Page 84 of Shadow Throne King

I had touched the black stone in the Lakeshore Palace, wondering what secrets it held, but I had never anticipated anything like this.

“This range was made from an ancient volcano, and they say that it is where fire dragons were born, that they grew only where lava heated their nests. The dragons may be dead, but the lava still bubbles in the depths. It moves over time, leaving behind the black stone, and somehow, our king has learned to listen through it. He can hear a conversation half the mountain range away, if those talking are speaking near a shard of black stone.” Vostop glanced at the doorway. “Those of us concerned for his behavior have removed as much as we could. We could not remove all of them—he would notice that. But there are areas of the tunnels that are free from his spying.”

“Was that who he was talking with?” I asked. “When we had an audience with him, he seemed to whisper to shadows.”

“No. Sadly, it is worse than that.” Vostop looked down, the heels of his hands resting on the tabletop. “Inor foundsomethingin the dark.”

He let his words hang in the air between us. Neither Tallu nor Koque spoke, leaving it to me. I thought of the monstrous creatures that had attacked us. Hadthosebeen badgers? “Something in the dark? The badgers you spoke of?”

“Inor used to be the greatest stone mage in our guild. Inanyguild. They said that he was so good at clearing stone that the badgers living in the dark would beg him to make their burrows in the winter.” Vostop looked away. “And when the Imperium threatened our borders, he was sure the only safety dwarves would have would be going deeper into the mountains. It wouldn’t matter what the Imperium could do, if we could dig deep enough to escape. He set out to prove that it was safe, that the stories of what was buried in our mountains were just tales from our grandmothers meant to scare us. Instead, he found the very monsters that the animalia created the Krustavian Mountains to trap.”

I frowned, blinking as I searched my memory for stories my mother had told.

“What creature was so terrible the One Dragon trapped it in the mountains?” I asked, thinking it was impossible.

“She did not trap itinthe mountains. There was one among the animalia whose crimes were so perverse that the One Dragon had dropped a mountain range on top of the monster so that it might never escape.” Vostop gestured around us. “Before that, there was no mountain range here. She created these mountainstotrap the animalia they called Centipede.”

“Centipede?” I asked. “My mother never told me of it.”

“Centipede is not a tale many would know,” Vostop said. “After delving deep, King Inor came back strange and with stranger powers. He said that the reason we have not seenbadgers in so long is that now they bow to Centipede and do as he says. He said that Centipede taught him the true manner of stone magic, and he would teach all of us, if we would follow him.”

Small claws climbed down my shoulder, and Naî lowered herself into my pocket, pressing her face into my hip.

I had a sudden uncertain feeling. Naî had promised to teachmemagic that no human had ever known. She had givenmepowers beyond what men could do.

“And did the people of Krustau follow him?” Tallu asked.

“He is our king not by birth but by right of his supreme skill,” Vostop said. “Of course we followed him. And we tried to learn from him, but we did not do so well. Then he said he could not teach us, inapt pupils that we were, and invited Maki to our palace, and now… well, you have seen him. I worry that the reason none of us could learn from him is that Centipede has done more than whisper in his ear.”

“Centipede has taken him over,” I said, thinking of Asahi and the insect that had grown in his neck.

“Yes.” Vostop nodded. “But his powers are too great now. And we cannot stop him. He could bring the entire mountain down if he wished, crushing us all.”

“But he doesn’t want that,” I said. “He wants to hunt, to maim in the dark, to frighten. Centipede does not injure to win quickly. He injures to torture.”

Vostop did not meet my eyes. “The other guilds have been losing members. More members than they should. More members than they usually do.”

“You think he’s doing something to them,” I said.

“I know that my cousin was a good man.” Vostop looked up, his eyes fixed on Tallu. “The Imperium has tried many times to conquer Krustau. They tried twice under my cousin’s reign alone, and my cousin led the fight against them. He has beenking for so long that I do not know what the throne will look like without him sitting on it, and yet…”

“I know what it is to have a mad king sitting on your nation’s throne,” Tallu said calmly, as though Emperor Millu had belonged to some other family and been someone else’s burden to bear.

Tallu looked at Koque and she looked back, the pair of them accepting that they had shared the burden of Millu, even if they might never have explicitly spoken of it. They both owned that Millu had only been propped up because Tallu had been unable to take that final step and kill his own father, no matter what the court whispered.

“Why did you do it?” Tallu asked, his eyes fixed on Koque.

The room was so silent that I wasn’t sure anyone in it was breathing. She sighed, looking down at her hands, clasped in her lap. I shifted on my pillow, unable to take the silence, but Tallu just waited.

“Your consort was not wrong.” She glanced at me, tilting her head as if acknowledging a point I had just made and not one from the day before. “Even when your father first started paying attention to me, I understood my time with him would be limited. You knew your father’s interests.Iknew your father’s interests.” She grimaced. “The entirecontinentknew your father’s interests. But if I bore him a child, if I gave him another son, then he would have to acknowledge me, even when I was too old to fit his very specific desires. Even when his promised empress came from the north, he could not make me disappear.”

“If you had guaranteed your position why kill him rather than stay and fight?” I asked. Eonaî never would have yielded to this woman, but, by the same token, I didn’t see Koque giving in when faced with competition.

“Because ofyou, Tallu.” Somehow, Koque managed to say the words calmly, her hands resting in her lap. “Because you andI both understand exactly what your first act as emperor would have to be. And I could not bear it. If I were to survive after the northern princess came, if I were not forced to relinquish my position to this young girl who had been trained to meet Millu’s every desire, then I would have to watchyoukill the son I bore when you ascended your father’s throne. I could not do it then, not even to save my own neck. And I cannot do it now.”

If she had been from the north, she would have drawn a blade, but instead, she raised her chin, staring Tallu down with all the force of someone raised in the imperial capital.

Tallu didn’t look away, and Koque nodded.