Chapter 8: The Body Without a Shadow | The Bride Whose Shadow Chose the King

Without Nima, Elara's body felt badly assembled. Mirrors showed her face a fraction late. A guard's glamour made the corridor bend, and she had no second sight to tell her where the lie began.

Rhyse confined her to the armory while Seris prepared a rescue. Elara waited exactly five minutes before taking the key from the unconscious guard who had tried to stop her. The man lived. She had no desire to become Maelin merely because Maelin had trained her well.

Tavin met her in the lower passage, wrists bound in a loose knot he had clearly learned to escape. "Seris let you out?"

"Seris would disapprove of the phrasing."

He gave a wounded laugh, then held out a stolen document. It was Maelin's severance order, signed three weeks before the wedding. Beneath it was a payment schedule to Caelen's Sun Guard.

"I sent copies to every Veyran commander," Tavin said. "They will know what she intended for you."

"And your oath?"

"My father swore it when he accepted Maelin's protection. I obeyed because I thought obedience made me useful." He met her gaze. "It made me owned."

The Sun Tower door opened before them. Inside, Nima hung in a web of gold, her darkness poured into a crown on Caelen's altar.

"Elara," Nima called, voice cracking from the metal. "He is using me to open the Gate."

Caelen stepped from behind the altar. He wore no weapon. That was the weapon.

Elara looked up at the web. Nima's outline had been stretched so thin that the familiar line of her shoulders barely remained. Every time the gold tightened, a memory surfaced behind Elara's eyes: rain on a window; Maelin saying be grateful; a little girl's fury swallowed because there was nowhere safe to put it.

"Names are not coins," Elara said.

Caelen's expression warmed with false patience. "Everything is a coin at court. Your aunt merely taught you to spend yourself cheaply. I am offering a better exchange."

Tavin moved first. He threw the burned severance order into the brazier beneath the altar. The paper flared red, and the oath-mark in his palm answered. He cried out but did not pull away. The gold web flickered.

"You will die for a document?" Caelen asked.

"No," Tavin said through his teeth. "For the fact that she should never have needed it."

Seris dropped from the gallery onto the altar steps. Her sword caught the nearest gold strand. Metal screamed. Caelen's guards rushed her; Elara caught a fallen spear and used its shaft to bar the door. It was not graceful. It was enough.

Nima pushed a thought into Elara's mind. The crown above him. The piece he stole from me is inside it.

Elara saw the black pulse in Caelen's temporary coronet. She ran for the altar. Caelen caught her wrist, and the contact filled her mouth with the taste of sunlight on blood.

"You are afraid of being used," he said softly. "So am I. We could be honest about that."

"You confuse honesty with announcing your cruelty."

She drove the knife from her sleeve into the gold thread around his hand. The oath flared. Caelen released her. Nima fell free, not whole but moving.

Rhyse entered as the tower roof split open. Moonlight struck the altar. For one breath Elara thought they had won.

Then Caelen stepped backward into the light, carrying a sliver of Nima's darkness in his crown, and vanished through the roof toward the Thorn Gate.