Page 35 of Bartered by the Shadow Prince (Bargain with the Shadow Prince #3)

The War of Plagues and Arrows

DAMIEN

“ M other?” I hold out my hands to her, disbelieving what I’m seeing. Is she a ghost? A conjuring of the witches?

She hands Catarina a large bundle of burlap, and the witch leans it near the door. Then my mother comes to me and wraps her fingers around mine. She’s real. As alive as I am. “Damien. My son. My prince.”

I stand and draw her into my arms and then grab Karyl, who waits quietly behind her, and hug them both at the same time. Tears stream down their smiling faces, but I don’t feel my own until I draw back and one skates over my cheek.

“We thought you were dead,” Karyl says between sobs. “The witches said you would come, but?—”

“Brahm told me you were dead,” I say.

“He thinks so, as does most everyone in New Stygarde.” Karyl glances toward our mother, adjusting her simple wool dress. Both of them are wearing the wardrobe of witches and not the shade textiles I’m accustomed to seeing them in. “Mom? Maybe you should?—"

“It was essential everyone truly believed we were dead,” Mother says.

I back up a step and sit down slowly, a heavy weight settling in the pit of my stomach. “The king… Father… He didn’t die of any wasting disease, did he?”

Mother shakes her head and turns to Karyl. “Help Catarina in the kitchen. I need to speak with Damien alone.”

Karyl curtsies and kisses me on the cheek, then follows Catarina into the adjoining room.

“You should finish your stew. You need your strength.” Mother picks up my forgotten bowl and hands it to me.

“Brahm was behind it all, wasn’t he?” Everything he’s told me has been a lie. I’ve underestimated my brother’s wickedness. All this time, I’ve placed the locus of my blame on Nevina, but if Mother and Karyl are alive, I can no longer linger under that delusion.

She smooths her dark hair, and I notice it has more gray strands in it than before.

Life here has not been easy for her. “There was never any wasting disease. Never any starvation in our castle. That is the elaborate lie they’ve tried to pass off as the truth.

Did he tell you that elves also died from this so-called plague?

” She scoffs. “Never. Lies. All Lies. Your brother and his elf mate’s zeal for power has led them to orchestrate a narrative to appease the masses and disguise their treachery. ”

“What is the truth?” I almost can’t bear to ask, but I have to know.

“After you were taken, the war raged on. Brahm was spending more and more time in a drunken stupor. He refused to take up a sword and fight for the kingdom, and he spent most of his time holding down a stool at a Rivertoad bar on the edge of Mount Damocles.”

“Of all places, a Rivertoad bar?” The Rivertoads are travelers, and any such bar would be no more than a covered cart pulled by rabble beasts.

Their liquor is nothing to write home about either.

The Rivertoads ferment anything they can pick or pillage.

Not the stuff normally fit for a prince.

For anyone with a little money, they could be dangerous as well. They are known mercenaries and thieves.

“By that time, no other establishment would have him. He’d been kicked out for fighting or not paying his tab, which was intentional.

You know he had plenty of money. After you were gone, your father started cracking down on his behavior.

He insisted that Brahm sober up and start acting like the shadow prince he was.

Brahm didn’t take it well.” She brushes some lint from her wool dress.

“Why am I not surprised?”

“His behavior became worse. First, he never left his bed. Then he wouldn’t eat.

He wouldn’t hunt. He argued with your father night and day.

Out of desperation, Malek took him to negotiations with King Adril in neutral territory.

As you know, we’d attempted to negotiate a peace settlement numerous times with the dark elves.

The meetings never lasted long. But Brahm met Nevina at that meeting.

Malek returned to Stygarde and joked that perhaps Brahm could serve a royal purpose after all.

He’d caught the two flirting. But Brahm never mentioned any interest in Nevina. ”

I raise an eyebrow. “But that changed…”

She purses her lips. “In the weeks that followed, Malek started showing signs of illness. Fatigue, inability to sleep, pains in his stomach. His hair began to fall out in clumps. Karyl and I started experiencing similar symptoms. Then Karyl went to visit Aunt Tempest for a few days. Her symptoms improved. Your father’s and mine grew worse.

We began to suspect something in the castle was making us ill.

“Malek became so sick, he took to his bed. That is when Karyl and I set out to find Aurora as you had suggested, Damien. We didn’t know she had already passed on.

We thought she might be able to use her magic to determine what was causing our symptoms and also help us cure Malek.

Brahm promised to stay and care for your father.

“We fell to the wraiths, just as you did, and were healed by Catarina. While we were out, she determined what had made us ill. Blackthorn root, an herb that only grows in Willowgulch and can only be prepared using elf magic. And the only logical way it could’ve ended up in our food was Brahm.

He was poisoning us with a potion he obtained from Nevina. ”

“Is he in his right mind? Is Nevina controlling him? Was she even then?”

Mother’s face grows ruddy with her tears, and she takes me by the shoulders.

