“It’sShadow magic,” she heard someone snarl. “She has obviously used it to possess our prince and his mind, to make him make such questionable choices.”
Tarron’s grip on her hands tightened. “They won’t touch you, whether you are a questionable,chaoticchoice or not,” he told her. “Don’t worry.”
But she wasn’t worried.
An odd peace had overtaken her.
“I need to do something,” she whispered, and she pulled out of his grip, left him staring after her with a mixture of concern and confusion in his eyes.
That peace inside of her wobbled a bit as she turned and started toward the king. Dozens of angry gazes followed her every movement. But she managed one step, and then another, and then she was halfway to the throne, and then closer still—close enough that she didn’t have to raise her voice to make it carry to the king.
“I want to help you,” she told him.
The king’s gaze dropped toward her. His hands, grey and shaking, gripped the arms of his throne more tightly. He seemed to be struggling to focus on her face. And before he could reply, guards filed into the space between them, forming a wall, blocking Sephia’s path.
Sephia took a single step back before she caught herself. She steeled her resolve and held her ground, keeping her eyes focused on what she could still see of the king through the wall of armor and weapons before her.
A tense moment passed.
Then came a cough, and then the king’s voice: “Let her come closer.”
A few of the guards shuffled uncertainly, but most kept still with their hands resting uncertainly on the grips of their weapons.
“I saidlet her pass,” coughed the king.
Slowly, a few of the guards peeled away.
Sephia stepped forward, and as she passed through the wall of sentinels she breathed in deeply, relaxed fully into her senses once more. She let her eyes flutter shut, and she soon felt it, just as she had when she was blindfolded—the cold ribbons of Shadow magic snaking themselves around the king.
Now I just need to draw them out.
Just as before, her body shook with her first attempt.
“Sephia, you don’t need to do this.”
Tarron’s voice. It sounded like he was very far away. But something told her he was closer than he sounded—a feeling she couldn’t name, a pleasant warmth—and a small smile curved her lips at the thought.
Strength surged through her. She reached again for the shadows, and this time she managed to keep still when they began to strike and tug at her senses. She imagined them as actual snakes, and in her mind she began to unwind them. To untangle them. To draw them toward herself.
She blinked her eyes open and saw the king slumping forward as the shadows spilled from his body. He was eerily still, as if those shadows had been his bones, his very framework, and now she’d drained him of all stability.
The thought was horrifying, and she was not the only one who had it, apparently; guards were suddenly rushing, arguments were building all around her, it was chaos—
Until it wasn’t.
That same peace from before overtook Sephia. She couldn’t explain it, but she was not afraid. All of the noise in the room settled into silence. She saw lips moving, people rushing around her. But all she heard were the whispers of those shadows she had drawn out. All she focused on were the threads of darkness weaving around her. She was standing in the middle of these threads, and they were encircling her, eventually blocking her view of everyone else.
Sheshouldhave been afraid.
But she wasn’t.
She didn’t care about the toll this might take on her. She didn’t care what happened after this moment—she would face whatever it was. Right now, she only wanted to help the king. To prove to Tarron and anyone watching that she was not a monster, and that she could andwouldatone for her mistakes.
The dark threads wound more tightly together, encasing her in a deeper, tomb-like darkness.
She lifted her hands. Slammed them back toward the ground, and watched the shadows slam toward that ground an instant later.
Leave us,she thought as they struck the marble.
