Page 66 of Sworn to the Shadow Throne

When my heart started beating again, I said hoarsely, “You’re asking me to abandon you before we’ve even had the chance to try.”

She said nothing. And a terrible suspicion, dark and unwelcome, crept over me. “Was I nothing more than a night’s diversion?” The question tasted like bile as it left my mouth, bitter and unworthy of both of us. I hated myself for asking it.

She looked away, but said softly, “I thought that’s all I was to you. I can’t go because I know what happens when I give people the power to cast me out.”

I opened my mouth. Closed it. The arguments I’d rehearsed on the walk back inside—promises, contingencies, carefully structured compromises—fell apart under the weight of her devastating certainty.

“I wouldn’t,” I said fiercely, still begging even if I wasn’t kneeling.

“But you could,” she replied. “We’re from different worlds, Owain.”

The worst part was that I had no answer because she wasn’t wrong about that either. My world was edged with steel just like hers, but where I came from, the attacks came from within. It would ask her to bleed one way or another.

The fracture that had started earlier spread through my chest. It was deep, as if my shadows had formed a jagged blade and were pressing outward from the place just behind my sternum, wedging the bones apart slowly and without mercy. Tearing me asunder.

“You’re choosing solitude over possibility,” I argued, and immediately hated myself for how it sounded. I knew it wasn’t fair, but I’d thought there was a possibility she’d wanted the same thing.

“No. I’m choosing to continue my mother’s legacy. To save my village while you and everyone like you,” she pointed toward the door, “dawdle on a solution.”

I had no worthy answer to that because she was right. We were failing our people.

Still, something within me strained against its limits, reaching for her, for the impossible shape of a life I’d never allowed myself to imagine until she put it within reach. I knew we could have what we shared in her little cabin in the Tir. She could continue her work helping people during the day, dine with me as the sun set, and sleep beside me every night. We could find happiness with each other.

But now, mercifully or cruelly, she was taking away that possibility. And it was entirely my fault.

I stood there and let myself want her for one more moment. Then, from a bleak and merciless place inside, unforgivable thoughts bubbled up.

What good is power if you never use it? Take her. She’d be safer.

The orders were already forming on my lips before I understood what I was doing. The horror of that realization snapped me back into myself.

Breathe, Owain. You’re not the monster they paint you. Don’t be him now. Never to her.

I was Nocthel. She’d taught me that.

I had to be better than my base impulses. If I stayed here looking at her—if I kept pushing—I would approach the point of no return. I’d do something I could never forgive myself for.

So I did what I’d been trained to do since childhood. I built the walls back up around myself, stone by stone, forcing my breath to steady, my shoulders to square. I thought of the men outside waiting for my command. Of my best friend and Reina. Of maps and borders and decisions soaked in blood. Of the weight I’d been trained to carry since boyhood.

I clasped my hands behind my back, locking them behind a prison of flesh. It was all that stopped me from reaching out for her again. I let the Shadowborn prince rise up and smother Owain. My shadows fought back tooth and nail under my skin, but my will was stronger. I pushed them down into the place where I kept my emotions buried under discipline.

A Fae-blooded healer with the power to rebuild bone and flesh from ruin would be worth more to the Assembly than a dozen battlemages. They hadn’t cared what anyone—especially not women—had wanted for centuries. They would take her, call it prudence, and force her to bear child after child until her body gave out.

I knew it because they’d tried to force Isca into a similar situation. She’d told me, discreetly, how the Assembly had sent her to Tir Darreth under the guise of diplomacy, but in reality all they’d wanted from her was a womb occupied with the child of the human weapon they’d lost control of so they could create another one.

Maybe it was best that Lunette remain a secret in Selmont.

“I understand,” I said finally. “My troops will be ready to leave within the hour. King Emrys will charge the ward he broke.”

Lunette’s shoulders sagged, like she was relieved in too many ways to count. Then, her expression cleared as she made up her mind. “Wait,” she said, turning away.

Hope—ridiculous and unrealistic—leaped in my chest. I’d spent a lifetime keeping it contained, and she’d undone all of that in little more than a week without even trying.

With quick, purposeful strides, she crossed the room and kneeled before one of her wooden trunks. The lid creaked in the chilly silence of the room as she pushed it open. I waited for what felt like an eternity, sternum aching but still filled with impossible dreams.

When she turned back, she was carrying my dagger in one hand and the Fae children’s book in the other, its yellowed pages crackling softly as it shifted in her arms.

She held them both out to me. “You need it right now more than I do…”