Page 12 of Sworn to the Shadow Throne

I rose, wiping the blood from my fingertips with the extra cloth Louie had brought for the task. I swayed on my feet from the hollowness spreading through my body. “The wounds need to stay moist,” I murmured. “Cover them for a few days. Keep her out of the sun and wind so the scar can fade completely.”

Lana offered a polite nod, still cradling her daughter. Then she ordered Louie, “Bring her the chicken I just butchered and a bottle of wine.”

She offered no thank you. Only business.

I was like the village well—always there, essential, but only existing to be used until I dried up. I accepted the chicken and wine from Louie because hunger had never cared about dignity. At least wells weren’t expected to smile while they were drained.

I felt myself shrink, withdrawing farther into the wards of bitterness I’d begun to weave around my heart. How much thicker could they get before air stopped coming through? How long would it be until I suffocated?

Tomorrow would mean pouring myself out for Selmont once again. The only question was whether I would be strong enough to remain standing afterward.

Chapter 5

Lunette

Tomorrow came too quickly. The hollowness had healed slightly overnight, but it felt dull and empty inside my chest. But Selmont still needed its protections, whether I had anything left to give or not.

The wardstone felt cold and almost hostile against my palm, nearly as unfriendly as the villagers who would be watching me soon. Sometimes, I wondered if all the magic that had been poured into these border stones had given them enough life to bite back against my touch.

I supposed the fight was fair. It had always seemed to me that nature had no choice but to defy any person, man, woman, or Fae who attempted to change it.

At least four generations of mages had etched a message into the craggy surface of each stone set in a circle around the village. Every line was a comforting reminder of why I kept pouring myself into them. I could make out a few words of my great-grandmother’s writing, but lichen and weathering had erased the oldest records of my family’s legacy.

I was what was left. Now, my power imbued a single message aimed at outsiders that generations of my family had whispered into the stone: Look away.

The craggy surface glowed faintly as I wove magic into it. I’d done this so many times that I no longer fainted from the effort, but occasionally, it was a close thing. My mother had been far stronger at warding. My grandmother stronger still. Both could make a protective aegis appear out of thin air that would’ve stopped a flying arrow.

I’d never managed such a feat. But I’d do my best to carry on their life’s work until my body gave out.

My breath clouded the chilly afternoon air as my bare hands froze to the icy stone.

The bone-deep drain began in my chest. At each stone, my trembling grew worse. My magic wove through the network to spill across the frost-hardened fields below Selmont, past the crooked fence posts and sleeping livestock, unfurling in unseen lines.

No one could see me yet, so I allowed my shoulders to slump and my head to dip as I worked. I remained high on the densely treed ridge, between the space where the riot of orange and yellow leaves clashed with the green of the hardier pines, out of sight from those on the main road winding past our hidden village.

With the pass soon to close for the winter, the road was usually quiet, especially this close to nightfall. But today, the sound of many hurried hooves echoed from below—probably a traveling trader racing against the fading light to reach the pass where his caravan could make camp for the night.

I ignored it. Only a true mage would sense the weave I was working, and few of those would travel toward magic-intolerant Gelida. Those that wore purple or black robes of the Assembly only traveled to claim or silence someone.

My stubborn certainty of my safety was dashed as a jolt of pure energy shot up the lines I’d woven, so sudden and violent that I gasped. I clutched the stone to steady myself as my knees nearly buckled from the impact that struck straight at the core of my magic.

At first, it was blinding in its shocking intensity, but after only a heartbeat, everything changed. For the second time this week, the fine hairs on my arms and neck rose all at once. My exhausted magic jolted awake, snapping to attention along with every nerve in my body.

Can this mage track me? Will they forcefully breach the wards?

But even as the fear took hold, something beneath it gave me pause. This felt nothing like an assault. Underneath the shock of it was that same unfamiliar, unbidden comfort. Unsettling in entirely new ways.

The fear and the strange comfort were tangled together now, and I couldn’t separate them. Scenarios of what I could do to get the children out of the village played through my mind as I walked the circuit closest to the ridgeline on unsteady feet. I had to keep going, to shore up our only defense, just in case.

Eventually, the sound of hoofbeats and wagon wheels faded into the distance. Surely whatever this was would fade along with them—it had to, or we were doomed.

But then my heart stumbled. And a second pulse found its way to me. This time it felt less shocking and more deliberate, like whoever had sent it was searching and expecting an answer.

Like it was personal. The sensation skimmed down my back like the caress of warm, rough hands. Like someone had reached across the ward’s magic to touch me. It was unlike any touch I’d known. It reached deep within, almost as if it was caressing my very soul.

For a fleeting moment, I indulged in the strange warmth, enjoying and dreading whatever it might mean, while trying to make sense of the terrifying thought that whatever it was recognized me in some way.

How? I’d never know magic could feel so…intimate. What was this?