Throne of Shadows Read online

  Throne of Shadows

  Book One

  By Emma Fenton

  Table of Contents

  Throne of Shadows

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  Enjoyed the Book?

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Dedication

  For Hannah, who asked for the most ridiculous bedtime stories.

  Chapter One

  Ria was late. She’d been so absorbed in her reading that she hadn’t noticed the time. She ran through the halls of the palace, sending a silent prayer up to the gods that the Council would not be too upset with her for being late to dinner. Not that they really care if I’m there, Ria thought as she skidded around a corner, almost knocking into a maid carrying a stack of bedsheets. But they’ll take any opportunity to criticize me.

  She slowed as she came to the doors of the dining chamber and straightened her dress, brushing a smear of dust from her bodice. Ria patted her hair, making sure the dark, unruly locks were still secured in her braid from this morning. Assured that nothing was out of place—or at least, no more out of place than usual—she straightened her back and pushed open the doors.

  The dining hall was warmly lit with dozens of candles, but it did little to soften the stern faces of the Council. The three men were seated near the head of the table, only leaving space for where the king and queen would have sat if they’d been present, and they did not look happy. Jaya, Ria’s older sister, sat next to them, a cruel grin twisting her sharp features into something smug.

  “How generous of you to grace us with your presence,” Jaya said. “We were beginning to worry about you.”

  Liar. Ria couldn’t remember exactly when she started to hate her sister, only that it was some time ago and the feeling was entirely mutual. Sibling rivalries were natural, their parents said, healthy even. Friendly competition, they called it, except there was nothing friendly about Jaya, and Ria wasn’t sure if there ever had been.

  “Well?” Jaya’s eyes flashed, her dinner knife held almost threateningly towards Ria. Patience had never been Jaya’s strong suit. “Don’t just stand there. Sit down.”

  Ria tried to ignore her sister, thankful for the dim candlelight and her dark complexion, both of which hid the unwelcome heat that had risen to her cheeks. Anytime Jaya graced Ria with her attention, it was only to find fault in her, and though Ria really should have been used to it after nineteen years, Jaya always knew just how to get under her skin. It didn’t help that the Council seemed content to pretend that nothing was amiss between the sisters; they’d never once bothered to come to Ria’s defense.

  Ria settled down in the seat directly across from her sister, ignoring the impatient sighs coming from her and the Council. The slight weight of a hand, warm through the thin sea-silk of her dress, rested on her right knee, and she relaxed against it. Mikhael. His face was a mask of polite disinterest, and he didn’t so much as glance in her direction, but underneath the table his thumb rubbed feather-light circles into her leg. It was no wonder he’d sensed her tension; after three years of engagement, there was very little that passed unnoticed between them.

  He was the only person Ria could count on, the only person who disliked Jaya almost as much as Ria did. Just a little longer, Ria thought, allowing herself to focus on Mikhael’s soothing, steady presence. They would be married in a matter of weeks, and then she would leave Helhath forever to go rule in Anor with him. She would never have to see Jaya or the Council again. She would be free.

  “As we were saying,” one of the Councilmen, Vili, said, lip curling as he glared pointedly at Ria, “the Pesh have reached out to see if we would be amenable to reopening trade with them.”

  He was the eldest on the Council by a good fifteen years, and he wore a stark white turban that matched his thinning beard. Tradition, he’d claimed years back when Ria asked him why he was the only person on the Council to wear a turban. Ria suspected that, in truth, Vili was simply balding and wished to keep it a secret from the two younger Councilmen.

  Slow and blurred, like trying to listen to a conversation underwater, a memory surfaced in Ria’s mind of a much younger Jaya holding her by the hand as they snuck into the Council’s meeting chamber. It was gone in an instant, and like so many of Ria’s early memories, she wasn’t sure if it was real or not. At times, she thought she recalled playing in the garden with Jaya, happy. But maybe that was the time Jaya convinced her to pick up a poisonous snake, resulting in a nearly fatal bite. And did Jaya pull her out of the frozen river when Ria was only six, or had she pushed Ria in?

