I’d been in the bell tower quarters, lighting the candles, when a prickling sense of danger had hit the back of my neck. Legend said that Shadow-wielders were more attuned to forthcoming Death since the Death and Shadow Origins were brothers. I could usually see Shadows of the dead in the moments after someone had passed away, and had a keen sense of when Death neared.
Sybilla.
Leaving the candles, I Shadowed to her bedchamber door.
“Ryn?” I shouted. He had been told to watch over her room. I pushed through the door. Sybilla stood with her hands stretched out toward the ground.
Blood dripped from her cheek.
A ring of red circled her neck.
Someone would be dying for that. An annoyance or not, the Queen should not have been touched in my home. My vision blurred with rage.
For a moment, I didn’t register what she was doing. Then I looked down and saw the state of the two men on the ground.
Shit. I might not even need to help kill them.
The men were clawing at their own skin, trying to escape the inferno of their minds.
It was her.
I’d doubted it could be possible, but she had been right in front of me this whole time.
I wanted to watch her fry their brains like eggs in a pan, make them husks—punish them. Standing there in nothing but a pale-blue, blood-spattered nightdress, she was a vision of violence that struck me as terrifyingly beautiful.
But I needed to know who’d sent them and why. Logic won out.
“Sybilla!” I didn’t tell her to stop. Killing was a personal choice.
Her shoulders slumped, and she glanced down and then up at me. For a split second, it seemed as though she might extend her magic to me; she looked drunk off it.
I tilted my head. “Come on now. Don’t dothat.” She didn’t seem to hear me.
She stared down at her hands.
Then she gasped and took in the product of her vengeance. As soon as the men’s bodies slackened, I let my Shadows do as they wished—which was to dig into the intruders and slam them to the far wall. I’d deal with them later.
I took one step toward Sybilla. “What did they do to you?”
She fucking flinched.
I softened my tone. “Sybilla, which one of them did that?” I pointed to her neck.
Her breath heaved, and she gestured to the dark-haired man. I smirked as my Shadows wrapped around his fingers and mangled every single one. He shrieked as they snapped, though it paled in comparison to his shrieks from just moments ago.
“What about that?” I pointed to her cheek.
Her eyes darted like a caged animal, as if she didn’t know whether to strike out at me or back away. But then she motioned to the light-haired man.
“My King, please—” he begged.
The snap of his bones and cries of his pain pleased me. They were both pleading now, squabbling like children. Not wanting to hear them anymore, I let my Shadows consume them completely and cut off their air.
“Did they touch you anywhere else?” I whispered. I didn’t want to startle her again.
Sybilla shook her head.
Ryn burst through the empty doorway, glancing around. “Sources...what happened?”
