Page 4 of Beyond the Shadowed Earth

Outside, the rain fell harder, sharp as stones on the tile roof. Lightning flashed, and thunder answered with a resoundingcraaaackthat shook the whole palace.

Eda’s eyes were drawn to the foot of the table, where a figure stood suddenly beside Niren, its clothes or body made of rippling shadow. Eda stared, horror freezing her in place. For a moment, the figure raised its head, fixing Eda with those shining eyes she remembered so well from her childhood.

“Tuer.” The god’s name dropped from her lips in the barest whisper.

He didn’t speak, just touched Niren’s brow with one shadowy hand.

Niren’s forehead creased in pain, and Eda cried out and leapt toward her.

But then she blinked and the shadow-god was gone. She stood trembling in the center of the council chamber, rain pounding on outside the shuttered window, lamps flaming orange from their wall sconces.

All the courtiers were staring at her.

Eda didn’t care. She couldn’t take her eyes off of Niren, off the faint shadowy marks that lingered on her friend’s forehead where the god had touched her.

Dread pooled in Eda’s stomach, a terror awakening that had never been real to her until this moment. “How long since the stone ran out?” she asked quietly, to no one in particular.

“Your Imperial Majesty?” said Domin, the youngest Baron, confused she would go back to harping on the temple at this moment.

“Howlong?” she shrieked.

“What’s wrong, Your Imperial Majesty?” asked Niren. Sweatwas beading on her brow, though she didn’t seem to notice.

“Construction stopped yesterday,” offered the Baron of Tyst. “Does it matter?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Eda demanded, trying and failing to conceal her panic.“Why didn’t you tell me?”She couldn’t look away from the marks on Niren’s forehead, the spots of shadow, sinking into her.

Gods gods gods.Eda hadn’t thought this would happen so soon—she hadn’t thought it would happen at all.

She’d thought Tuer would give her more time.

They discussed her fate like she was a hound or a chair—to be put aside and forgotten. They didn’t even wait until her parents’ burial.

She stood outside her father’s office the night after they died, listening like the shadow they thought she was. Lamplight flickered orange in the hall, shadows dancing. Her nightgown hung off her thin form, overlarge since the illness that had taken her parents but not her. She trembled, even though the air was warm, and put her ear to the door.

“She can’t inherit, that much is obvious.”

“A regent, then. But who?”

“I know you’re itching for the job, Rescarin.”

“I’m a cousin, of a sort. It makes sense.”

“We’ll take it to the Emperor.”

“But you’ll support me?”

“If you’ll keep the size of my army from him.”

“You know that’s treasonous, Lohnin.”

They both laughed, and she didn’t understand how anyone could laugh when her parents lay as cold as marble two rooms away.

“But what to do with the girl?” asked Lohnin.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“We have to do something with her. We can’t just throw her out in the desert and forget about her entirely.”