  It doesn’t matter now, Ria thought, her eyes drifting towards Jaya once again. They’d been enemies too long. If there had ever been any love between them, it could never be recovered.

  Vili was still talking, albeit more vehemently now. “We have not traded with Pesh for two hundred years, and we won’t trade with those land-hungry bastards any time in the next two hundred. Not on my life.”

  Ria resisted the overwhelming urge to roll her eyes. For a man who looked like he should have died yesterday, Vili was always swearing on his life. She had no idea of his true age, but he’d been an old man even in her childhood. She didn’t expect he’d be alive to enforce an embargo against Pesh for two more years, let alone two hundred.

  “You’re right, of course,” a new voice said, this one clear and uninhibited by age. Ria knew it immediately; Lord Izan was a high-ranking noble who had the unfortunate burden of being Jaya’s fiancé. Ria might’ve pitied him if she didn’t think that he was just as cruel as Jaya and twice as subtle. They probably deserved each other. “Pesh won’t settle for a trade deal. We open our ports to them, and the next thing you know, Helhath will cease to exist. They’ve wanted our land for centuries. We’d be fools to assume that’s changed.”

  “Pesh doesn’t have a navy big enough to challenge us by sea,” Ria said, unable to stop herself.

  Silence fell over the room, every pair of eyes trained on her. Ria swallowed. I shouldn’t have said anything. Why did I say something?

  “Because you know so much about fighting,” Jaya said, eyes dark and sharp. “Remind us, Ria, how are your sparring lessons going?”

  She paused, and Ria narrowed her eyes.

  “Oh, that’s right,” Jaya continued. “You quit them. To pursue—how did you phrase it—a more intellectual education.”

  “Swinging a sword around has nothing to do with whether or not Pesh has a competent navy,” Ria said. “Which you would know if you bothered to read once in a while.”

  “How dare you—”

  “Honoria,” Vili said, cutting Jaya off with his stern, rasping voice. Under his scrutinizing gaze, Ria was a small child again. And children did not speak at dinner. “I hardly think you know enough about our history—”

  Ria clenched her fists under the table while Mikhael’s grip on her knee tightened. How dare he talk as if she hadn’t been studying every day with the Elder Scholar for the past three years? As though she wasn’t just as well-versed as any of the Councilmen in strategy, international relations, or her own country’s history. As though she was just a little girl playing pretend at the adults’ table.

  B
ut Lord Izan held up his hand. “Let the princess speak.” She didn’t think she imagined the condescension in his tone or the half-sneer pulling at his lips. “Since she knows so much about trade politics. What would you do, your highness?”

  She swallowed and focused on the feel of Mikhael’s hand on her knee. His grip was bruising, but it grounded her.

  “Pesh has many valuable resources,” she said, wetting her lips. “We trade with Etheri to get these resources, but we pay nearly twice as much because the middle men take their cut. Dealing directly with Pesh would be more economically efficient.”

  “Possibly,” Lord Izan said, squinting at her. His eyes reminded her of a shark: cold and predatory. “But you fail to account for our long history with the Pesh. It’s not just about numbers.”

  “A hundred years is a long time. Perhaps they are ready to let the past be,” Ria countered, gritting her teeth. “I do not disagree with your caution, Lord Izan, but we would be foolish to outright refuse peace negotiations.”

  Before Izan could respond, another of the councilmen, Nasir, cleared his throat. Despite his relative youth—his dark hair untouched by gray, his skin unwrinkled—he had a commanding presence that rivaled that of the senior councilmen. Everyone’s attention shifted to him.

  “Princess Honoria has perhaps forgotten that she is learning to manage the politics of Anor, which are more prone to taking such…risks,” he said almost lazily. He offered a tight smile to Mikhael. “Helhath is not Anor.”

