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She nodded, her face turning grave. “Thousands of them. The king wanted the palace built quickly. He hired as many men as he could. They worked hard, too hard. Hundreds died. Some were crushed under stones and their bodies were just left there.”

“Gods,” I hissed. This was worse than I could have dreamed—and yet, it was exactly what I would have thought. The Shadow King had blessed the king with immortality. He had not mentioned the palace at all.

Of course. What was called a gift from the gods was only a veneer over more darkness and death.

“The water channeled for his fountains brought a drought in our village for months,” she continued. “We had to craft a new waterway.”

“And—and decades have passed, and nobody has spoken up?” I asked.

“The king claims that the gods are on his side. That he was chosen by them.” She carefully drew back. “Those who challenge the king challenge the very gods themselves. It is not so simple. And His Majesty... he holds so much power.”She glanced out the sunlit window. “The king provides our villages with knights to vanquish the Shadows that come at night. He handsomely paid those left behind from the palace’s construction. We are not fooled. But we will accept his bribe, even so.”

Someone hollered, “Marie!” from the kitchen.

She showed me an apologetic smile. “I have to go tend to some baguettes.” Marie curtsied. “I’m glad you were able to get away from that place, señorita.”

She slipped into the kitchen, leaving me there at the bar.

I was right.

I was right.

The king did not care for any life but his own. For a palace, for his image, he’d let hundreds die and waved off the idea with a few gold coins and a flick of his hand. He was so powerful that decades had passed, and this had been kept secret.

Hundreds had vanished. No wonder three women were so easy for him to disappear.

And Ofelia—

How could she be safe within the king’s grasp?

I dragged myself back up the stairs. With a click, I locked the door to my room behind me and slumped onto the bed, unmoored once again.

For a time, I had fooled myself into thinking I was a hero. Into thinking that I could save Ofelia or at least savesomeonefrom the Shadows that plagued our world.

But who was I? A lone girl without even a sword.

My stomach lurched. No matter my determination, the world would turn just the same. Kings would rule. Wicked men would be rewarded. Shadows would fester through the kingdom and kill children. Make orphans. And necessitate the creation of more and more knights like me.

I considered it again. Breaking back into those gardens, once again wrestling my way to that door. Perhaps some guards would fall to my prowess. A cost to save the lives of many. But how,how, could I keep the beasts from entering this world? A door created by a god could not be so easily sealed.

I sat up in bed.

I knew of one being who could close such a door. I knew of onemore powerful than a king.

In a blink, I had leapt out of bed and placed a candle on the vanity with its small metal mirror. With my tinderbox, I lit the flame, then I closed the shutters, covering them with a blanket until the only light in the room came from the flickering candlelight. From within my satchel of all my worldly possessions, I found my journal and flipped past poems.

My last one for her. I had compared her kindness to the caress of petals against my fingertips.

I would write another one. Just for her—someday.

All the breath in my lungs was trapped within me, heavy as a breastplate. I sat in front of the mirror and looked my reflection in the eyes.

We have survived so much, you and I, I thought. I was grateful for the scar on my face; proof that I’d escaped death. Proud of my lips, capable of speaking sharply and sweetly. The eyes that had seen horrors and beauty and had wept and endured all of it.

I set the poem into the flame.

“King of Shadows,” I whispered among the crackling of the flames. “God of darkness and the Underworld.”

Once again, the flame bloomed into a white column; I drew my hand back just in time. When the strange, heatless fire shrank again, the flame turned black as ink. The long shadow it cast spread and twisted until it splayed upon the nearest wall. The tip of the Shadow King’s horns touched the ceiling.