Page 193 of Sworn to the Shadow Throne

Right now, my mate needed me.

Chapter 51

Owain

At first, I thought Berian was alive. He sat upright in the chair before the hearth, the last embers painting his face in unsteady gold.

Then I stepped closer.

The grayish tint of my brother’s skin wasn’t the pallor of death. I was familiar with that shade. This was the emptiness of a body that had been scraped clean of every thread of magic until there was nothing left but a husk.

Whatever they’d promised him, whatever bargain had brought him into this room…it had cost him everything.

I rested one hand against the chair and sank to one knee before him. My armor dragged at my shoulders. A broken rib protested each breath. Yet none of it mattered.

I'd spent years preparing myself for Berian’s death. I'd imagined grief. Rage. But back then I hadn’t accounted for the possibility that the small voice in the back of my head had been right about him all along.

I hadn’t prepared for this. I hadn’t had time to decide what separating from him meant for us. But he’d taken that from me too. Anger rose in me, but it had nowhere to go.

Berian had been mine to fight, to fail, to reach for on the rare days when I still believed it might matter. He’d been mine to hate.

I reached instinctively for the old ache of wanting his approval—for the childish hope that he might someday see me as more than a burden he’d inherited. But there was no one left to give it.

All my life, I’d built discipline and restraint to keep me upright against the pressure of his judgment. With him gone, I could no longer tell where the bracing ended and I began. The sudden, naked exposure of not knowing who I was without the weight that had always defined me was terrifying.

Berian had spent a lifetime making me smaller. In the end, he had chosen men who tried to do the same to Lunette.

Yet when I searched inside for grief, I found that it had made itself small.

It could stay that way.

I reached up and closed my brother’s eyes. The device on the mantel caught my eye as I straightened. I took it before anyone else could. Whatever it was capable of, it would not remain within reach of another enemy.

It was such a small thing to have caused so much pain and suffering. Vaustin had tried to grab it during the fight. Surely that meant it could be used to siphon again. I certainly didn’t want it getting into the wrong hands. Yet there was a potential use for it that might heal instead of harm.

Perhaps someone like Mirelle could figure out how it worked and engineer something that might help Emrys. His curse had resisted every attempt to remove it. This might be the one thing that could give him back a normal life.

At some point, Lunette came over to stand beside me and take my hand. Faint waves of her healing magic poured into me, healing my head and ribs. I closed my eyes for a single moment and allowed myself to feel the overwhelming gratitude that she was still alive, still here, and still holding my hand.

Then the weight of change settled over me, and for once, it didn’t feel like duty was weighing me down. Living as a fraction of who I was supposed to be that had done that.

I’d spent years serving Larethia without the title, the authority, or the right to call it mine. Without gratitude, without hesitation, I’d surrendered my sleep, my peace, and my pride for it. Sacrifice was simply a part of who and what I was: Nocthel.

I was done pretending that didn’t mean something.

I was going to take the throne.

Not because I’d always wanted it. Because Larethia deserved someone who would lay himself down for her, and I’d been doing exactly that my entire life.

And I wasn’t standing alone. Behind me stood Camrick. He’d believed in my strength. Had always had my back, no matter how foolhardy I seemed, no matter his own suffering. Beside him was the woman who’d stepped up to run a kingdom in the shadows, who’d been a mother to me, who’d taught me that duty could be quiet, tender, and unbreakable. And around me, soldiers who’d watched me hold this kingdom together with my blood and sweat—men who’d long since chosen where their loyalty lay.

And next to me, her hand still in mine, was my person. Fate had brought us together. Magic and biology tied us to one another. Yet she was still choosing to want me back.

She was the other half of my heart and soul. The guiding moonlight to my darkness. She’d anticipated none of what was landing squarely on her shoulders: A complicated man, a heavy crown, and the threat of war on the horizon.

Lunette had seen all of it—the darkness and the powerlessness and the borrowed sword—and she was still standing steady in the wreckage after killing a man to save me. I didn’t know how to deserve that. But I would spend the rest of my life trying.

Camrick was the first to move. He crossed the room in three strides and bent down on one knee, sword still in his hand. He laid it flat across his palms and held it out in presentation. His face was perfectly still, but his eyes gave him away.