  “No,” Mikhael agreed. His lips were pulled into an imitation of Nasir’s, but his eyes were alight, sharp. “In Anor, we don’t continue to fear our enemies after we’ve defeated them.”

  The men at the table erupted into a heated argument, each one yelling louder and louder in an attempt to be heard over the ruckus. Ria gulped down the contents of her goblet. If only you’d kept quiet, she reprimanded herself.

  She met Jaya’s eyes across the table. The older girl sneered at her. Look what you’ve done, Jaya’s eyes seemed to say. You ruin everything.

  Ria’s chair scraped against the stone floor as she stood, but the sound was lost to the clamor of the argument raging on around her. No one but Jaya saw her flee the dining hall.

  ***

  The room was dark, lit only by the faintest sliver of moonlight through her window, and silent except for the soft hush of her breath. Ria hadn’t been able to sleep. The ordeal from dinner was playing on a cycle in her head as if a travelling troupe had rolled into town, but they only knew one scene from one tragedy, and they insisted on performing all night. At least with the travelling troupes, you could pay them to leave. This? This she was stuck with.

  Tap. The sound was loud enough to interrupt her thoughts. A brief pause. Tap. Tap. Another pause. Tap.

  Ria slipped out of bed and crept towards her door. It was late, far past the time they usually met, and she was grateful, not for the first time, that her chambermaid Sofi had taken to spending the darkest part of night with the butcher’s son instead of sleeping next to Ria like she was supposed to.

  She cracked open the door, squinting against the sudden brightness of the well-lit hallway. Mikhael stood in her doorway, tall, and pale, and golden, still dressed in his dinner clothes. She grabbed him by the arm and tugged him inside. Engaged or not, if anyone saw him standing outside her door at this hour, there would be rumors. Only some of them would be untrue.

  “I wasn’t expecting you,” she confessed as she closed the door behind them. After the spectacle at dinner, she was frankly surprised that he wanted to see her at all. She still couldn’t believe that she’d argued with the Council. And in public too. She was afraid to look up at him, afraid to see if he was cross with her, or worse, embarrassed by her.

  His hands, eternally warm despite Helhath’s frigid winter, cradled her face, tilting it up so that she could meet his eyes. Despite the dim light of the room, Ria still marveled at their color: pale, green-gray like smooth sea-glass. He was handsome in a severe, icy way. Everything about him was crisp from his defined jaw to his eyebrows, his high cheekbones to his mouth. The only imperfection, if it could be called that, was his nose, slightly crooked from being broken once when he was younger.

  “I can leave, if you prefer.” Mikhael’s thumb brushed over the small, dark mole under her left eye. She leaned into his touch, eyes fluttering closed for a second.

  “Stay for a moment,” she breathed. “Please.”

  He hummed in response and brushed a strand of her thick, black hair behind her ear. His hand lingered, winding the strand around his forefinger, then unwinding it and starting again. He was quieter than usual, more pensive. Any other night, the silence would have soothed her, but now she could barely stand it.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, cursing internally as her voice cracked. Mikhael despised weakness, and though he could calm her nerves and offer her reassurance, his patience had limits. “For dinner. I didn’t mean to start a commotion.”

  His mouth curved into a small, rare smile. “I started the commotion. Or that idiot Nasir. Not you.”

  “But he was right! Why would I know better than the Council? I shouldn’t have said anything—”

  “You,” he said, suddenly serious, “are going to be my wife. When you sit by my side, no one will dare to silence you.”

  Mikhael leaned down, closing the short distance between them to brush their lips together. It was soft, lighter than a southern breeze, and just a few seconds too long to be completely innocent. Ria felt the warmth rush to her cheeks as she leaned towards him. It seemed a miracle that he’d chosen her, she thought. Everyone always wanted Jaya. Jaya who was strong, who could fight as well as any man, who commanded attention whenever she walked into the room. There was nothing gentle about Jaya; she was all lean muscle and sharp features. Ria felt unbearably soft in comparison. Breakable. Inadequate.