“Oh Damien, how I wanted to believe that. But the drink and the depression changed him, and when your father pulled his allowance to try to rein him in, he unleashed something in your brother. Something dark and unforgiving.”

I draw a deep breath. “Tell me the rest of it.”

She nods. “Catarina aided us in sending word to Stygarde Castle.

As much as we longed to go back ourselves to warn Malek about Brahm, we were still regaining our strength and it was too dangerous.

She sent a raven so that we could see what it saw reflected in her magic mirror, and she tied a message to its leg for Malek.

The raven perched in our bedroom window, and we observed our deepest fear.

“Malek was bedridden and too weak to notice the raven or our message. Karyl and I planned to leave the following morning to get him out of there, but that night, in the silver, we watched Brahm creep into Malek’s room and slit his throat.”

Tears run down her face as if she’s living my father’s death all over again. My chest aches, the wound of grief reopened with this new understanding of his death. Eloise knew. She’d seen his ghost. Only now does the full truth sink in. I scrub my face with my hands.

“They buried him in the cemetery behind the castle, but Brahm made no sacrifice to Thanesia to help him cross over. He shed no tears. He killed every castle servant who had seen the king’s body after his death so that no one could dispute his claims of plague.

By this time, the umbrae were searching for us.

We’d been gone for almost a week. Catarina helped us again, planted a memory in the head of that child he’s taken as master of the guard, Banias, that we had been seen throwing ourselves into the river of lava at the base of Mount Damocles after we’d heard of Malek’s death.

“He didn’t believe it at first, but when a thorough search of the kingdom turned up no sign of us, he assumed we were dead.

Days later, we received official notice here, as guests of the kingdom of Dimhollow, that we had succumbed to the same plague as Malek.

We had a laugh over that, considering we were still alive and had planted the memory of committing suicide.

But Brahm wanted to control the narrative as much as to control Stygarde.

He and his new wife, Princess Nevina of Willowgulch, who Malek had supposedly married while he was still alive as part of a negotiated peace accord, were next in line to the throne.

Their coronation followed almost immediately. ”

My hands tremble where they hold her arms. The way she’s gripping me and I’m gripping her, it’s as if we’re holding each other together.

“It was him. It was all him. She helped him, yes. But Nevina could not have done it without Brahm’s assistance,” she says, shaking her head.

For hundreds of years, I’ve withstood war, captivity, torture, and been near enough to death to smell its fetid perfume, but this news breaks me.

I allow my mother to pull me into her arms as I howl, indulging for this one private moment the feelings of betrayal, grief, and pure rage that drive into me from every direction.

Because I know in my heart that Brahm is behind Eloise’s disappearance.

From the beginning, he wanted to control me, to make sure I was not a threat to him. He knows I’d do anything for her.

“He will pay,” I growl out. “I swear on the blood of our ancestors, he will pay. He will suffer tenfold by my hand for any pain or hardship brought upon Eloise, and then I will kill him to avenge Father’s death. I swear this here and now.”

When my mother draws back from me, she straightens to her full height, and it’s impossible not to see her as Queen Nyxadora, the true and rightful ruler of Stygarde. “Good. We have waited long enough, my son. Our kingdom needs us.”

I squeeze my eyes shut against the roar in my ears. “First, I must find my mate. Eloise is missing. I cannot help you until I have found her and know she’s okay.”

Nyx smiles. “My son, mated. She must be a remarkable woman.”

“She is.”

“We need Catarina.”

After a few words are exchanged, Catarina and Karyl join us again, and we each take a place around her table.

Catarina unveils a mirror that reminds me far too much of the one used in the vampire trials in Night Haven.

The witch passes a hand in front of the glass, mumbling words in a language I do not know.

The mirror grows foggy, and then an image breaks through the white smoke.

I see the forest—a raven’s-eye view as it flies toward Willowgulch.

“This is a memory,” Catarina says, noting the moon in the silver. “From several hours ago. I sense my raven is already on his way home to me.”

The raven soars around Dhegal prison, but there is no sign of Eloise there. Then it circles Blackspire Palace. I tense, praying for a clue to her location. Praying that she’s okay.

My prayers are answered. Through the window in Blackspire’s Great Hall, I see her, chained by the throat and hunched at Adril’s feet. Curse you Adril. Curse all your gods . She doesn’t look conscious, but she’s alive.

Karyl gasps. “Is that her?”

“Yes.” I seethe.

“Damien…”

“She’s alive. I can feel her still.” I rub my chest.

“Then you must go to her, my son. You must bring her back,” Mother says.

I rise. “I will go. Now.”

“Alone?” Karyl stands. “Maybe I can help.”

“It’s safer for me to go alone. Maybe, if we had another umbrae, we’d stand a chance. But as is, I must be surgical about my extraction.” I say honestly.

“Then you best take this,” Mother says. She returns to the door, to the bundle she’d carried in with her.

From within the nest of burlap, she draws out a massive silver blade that winks in the candlelight.

My blade. The one crafted of the finest Stygian steel and left on the battlefield when I was taken from this world.

Dawnbreaker .