Page 5 of Boundless

It hadn’t been so easy before, though. The shadows hadn’t been able to read my mind like they were doing now, detach from the floor, and rise toward the fallen Midnight King.

I was half surprised myself to find them pulling him up and straightening his body, moving him just off the side of the dais, holding him up over a box of complete darkness—just like I’d imagined it in my head a moment ago. Eyes closed. Hands folded over his chest.

The former king looked asleep.

Something moved inside me, but I wasn’t sure if it was regret. I wasn’t sure if it was sorry.I wasn’t sure if it was thenothingI felt for this man.

Nobody said a single word as they watched me. All their eyes were on me. If I’d only had my ears, I’d have though I was alone. The sound of my footsteps as I climbed up the dais and to the throne chair was the only sound in the room.

A throne.

A fucking throne made of shadows.

I sat on it before my legs gave, or before I exploded and broke the bones of every person watching me with that shock and that disgust, which really wasn’t anything new. I sat on the throne and looked down at them, burning still. Under my skin. In my very bones.

“The…the…”

A man spoke.

He was older than the rest of the group, if I had to guess, a short beard over his cheeks, his hair sleeked back, his dark eyes gleaming.

“The king is dead.”

Those were the words he said.The king is dead.

I looked at the body of the fallen king, still lying peacefully over the box of shadows.

“Your king is not dead. He is very much alive.”

Raja, who was standing at the bottom of the dais with her back turned to me, looking at the newcomers—who could only be high-borns, generals and advisors and whatever else a king was supposed to keep around himself as a council or assembly, to rule a court—turned and waved a hand at me.

She was a mess. Grey dress torn and stained with blood. Hair all over the place—but her eyes were as fierce as ever. Her spirit was bright.

“But if you meanthat,then…” She turned to the other side, to the body of the fallen king, and flinched. On purpose, for all of them to see. “Yes, Helem is very much dead.”

“This is…” A shaking head from a woman who stepped forward, a thick black braid over her shoulder. She had the layers of her velvet dress in her shaking fists as she looked up at me. “This isoutrageous!To come here and to challenge the king?—”

The soldiers moved.

Two of them broke formation and stepped forward, closer to the dais, hands on their swords, eyes on the woman who had planned to take another step closer.

She stopped speaking, the look on her face that ofhorroras she watched the guards.

Any other day, I might have smiled.

“I did not challenge the king.” My voice echoed in the room, the sound of it cleaner. “He challenged me.” And I’d known the moment the throne disappeared that his challenge took. The palace recognized me as a potential heir, bastard or not.

Then it accepted me as king.

Which was wrong—so fucking wrong. This was not how it was supposed to be. None of this was how it was supposed to be.

“A challenge cannot merelybe held. There are rules—there needs to be a process, and-and witnesses—” Again, that same man.

“Don’t speak to me about rules. A king can ask for a duel any time he pleases. All that is required is two eyewitnesses. Here, there were seven,” said Raja, waving a hand at the soldiers with a small smile on her face.

She was enjoying this, Raja. Thoroughly.

Meanwhile, I was trying to keep myself from throwing up.