Page 156 of Sworn to the Shadow Throne

The assassin aimed for the window again.

Murder lived openly on Owain’s face. I expected him to go after the assassin, but he crossed the room in quick strides with his midnight gaze fixed entirely on me. Without as much as glancing sideways, he cast a whip of shadow that caught the assassin by the ankle mid-scramble, dropping him in a heap to the floor.

Camrick pushed aside the mages arrayed behind him like useless, gawking hens to get to the intruder. He hauled the assassin upright by the throat against the far wall, one forearm braced across his windpipe in a relaxed way that suggested strangling a man was not a novel experience for him.

Owain’s eyes never left me. I’d never seen him look afraid before. His arms closed around me with bruising force, as if he needed proof I was still alive.

With a metallic clang, the assassin’s blade clattered to the floor. I watched, pressed to Owain’s chest, as one guard secured the assassin’s wrists and another retrieved the blade.

Reina rushed in, saw Richart, and dropped to her knees in front of him.

“He’s still breathing,” I whispered to her, convincing myself he’d pull through.

Then I turned toward the bed, panic rising anew. I pushed away from Owain, only to be stopped by the ring of steel that had surrounded the king.

“Move!” I shouted.

Without waiting for a nod from Owain, Camrick, or even Reina, they lowered their weapons and yielded the path to me.

Berian lay exactly as the assassin had left him, gray-faced and terribly still. His aura was alive—I could feel it now without the device screaming over everything—but it was so weak.

Not yet, I thought. I refused to let him die.

I climbed onto the bed and laid both hands on his chest. The room immediately fell away. My magic answered my call with everything it had left after daily healings and one unplanned ward. Violent with my anger, it tore through me with such intensity that black spots momentarily swam before my eyes.

I plunged it into his heart, his lungs, even his veins. I pressed with a desperate plea and the force of command. It answered by chasing down the threads of damage the device had left behind and undoing them with brute force. The hollowness invaded my arms and feet first then spread up until it overran my abdomen, rushing straight toward my heart.

If Berian died, the fragile balance holding the realm together might shatter. War would burn villages like mine to the ground and leave children digging through ash for anything left behind that might resemble a life.

Selmont. Louie. Celine.

My chest tightened as the emptiness crept closer. But I had willpower and the sheer, stubborn refusal to let him die on my side.

Berian’s skin was cold under my hands, barely clinging to life. But it warmed by degrees as my own heart rate plummeted. I kept going even as my vision tunneled at the edges. Berian’s breath stuttered, caught, then dragged itself forward with a wet rattle.

I caught a flicker of skirts at the edge of the room. “The assassin…” my voice was barely more than breath, my lungs heaving into the void of my chest, “has what you’re looking for.”

Reina froze at the edge of my senses then turned.

Berian’s breath hitched again beneath my hands, a fleeting pause before continuing in a shallow, fragile rhythm. It was enough.

I’d given enough…

The last thing I heard was Owain saying my name, a raw, breaking sound, like it could drag me back from the dark. Then I felt his touch. And darkness, the kind that devours the light when you need it most, lifted me into his arms.

Chapter 42

Owain

Everyone is alive.

Inside my mind, I’d said the same sentence over and over, a dozen times at least, hoping the repetition would ease the tightness in my chest.

But it wouldn’t until the threat was no longer breathing.

The low-level mage who’d tried to kill Berian was now bound and being roughly hoisted into the air by multiple guards. Every Nocthel instinct in me screamed to tear him apart, limb by limb, before they could drag him another step. Yet if I loosened my control to do that, I would also slaughter the Assembly conclave with him. The only thing holding me back from doing either was the other half of my heart, still beating strongly next to mine.

I needed to get Luna safe. Cradled in my arms wasn’t good enough. Safe meant away from all of this—away from the stares, the whispers already forming behind closed teeth, away from the men who wanted to take her away from me.