Shadows Of Throne

The executioner's blade gleamed in the morning sun, but Lyra Blackwood was not afraid to die. She was afraid to live. "Kneel," the guard commanded, his voice rough as gravel, the courtyard of Thornhaven Castle fell silent, three thousand nobles holding their breath, waiting for the traitor's daughter to meet her end. Lyra's knees hit the stone, and the cold seeped through her thin prison dress, but she kept her spine straight. She kept her eyes on the horizon, where the Black Mountains carved jagged teeth against a bleeding sky. Let them watch, she thought. Let them remember how House Blackwood falls. "Any last words?" the executioner asked. His mask was a skull of polished silver, anonymous and merciful. Lyra smiled, it was not a prisoner's smile, it was the smile her mother had taught her, the smile of a woman who knew secrets that could unmake kingdoms. "Tell King Aldric," she said, loud enough for the front rows to hear, "that the debt he owes my father comes due today, in blood." Murmurs rippled through the crowd, the executioner hesitated, blade hovering. That hesitation saved her life. "STOP!" The voice cracked like thunder, but not loud. A voice used to being obeyed. The crowd parted as if cut by an invisible sword, and through the gap walked Prince Kaelen Thorne—the King's Shadow, the Nightmare of the North, and the man who had personally burned her father's stronghold to ash six months ago. He wore black armor etched with silver runes that seemed to move in the corner of her eye. No crown, he didn't need one. Power coiled around him like smoke, and where he walked, flowers died. Lyra had seen him once before, through a window, while her world burned, he had been laughing. He wasn't laughing now. "Rise," he commanded her. "I was told to kneel," she said. Something flickered in his gray eyes. "You're already dead, little traitor, what more can they take?" Everything, she wanted to say. They can take everything, but she rose, her chains clanked, heavy enough to bruise her wrists. She met his gaze and did not look away. Prince Kaelen studied her the way a wolf studies a deer that refuses to run, curious and hungry. "The King requires a new court poisoner," he said. "Your father taught you his craft, did he not?" "He taught me many things." "Then consider this your apprenticeship." He turned away, dismissing the executioner with a gesture. "Come, Lyra Blackwood. Prove you're more useful alive than dead." He began walking toward the castle's obsidian gates, the crowd stared, and the guards stared, even the executioner stared, blade forgotten in his hands. Lyra stood frozen, this was not salvation, this was a different death, wearing a prettier mask. "You're giving me a choice?" she called after him. Kaelen stopped and looked back, and for just a moment, the mask slipped, the perfect prince, and the ruthless killer, and she saw something else, something tired and something hunted. "No," he said. "But I'm giving you time." Then he vanished into the shadows of the throne room, and Lyra Blackwood, daughter of traitors, heir to secrets, girl who should have died, followed him into the dark. She didn't know, then, that she was walking into a war older than the kingdom itself. She didn't know that Prince Kaelen Thorne had killed three poisoners before her. She didn't know that in six months, one of them would sit on the throne, and the other would be in chains. But she would learn.