  But never with Mikhael. He pulled back from the kiss slowly.

  “I should go,” he murmured, still close enough that his breath was warm on her face. Ria nodded, unable to form the appropriate words. He smiled as he stepped back from her, catching her hand in his. His eyes searched hers, caught somewhere between serious and teasing.

  “If I wanted a quiet wife, Ria, I would have picked someone else.”

  And then he brought her hand up to kiss the back of her knuckles. Ria’s own skin was dark like aged bronze, and next to her Mikhael looked nearly translucent, like some sort of apparition. He was quiet like one too, and quick, and he slipped away without a sound, leaving her alone in the dark room which suddenly felt much larger than it had before. Only the tingling on the back of her hand where his lips had touched reminded her that he had been there at all.

  ***

  Her hair was not cooperating. She had tried everything: washing it, brushing, braiding it. It didn’t matter; the black mass was relentlessly frizzy and uncontainable. This is mutiny, Ria thought in disgust. There was only one solution: she’d have to cut it all off.

  She made it halfway to the scissors on her table before Sofi came up behind her and slapped her hand away.

  “And ruin your pretty hair?” the curvier girl admonished, shaking her head. She ran her nimble fingers through Ria’s hair, detangling it as she went. If Ria didn’t know better, she’d have sworn it was magic. “What would your prince say?”

  Ria’s fingers tapped against her collarbone, and she relaxed into the quiet patter of skin against skin. “Maybe he would say a queen can do whatever she wants with her hair.” In the reflection in the mirror, Ria saw Sofi’s lips twitch into a smile.

  “Then—” Sofi gave Ria’s hair a sharp tug, forcing it to bend to her will “—as you are not yet a queen, you’ll keep away from those scissors.”

  Ria scowled but kept quiet as Sofi pulled her hair into a painfully tight braid. At least it was manageable like this and out of the way. Even if it did make her head hurt.

  “There,” Sofi said, standing back to admire her handiwork with a sa
tisfied smile. She placed her hands firmly on the princess’s shoulders and gave her a light push, guiding her towards the door. “Now go before you’re late for your lessons.”

  “But breakfast,” Ria complained, her stomach grumbling.

  Sofi gave her a knowing look. “If you’d woken up at a reasonable time, you wouldn’t have missed it.” She opened the door and practically pushed Ria through it. “Get.”

  Ria stumbled out into the hallway, directly into the path of two councilmen deep in conversation. Their heads were bent together, whispering and not at all paying attention to their surroundings. Ria didn’t see them until she turned from the door and found herself reeling backwards to avoid being trampled by them. A tanned hand shot out and grabbed her by the elbow to steady her.

  Nasir’s face was the pinnacle of concern. “Are you alright, princess?”

  She tried to suppress her involuntary revulsion at his hand on her arm and removed herself from him as quickly as was polite. “Quite.”

  “Our princesza is still clumsy, I see,” the other man said with a chuckle. Ria smiled at him. Out of the three Council members, Paavo was the only one who still called her princesza—little princess. He had always been her favorite, almost like a grandfather. The wrinkles around his eyes crinkled in amusement. “Don’t you have lessons with the Elder Scholar, Ria?”

  “Yes, sir.” She bowed her head slightly to him. “Excuse me.”

  As soon as the councilmen were around the corner, she ran through the hall and up the flight of stairs. It was inelegant to run in the palace, or so they’d been telling her, but even at a sprint, she slid through the library doors barely a minute before her lesson time. She was getting out of shape, she thought as she leaned against a bookshelf gasping for air. Since her engagement at sixteen, she hadn’t been required to attend the sparring sessions Jaya was subjected to. Instead, she was encouraged to pursue diplomatic studies with the Elder Scholar. Ria couldn’t say that she missed her daily humiliation at Jaya’s hands or the bruises that came with it, but even so, she had to admit that perhaps it would have been wise to keep up some sort of exercise routine.