Page 1 of A Promise of Lies (Shadows of the Tenebris Court #3)

BASTIAN

B lood coats my hands. It’s my own. My chest feels like it’s been ripped apart. I don’t know how I’m still standing—I can feel my insides pressing on the thin wall left holding them in.

My father’s eyes are wide on me. They flick down to my stomach. He pales.

It’s bad.

I suck in breaths, tighten my grip. I’m dead. It’s just a question of when exactly I drop.

But I can’t give up until I stop him.

“Bastian,” he begins.

“Why?” I swipe, and he turns my sword away with ease.

“I…” He grits his teeth, takes half a step back, like he doesn’t want to finish me off. “I didn’t mean to, I…” He shakes his head, glancing at the bloody mess he’s cut through me.

“I don’t mean me, I mean…” My head swims. Now he’s backed away, I chance a look down. Raw and red, the dark crimson of muscle, the light yellow of fat and flesh where he’s sliced clean through my leather armour. It’s bad, but…

But there should be more blood.

I should be on the floor, a breath away from oblivion.

He should be striding past me to do what he came here with a naked blade to do.

“Why do this?” I choke out. “Betrayal. Treason.” The words others associate with him, but that I never have.

And yet here he is, come to kill the queen. The queen he betrayed the other side for all those years ago. The queen I thought he had chosen.

I’m not supposed to be here today. It’s my day off. But there’s been something strange about his behaviour and yesterday I caught him cleaning his armour. I knew something was wrong, but…

I thought I’d get here and find him facing some enemy, that I would help, and we would fight side by side to protect the queen. Not this .

“I don’t?—”

“You don’t understand.” He straightens as if realising I’m not about to drop dead. In his old armour, unworn for centuries, he looks every bit the legendary general. And when he speaks again, it’s as the general. “Step aside, Bastian. Get to a healer while you still can. Let me do what must be done.”

“So you can plunge us into chaos?” I laugh, humourless and bloody, and the cut in my lip stings. It’s a pale pain in comparison with the agony of my chest and stomach, spiking with each heartbeat. Darkness pulses on the edge of my vision, like my own shadows ready to rush in.

But I can still move, can still grip my sword and straighten.

“Not chaos.” His brow tightens. “Step asi?—”

“No.” I’m clumsy with pain as I sweep my sword up and across. He’s going to catch it, but if I delay him just long enough, someone will hear the sounds of our fight. Someone will come.

But as time draws out like a bowstring stretching longer, thinner, less real somehow, the darkness of my Shadowblade cuts through the air and no steel rises to meet it.

He lifts his chin, bronze-brown skin catching the light like he’s a statue and can’t fight back.

My heart clamours, pain pounding through my entire being. It understands before I do.

I can’t stop. My sword slices through flesh, grinds on bone. I think he makes a sound, but I can’t hear anything except my thundering pulse.

Blood splatters me, mingling with my own.

He staggers under the weight of an injury that matches mine.

He could’ve stopped me. Should’ve. Why…?

Never blunt your blade . It’s been drummed into me a million times—never hold back. No quarter given. No mercy owed. And certainly never damage your sharpest weapon.

Even now, the voice in my head barking the instructions is his.

Yet as he falls to one knee, he catches himself on the tip of his sword like it’s a walking stick rather than a blade to be kept honed. The ring of metal on stone cuts through the roaring in my ears.

He nods once, pain crinkling his features, then his weapon clatters to the floor, steel sparking unheeded.

My shadows rush in to cradle him.

For a long moment, all I can do is stare. “Why didn’t you block me?”

A faint smile curls his lips. “I can’t kill my son. Not even for this.”

“ Baba , you…” I shake my head. “You could’ve stopped me. You could’ve…”

“Today you stopped me.” He nods like this is right, and his breathing rattles. “Tell your athair … to remember…”

I drop to my knees and try to press on his wound, but I can see parts of him I shouldn’t and his blood slicks my hands. He shouldn’t be bleeding this much, not with the willow knot that lives in his pocket—a guard against a single mortal blow, gifted by one who loves him. A gift from my athair . “Your charm… where is it?”

“Tell him to remember… our promise…” His hand rests on mine, not quite closing, and as he blinks, his dimming eyes rest on my cloak.

I touch the pocket hidden in its folds and find something that crumbles, giving off a charred scent. I know the smell.

Ash. His charm used up saving me.

“You…” I shake my head.

He dips his chin. An admission.

He slipped it in my pocket instead of keeping it to save himself. Already the weakness from my injuries is abating. My throat is raw, so I can barely croak out the word, “Why?”

He knew I’d try to stop him. He knew I would betray him… or stay loyal to the queen. Two sides of the same coin.

“You are worth dying for. Worth fighting for.” His voice is barely more than a rasp in his chest. “Worth everything.” He smiles. “My boy.”

He gives me one more order, which just might be the hardest to obey.

And then he says nothing.

His mouth, his chest, his eyes—they’re all empty.

He’s gone.

I am alone.

The strength rushing back through me from the charm’s magic drives me to my feet, but I want to kneel. I want to die.

I should have died here. He is— was more experienced, more skilled, more everything than I am.

But I’m the one left standing and I can’t stay here and mourn my father. I have to turn away and get to the queen. I have to stride through the palace, finding a gaggle of loyal guards who stare at the state of my armour but follow my orders at once.

And all the while I wonder—how the hells am I going to tell Athair what I’ve done?