Page 2

Shadows

SALLIE ROSE

Thornie, don’t be mad.

I know, as my best friend, you’ll understand why I had to send you in my place.

In many ways, I have done you a favor. Unlike me, you have not had to live for twenty-four years with the certain knowledge that your twenty-fifth birthday would end life as you knew it.

I’m sure, if you really take some time to think about it, you’ll agree that I deserve happiness after a lifetime of dread. With Sir Paul.

Please know that I appreciate your sacrifice for the good of your best friend, the person who has kept you in luxury for all your life without any worries whatsoever. And I know you appreciate being able to play your part in ensuring I get the happy ending I deserve.

With warm regards,

S.

Weed worms and rocky soil! I can’t believe Princess Seraphyne’s audacity.

Okay, actually, I can.

Easily.

It’s my own bad luck more than anything that has me launching the foulest invectives I can think of at the carriage walls—before I go right back to screaming to be let out.

It only takes the few last ticks of the setting suns for me to stop, though. My dry throat is badly in need of water, and all my yelling only makes the pounding headache worse.

Also, it’s obvious that whoever’s driving the carriage isn’t going to answer.

Or feed me.

Or stop for bathroom breaks.

Both my stomach and my bladder are groaning by the time the carriage pitches back and starts ascending what I can only assume is a mountain.

The suns are long gone, and Sylvos, the moon my father prays to, is nowhere in sight. Everything on the other side of the carriage’s window is a murky black of looming shadows and howling shrieks I can only hope is the wind.

But, eventually, the carriage stops in front of a jagged silhouette of black spires and flickering lanterns.

The Stone Fae Castle.

More fortress than residence, it looms like it’s been carved from night itself, a collection of sharp angles and watchful turrets poking through a halo of drifting fog.

My heart drops to my stomach with a sickening thud.

Actually, I take that fortress comment back. It looks like a prison. A prison that a human with soft plant magic and not an iota of fighting skills could never hope to escape.

“Not so eager to be let out now, eh?”

I don’t realize that someone’s opened the other carriage door behind me until I turn to see an upright creature covered in off-white fur. His long, angular face is framed by a set of small curled horns, and tufts of pale-blue hair cling to his chin like an unkempt beard.

He wears a black-on-black uniform, so aggressively dark it blends into the shadows behind him, making him look like a disembodied head floating above a stiff collar.

“Please, there’s been a mistake!” I clamor out of the carriage with the exact opposite of the utmost comportment an Aralyssean royal is always expected to display. “I’m not Princess Seraphyne, and this letter proves it!”

I thrust it in his face.

The escort responds with an awful, mocking bray. “Think a Mountain Goat knows how to read, Princess?”

So, he’s one of the Mountain Goats. I’ve never seen one myself, having carried out most of my life behind the palace walls, but I heard that they were the only ones allowed to traverse the Stone Realm.

If you want to reach the Capital City by land, you either pay for an extremely expensive Mountain Goat escort, who both guide and pull the carriage, or risk the wrath of the Stone Fae horde for traveling without payment through their wastelands.

His delivery of the word “Princess” does not sound nearly as respectful as the tone I’ve been required to use with that title all of my life.

Also: “I’m not a princess. The only reason I know how to read and write is because my mother taught me along with the princess—the real princess. If you could just take that letter to someone who can decipher it?—”

“I can read.” Another male with brown fur and three sets of horns appears beside the first driver and snatches the letter from my hand with a cloven—and apparently opposable—hoof.

“Yup, yup…” he says as he reads over the letter.

“This was what I was afraid of when I saw they had to drug her just to get her into the coach.”

I breathe a huge sigh of relief. Thank goodness Princess Seraphyne left that letter explaining how she sent me in her place so that she?—

“The palace guard warned me that the princess was the cowardly type,” the brown Mountain Goat finishes. “Told me she’d do and say just about anything to convince us to turn back around.”

He shakes his head at the white goat. “That’s why I told you it was best to ignore her and not bother stopping until we reached our final destination, sprout horn.”

My heart stops. They don’t believe me, even with the letter.

“Wait,” I begin to say.

But before I can make my case, the brown goat balls up the parchment and tosses it over his shoulder. Just like that, my one lifeline out of this mess is swallowed by the mountain’s hulking shadows.

My blood runs cold with the realization: They don’t care who I truly am. Only that I showed up in white.

“Come on, Princess.” The first Mountain Goat shoves me forward with a rounded—but somehow still sharp—opposable hoof toward a set of castle doors.

Black, of course, and covered in obsidian studs that glitter in the low moonlight.

“The king’s not going to marry himself under the Eryx moon before he slits your throat right after the pledges are done. ”

“You’re not…” My heart clogs my voice box, and I have to swallow it down to ask, “You’re not serious about him killing me right after he marries me?”

More braying laughs.

“Sure, us Mountain Goats are known throughout the realms for our sparkling sense of humor,” the shaggier brown answers with another hard hoof shove that sends me stumbling forward.

I clamp my lips. Pray to a couple of the nicer moons. Then hopefully ask, “Are Mountain Goats known for?—”

“No,” the first goat answers flatly before I can finish.

“ Moist !” I curse in the old ancestral language that royals—and therefore their dutiful handmaidens—are required to learn. “Seriously, there’s been a mistake. If you could just let me go back and get that letter, I could show you that my handwriting looks nothing like hers?—”

The second goat cuts me off when he steps forward to rap three times on a massive set of ebony double doors. The doors creak open, seemingly of their own accord.

