Shadows (Book Two of the Accalia Series)

Shadow Realm

Atlas's POV — Five Years Before the Final Battle

Peace. What was that?

There was no peace for a king who carried an entire kingdom. Especially one with no queen beside him to help carry it.

I stood on the balcony of my room, looking out over Draconis — my kingdom. The castle behind me was nine hundred years old, its black stone rising nearly three hundred feet, the highest towers brushing the yellow clouds. From up here, the whole realm spread out below: the homes of the families closest to the royals, then the extended families and friends beyond them, and past all of that, Azure Lake.

The lake was a gift from our god, Typhon — mystical, three miles wide, lined with flowers my mother had arranged to be planted before she disappeared six months ago. Its water healed any dragon who entered it, soothing injuries that nothing else could touch. My father had retreated there after she vanished. He hadn't left since.

We had searched everywhere for her. Other realms, other lands. Nothing. My soldiers still went out every day, because I had to have hope. My father had none left.

The Drakos family had ruled this kingdom for eons. We were not the most powerful by accident. Our name was feared and respected across the realm in equal measure, and as long as a Drakos sat on the throne, the kingdom would be protected.

Our primary threat came from the witches — specifically the witch kingdom, whose members tried regularly to breach the barrier that separated our territories. Their magic was strong, but ours was older and more deeply rooted. I had suspected for some time that they were behind my mother's disappearance, but there was no evidence to support it, and no trail to follow.

What made the Drakos line what it was came from our god directly. Typhon had blessed my family with the ability to transform — to become dragons. Not symbols of power, not metaphor. Actual dragons. We shifted at will. We flew. In human form, we could breathe and direct fire. Our dragons lived inside us the way a wolf lived inside a werewolf — a second voice, a second consciousness, a second and deeper version of ourselves.

My dragon was named Kai. His voice in my head was a lower, raspier version of my own, and we had never been separated in any meaningful sense.

Some of us carried additional gifts. My uncle Ellis could reach into the mind of anyone he chose — ideal for extracting the truth from prisoners. My younger brother Adam had the ability to teleport and open portals, which he used whenever it suited him, which was constantly. Between the two of us, I was the firstborn, which meant the throne had always been mine. That meant harder training, higher expectations, and the kind of pressure that had shaped everything about who I was.

I was a hothead by nature — all male dragons were, to some degree. Only a true mate had the power to genuinely quiet that fire. Since I hadn't found mine, I had learned to manage it myself.

Adam was less disciplined about controlling himself and had taken a chosen mate — something our God did not sanction. Typhon worked alongside the other gods and goddesses to create true matches, and going against that choice always cost something, eventually. Adam had found his chosen mate, a woman named Sorena, a few months ago, and claimed to love her. Sorena was a witch, which did not sit well with me. My contempt for witches was not something I had ever tried to hide. But Adam had explained that she had been shunned and cast out by the witch kingdom, mistreated by her own people, and I had instructed my uncle to read her mind under compulsion to confirm it.

She told the same story every time. With the same expression. I allowed her to stay — mostly for Adam's sake. Without her, his temper was becoming unmanageable, and I knew what unmanaged dragon rage led to.

We called it the madness. It started with a heightened temper — worse than our already considerable default. Then patches of skin would begin to scale. The eyes would shift, taking on the slit-pupiled look of the dragon beneath the human face. Rational thought would begin to erode, replaced by the need to destroy. The human part of a dragon was the only thing that kept the beast from taking over entirely — and when that broke, the final stage began. Full transformation, permanent. The dragon in control, and no version of the person left to speak to. No one had ever come back from that stage. The dragon burned until it died.

The lake water had been slowing my father's progression since we lost our mother. It healed him, but at a rate too slow to outpace the grief. He had not transformed into his black dragon in years. Black dragons ran in the royal line, each one marked by a streak of individual color that identified them. I was the only member of my family born without a streak, though Kai had told me one day it would come.

Kai's voice came to me now, quietly, as I stood on the balcony.

Just another typical day in the house of Drakos,

he said, and I exhaled in tired agreement.

I heard Adam arrive behind me before I smelled him, which was saying something.

"You always seem so far away," he said, coming to stand beside me.

"The throne requires it," I told him. "It's not that I can't do it. It's that sometimes I feel like it could be taken from me at any moment. It's all I've ever known. And I still haven't found my mate. Who am I, without the crown?"

