Page 180 of Sworn to the Shadow Throne

Too breathless to react to the newcomers, Berian could only stare, eyes widening in a flash of genuine shock. Did the thought only now occur to him that they would betray him?

The power he’d been clinging to seemed to abandon him all at once, leaving his expression as limp and useless as the legs that had just failed him.

I wanted to think that maybe he’d learn now, finally, but I wasn’t so certain.

Coryanthus greeted the mages like they were making the rounds at a feast. But then three pairs of cold eyes fell on Berian with nothing short of intention. Coryanthus reached into the front pocket of his doublet. His hand emerged holding the siphoning device, treating it with near-sacred care.

Oh gods. Reina.

The only way they would have it was if they’d already forced her to hand it over. Whatever was happening on the other side of those walls was not good.

Berian turned his head and saw the ravenous obsidian drinking in the firelight.

Realization dawned on his face, one emotion after another: first confusion, then fear, and finally, morbid clarity mixed with regret.

Everything that happened next transpired in the blink of an eye.

A low, unsettling hum filled the air as Coryanthus pressed it to the back of Berian’s neck. From a few feet away, I could feel it vibrate through bone and teeth. An instant later, Berian’s back bowed, as if an invisible force was yanking something within him taut.

I didn’t want to care. He thought I was nothing more than a tool. But, unlike him, I couldn’t shut off my humanity.

The choking fear gave way as a wave of pure fury washed over me. Berian was intolerable, but no one deserved to die like this. I didn’t think—I lunged forward. If I could just snatch it, I might be able to fling it into the hearth to destroy it forever.

But two of Coryanthus’s guards closed iron grips around my arms. I twisted, fought, tried to break free. Armor dug into my skin as I struggled. I could feel bruises blossoming, but their grip didn’t give.

I could defend myself, but there were four guards, three Assembly mages, and Lord Coryanthus. And only one me.

If they wanted to kill Berian, I couldn’t stop them even at the price of my own life. The horrible hum thrummed on, and my rage began to transform, hardening into a dense, inescapable weight: despair.

I could’ve endured cruelty—it was a normal part of life in Avanfell—but this was worse. Thibault held Berian’s hand tenderly as his body convulsed. Monstrous. He watched Berian dying like he was a patient succumbing to his natural end, not a victim.

I wanted to break down, felt like I would retch all over myself at the vile mixture of care and indifference the healer was showing to a man he was helping murder.

Berian’s eyes found mine. His gaze was almost accusatory, like I wasn’t fighting hard enough. It was the first time the cold had gone out of them. I could almost see the man—even the boy—underneath.

I had grabbed corpses by the wrists to drag them clear of rubble. I’d knelt in the frozen mud of border roads to close the eyes of people who’d still been breathing when I found them. In those years, I’d learned the particular shift that happened in a body the moment it stopped being a person.

I’d told myself, over and over, in the bleak arithmetic of survival, that what I was doing was victimless. That it was necessary, and even a mercy. Mostly, I’d been right.

But I’d never been the person standing by, unable to do anything.

The device’s hum deepened to a fever pitch. It was too easy to trick myself into believing that the worst wasn’t happening until I was forced to acknowledge it.

Berian’s hand twitched against the armrest. At the end, he was nothing more than an ordinary man, powerless against life’s brutality just like the rest of us. The device yanked away the last vestiges of his weak aura with the speed of yarn unraveling down a flight of stairs—gone in a blink.

His eyes never left mine as the light behind them slipped away with one final, shuddering breath.

I didn’t think it was possible to mourn someone you hated. But Berian proved me wrong. He’d been a person, and he’d meant something to my mate. I didn’t need any more reason than that to care. Maybe that made me weak in the eyes of some, but I liked to think it made me human—more human than some people with rounded ears.

My captors kept a tight hold on me as I gave in to grief for one moment of weakness and slumped to the floor.

Now I needed to think, not react.

“I am sorry you had to witness that,” Coryanthus said, his voice dripping with insincere regret as I found my feet again. “Necessities are sometimes unpleasant.”

“The king overextended himself,” he said to the room, maybe to his conscience, as he walked around the other side of the corpse he’d just made. He slipped the device back into his doublet. “He pushed himself too far in seeking,” a pause, a toothy smile, “love. A tragedy. They’ll believe it easily enough.”

He glanced at me.