clung to his shoulders, falling behind him like a living cloak that swept the stairs in his wake.
Soon, they hissed in his ear, a hundred voices speaking as one.Soon, soon, soon, soon?—
We drink. We break. We feast.
Loose us. Unchain us. Let them drown in the dark.
Though he couldn’t hear them, Elric still cast the shadows a wary glance, his fingers twitching toward the hilt of his sword. “They’re getting worse.”
It wasn’t an accusation. Not quite.
Corwin exhaled slowly, watching as the shadows shifted with the movement of his breath. “They won’t be a problem.”
Elric’s silence stretched between them, heavy with unspoken doubt.
Corwin sighed. “Not tonight,” he amended. "They hate the New Dominion as much as I do."
For a long moment, Elric held his gaze. Then, with a slow, resigned nod, he let out a breath and continued up the stairs.
They crossed through the sanctuary, its air silent and thick with the weight of the prayers of the handful of warriors clustered around the altar, their heads bowed as they spoke to a Goddess who had not answered them in centuries. Others stood motionless, staring into the flickering light of the sconces, taking one last moment of quiet before the end.
Some bowed low when he passed, their fists pressed to their chests. Others simply looked at him, their faces full of quiet respect and brittle hope—hope he didn’t deserve but felt the weight of all the same.
Corwin paused before the temple doors, turning back to face the warriors gathered before him. Their faces were hard, resolute, the flickering torchlight catching in their battle-worn armor, in the lines of exhaustion and defiance etched into their expressions.
His gaze swept over them, taking in the ragged edges of their cloaks, the nicks in their weapons, the way their fingers clenched white-knuckled around their hilts. But it was their eyes that mattered most.
They burned. Shining with the fire of a people who had nothing left to lose.
Corwin exhaled, rolling his shoulders, the weight of duty settling as heavily as the cold press of his crown—a symbol of a kingdom already lost. They were waiting—for him, for words of courage or reassurance. He had neither.
Instead, he spoke the only truth that mattered.
“We all know who we are fighting for.”