"My annoying older brother," he said, and put his arm around my shoulder.

I said nothing but shook my head slowly.

"Sorena says come eat before she portals up here and drags you down herself," he said, and disappeared.

I stayed a moment longer.

There was something about Sorena that I had never been able to name. A familiarity that didn't have a source. Kai couldn't explain it either. She belonged to Adam, and I had no intention of acting on something I barely understood. I had never been without options in that department, and I kept things clear in my mind. Still, the feeling persisted, and I couldn't make it stop.

Knowing Sorena would follow through on her threat, I made my way to the kitchens. The castle was extraordinary even after years of living inside it — carved oak stairs, marble floors, thirty floors each with its own character and design, staff who seemed genuinely glad to be there because I had never treated them as less than anyone else. That came from my mother. I carried it for her.

As I reached the kitchen, I could hear them before I saw them — the heated debate about whatever show had absorbed everyone's evening. I walked in, and every person at the table stood until I sat.

I had always found this custom unnecessary. None of them wanted to change it.

I took my seat at the head of the table and looked around. Uncle Ellis at the far end — my most trusted advisor, second in command of my army, the closest thing I had to a second father. His black hair and tired green eyes were ageless in the way that older dragons sometimes became. Beside him sat his wife Katrina, who was as much a mother to me as any woman could have been, and their daughters Destiny and Kimmy, nearly fourteen. Kimmy took after Katrina — blonde, brown-eyed. Destiny had Ellis's black hair.

On my right sat Adam, who looked like our father, all dark hair and hazel eyes. Beside him, Sorena. Black hair. Purple eyes that always seemed to see further into you than you had given permission for.

Past them were my cousins Parrish and Paris — twins, nearly eighteen, the same as me. Their coming-of-age ceremony would happen on their birthday: a bath in Azure Lake to unlock the dragon spirit within and allow the first transformation. If Typhon chose to bless them with additional abilities, they would know that night.

The room was loud. It had once been fuller. Since our mother vanished, the table had felt like it was missing something it couldn't name.

I tuned out the noise and ate. And then I felt it. Eyes on me. I didn't need to look to know whose.

"You're avoiding me," Sorena's voice said in my mind, clear as if she had spoken aloud.

"I've just wanted space," I told her, keeping my eyes on my plate. That was half true. The full truth was that one look from her made me feel something I had no business feeling, and she was my brother's mate, and I had been doing everything I could to create distance since I recognized it.

Her purple eyes pressed at mine until I held them long enough to make a point, then looked away.

"If you say so, Atlas," she replied, and turned back to the group.

I looked up and caught Uncle Ellis watching me. He had known, of course. Nothing was hidden from him. The look he gave me was the same one he had been giving me for weeks — a quiet, clear warning. I suspected he was also the reason no one had been pushing me about dinner lately.

Around two in the morning, I was in my room reviewing a report on witches caught near the outer barrier when someone knocked. I hadn't summoned anyone. As I approached the door, I smelled her. Why was she here at this hour? I opened it. Sorena. A black lace nightgown, hair over her shoulders, no good reason to be standing at my door.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"Can I come in?" she said.

I looked both ways down the hall — no one visible, but visibility wasn't the point. I let her in and closed the door, and when I turned around she was already on my bed, the nightgown gone, something thin and black in its place.

"Get out, Sorena," I told her.

Her eyes went hurt. She started to say she had thought — and I already knew what she had thought, because I had been careless. The glances, the playful contact — I had let it go on too long before I pulled back, and she had read it as invitation.

"You weren't thinking," I said. "Go back to your room and don't come to mine again unless it's something that can't wait."

She raised her hand. I recognized the motion immediately and I was across the room in a second, pinning her to the wall by her throat.

"This room is spelled against witchcraft," I said. "Don't try that again. Ever."

I watched her eyes water and dropped her to the floor.

"Get out," I said, and held the door.

She left without a word.

I closed the door and stood in the silence of my room. She was lucky she was the thing keeping Adam's dragon contained, because otherwise Kai and I would not have been so restrained. And I knew — as I turned it over in the quiet — that the blame wasn't only hers. I had been careless. I should have put a stop to it long before it reached this point. I hadn't been paying close enough attention.

I had no idea, in that moment, how much that inattention was about to cost me.