But Tarron didn’t have any desire to become king—especially at the cost of losing his brother. He only wanted the stable, peaceful life he had once known. Which was why he had insisted on carrying through with the tradition of marrying the Middlemage princess.
This marriage is a step towards stability,he kept telling himself.
Once he had his bride, he would have his full magic.He would have better connections to the Middlemage court, too, and to their army that had proven themselves useful allies in the past.
They had lost so much over the years… he was not prepared to lose anything else. He would do what he had to do, even if it meant putting aside his personal feelings and carrying through with this ridiculous marriage business.
He just hoped his bride-to-be proved cooperative.
Chapter 4
Sephia was trying her best to be cooperative.
But the servants of Solturne Hall were making itdifficult.
Over the past hours she had been poked. Prodded. Pulled at. Fussed at. Dressed and undressed, styled and restyled. She had been mocked as well, she was fairly certain; the fae women tending to and torturing her spoke the common tongue of Middlemage well enough, but they seemed to prefer speaking in their own language. And though Sephia had studied what she could of that language in preparation for her time here, there were intricacies and intonations that were simply impossible for human ears—forherears—to grasp.
Nevertheless, she endured the ordeal without protest, just as Nora would have.
When it was finished, her hair was piled into intricate braids woven through with chains of white flowers, and she wore a white dress that dipped elegantly low against her back. The dress’s draping material was thin, and she couldn’t suppress the shivers that erupted across her bare arms as the servants stepped away to study their creation from a distance.
Those servants finally nodded their begrudging approval. They fell back into their secretive, possibly mocking, chatter, and Sephia picked up her skirts and moved toward the window— toward the sunlight shining in—hoping for warmth.
Her room had a view, at least.
Far below, the flowering courtyards of Solturne Hall crisscrossed in alternating rows of brilliant color. The wind swirled pink and white petals through the air in a mesmerizing dance that was set to the tune of nobles laughing and birds singing. Even through the glass, the song filled Sephia with an ache that was not altogether unpleasant. She pressed her forehead against the window, and her eyes briefly fluttered shut as she soaked in the warmth and the sounds.
When her eyes opened again, the first thing they fell upon was a tall tower of white brick, adjacent to her own. It had no windows. Storage, or perhaps a library of some sort? Or some other secret place they were protecting from sunlight, or from outside eyes for some reason…?
Her gaze dropped to the base of the tower, seeking its entrance. She wondered when—andif—she might be permitted to explore her new ‘home’ more thoroughly.
A shadow moved across the white brick.
It moved swiftly and strangely enough that it caught Sephia’s attention and held it, and after a moment of staring she would haveswornshe was watching it turn into something more solid. Something with a distinguishable head. With two legs. With swinging arms and clawed hands.
There were perhaps a dozen fae strolling the grounds below her, but none of them seemed to notice that anything was amiss.
Sephia pushed the window open—she was pleasantly surprised to find she wasn’tcompletelylocked in—and she leaned out and narrowed her sight toward that white tower, toward that shadowy beast—
Gone.
There were no shadows to see aside from the thin fingers of darkness cast by a few willow trees swaying in the breeze. Normal shadows…
That wasallthere had ever truly been, most likely.
Anything else was simply her imagination running wild. It must have been. She had read and heard so many terrible things about this place and its inhabitants that even the shadows seemed menacing. An odd thing for her, considering that she usually felt most at home when she was surrounded by shadows, thanks to that magic she had been born with.
She had been trying not to think about that magic.
But suddenly it was difficultnotto think about it; she could feel the servants behind her, watching her.
They were staring at theSuntwin, as far as they knew.
She didn’t intend to stay here long enough for them—or the prince— to discover that her magic was the opposite of what it should have been. If the Sun Prince or any of his servants suspected her of courting with shadows, the consequences would, of course, be deadly.
And she was not dying here.
Such deceit was possible only because she had been working to suppress her magic for her entire life. When she was younger, the shadows had often whispered to her. Other times, she had managed to control them into doing her bidding without really meaningto do it; they stole secrets from passersby, created distractions that helped her sneak into places she shouldn’t have been. Once, her shadows had even taken a physical hold on one of the palace servants. Sephia had caught him harassing her sister, and she hadn’t thought about what she was going to do, she justdidit.