Is this kingdom powered by shadow magic then, as opposed to the light magic that my father and I inherited from a long ago fae ancestor? I suppose that would explain the black-on-black color scheme.

Papa … My last image of him flashes through my mind.

During my late-midday meal break, I found him in the palace gardens, bent over a bunch of wilting lavender, exacerbating his severe back hunch while working his weakened plant magic through arthritic fingers.

After shoving one of the meat pies I’d pilfered from the princess’s untouched tray into his hand, I’d happily handled the spell myself.

Afterward, as we ate our meat pies together, I’d been so excited to make him promises about what would happen when I took over his job the next morn.

“I’ve been reading about medicinal herbs,” I told him. “I’ve already talked to the palace healer, and he’s agreed to let me plant a garden behind his cottage. There’s a plant called mellura that can be turned into a paste we can rub on your hands to help with the pain.”

My father, who’d never learned to read, let out a proud chuckle at my ideas. “What I must have done right in my past lifetimes for Sylvos to bless me with a daughter like you.”

“Faster, Princess. Let’s not keep the king waiting!” the brown goat’s voice dissipates the memory.

But not the responsibility. I have to get back to Aralysse!

But how…?

I scan my surroundings, searching for anything— anything —that might serve as a weapon as we move down a hallway lit only by the occasional torch jutting from uneven sconces. But the space is so vast, so echoing and endless, it feels less like a hallway and more like a hall.

Having visited a few other castles in the Stone Realm as Princess Seraphyne’s handmaiden, I suspect it doubles as a place for balls and other events.

Like rituals that involve slitting your new bride’s throat.

I gulp when I spot a raised dais, which appears to be an altar to the Moon God Eryx, sitting smack in the middle of the space.

The structure is carved from dark stone so smooth it almost reflects the orange flicker of the torch.

Etchings crawl across its surface in deep, jagged lines, like veins or old scars, all converging on a basin at its center.

It’s shallow but large enough to fit a dead human body.

This is definitely the kind of place you’d choose to marry someone whose throat you were planning on slicing open right after.

My skin prickles, and my stomach turns at the thought of my short 25 years on this planet ending like that.

And before I can stop myself, I grab one of the burning torches off the wall. Then I whirl on the goats, swinging it in a wide arc. Not to hurt them—moons, no. I just need them to think I might.

“Ho!” the older brown goat says, rearing back along with his fellow escort. “What do you think you’re doing with that, Princess?”

No idea! My sudden move is fueled by pure desperation and not much else.

But I cut around the goats and start putting together a skeleton of a getaway plan as I make a run back toward the still-open entrance.

Maybe I can hide in the shadows outside. In a bright-white dress. Wait until sunsrise and make my way down the mountain. And across the vast wasteland. In the soft shoes all Aralysse servants are required to wear so as not to scuff the palace floors.

Whatever!

My panicking brain doesn’t care about reason. Only about getting out of this scary, horrible, fake-princess-killing nightmare and back to my widowed father, who needs me.

But just as I reach the entrance, the massive doors slam shut with a thunderous clap.

“I suppose we will have to do this the hard way," a voice says from somewhere above. It’s strange and dark.

Behind me, both of the goats bray in a way that no longer sounds amused. “Apologies, Sovereign. We didn’t mean to disturb you!”

Sovereign? Who is he speaking to?

In front of me, shadows twist and writhe, coalescing into a monstrous form.

My heart gives out in an instant, my legs weakening beneath me.

And then?—

BLACK.

Who knows how much time later, I’m waking up again with a parched throat and another terrible headache.

But this time the suns aren’t setting, and the world isn’t moving. I’m lying on what feels like a cold stone floor in a pitch-black room.

“What in the moons?” I scramble to my feet, even though I can’t see anything in the dark.

“Good, you’ve awakened,” someone says. The voice sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard before.

Deep and resonant as a funeral dirge, but raspy, with every syllable enunciated, like smoke curling over shards of glass that cut every word at a precise angle.

I vaguely remember it from earlier…

I suppose we will have to do this the hard way.

I debate whether to speak again. Or to stay as still as possible. I suddenly understand why songbirds cut off and freeze in place when us much bigger humans stand beneath their tree.

“Well, then? This is the part where you start screaming and crying and begging for your life.”

Is it?

My mind reels, trying to figure out what I should say—what I should do. You know, other than standing there paralyzed.

“By Eryx, I forgot your kind cannot see in the dark. Hold on.”

Somewhere directly in front of me comes the sound of flint scraping against… something.

I don’t even want to guess what.

Then the entire space is illuminated by a wrought-iron lamp.

Being held by the most fearsome creature I have ever seen.

Vast black wings spread wide. Glowing red eyes burn from within cracked gray skin.

His ears taper to sharp points, and black lips curl into a cruel smile.

At the center of his chest, a jagged emblem of blackened iron juts forth.

Shaped like a crest, its barbed edges appear fused to his stone-split flesh.

What in all the moons…?

The first sight of the creature behind that smoke-and-glass voice sends a chill lancing up my spine.

I have never—never in my life—known terror like this. To look upon him is to feel, in my very bones, every story, every whispered warning, made flesh.

He regards me with those burning red eyes, his fangs glinting in the lamplight.

Then he says, “Now, you may scream.”