Page 2 of Shadowed

I am going to get her those shoes if I have to rob the Iron Vault. I tell myself this at least once a week. The Iron Vault remains unrobbed. The shoes remain theoretical.

Tommy. Eight years old, still drawing pictures of our family with five figures in them. Still believing Da is coming back. Still the only one of us who hasn't figured out that four is the correct number.

I sit on the floor by the door and pull the documents from my coat. Fourteen sheets. Thirty-two names. Seven routes. Morrow will want these—Morrow wants everything, provided the price is low enough to make him feel he's cheating you—and if he pays fair I'll have enough for the rent, Elena's shoes, and maybe, if I'm very lucky and the chandler doesn't raise the price again, Marcus's coat.

If. The whole of my life runs on if. If the locks open. If the fences pay. If nobody gets sick. If nobody gets caught. If nobody asks too many questions about why their eldest sister sleeps on the floor, comes home smelling like fog and other people's houses.

I put the documents under my mattress. Pull off my boots. Sit in the dark. Watch them breathe.

The lock opened on its own tonight. I don't know why. The shadow in the study sat in its corner like it was keeping an appointment. I don't know why about that either. My hands stopped mid-pick for the first time in six years. Every instinct I own is telling me those three facts are connected, and that the connection is something I am not going to enjoy learning about.

But the rent is due Thursday. The jar on the shelf has eleven pence in it. Elena's feet are grey. Marcus needs a coat. Tommy needs to stop asking about Da. I need approximately three hoursof sleep. None of those needs care about mysterious locks or shadows that sit on purpose.

So I close my eyes. Sleep doesn't come—it rarely does—but I go through the motions because pretending to rest is the closest I get to the real thing most nights.

Outside the window, the fog presses against the glass. Somewhere in it, at the edge of the gaslight, a shadow sits thicker than it should.

I'd say it was watching me, but that's mad.

It's probably mad.

2

CALIGO

The throne room held three hundred once. Tonight it holds thirty-eight.

I count them because I've always counted them. Seven centuries of watching the number drop. The chairs haven't been removed—they line the vaulted walls in their rows, carved from shadow-stone that used to gleam and now just absorbs what light the braziers manage. Three hundred chairs. Thirty-eight bodies. The arithmetic of a court dying so slowly the other courts have stopped paying attention.

My shadows crawl along the walls. Sluggish. They answer my will the way a half-lame horse answers the spur—with effort, with delay, with a loyalty that costs them something each time. Sixty percent. Seven hundred years at sixty percent. The connection to the Shadow Realm sits narrow as a crack where a door should be, and my court rots around me at a pace just slow enough to be boring.

The number isn't a metaphor. The eight Fae courts have measured themselves in percentages since the Sundering—the catastrophe that severed each court from its source magic seven centuries ago and left every prince counting fractions insteadof full power. Most courts mended. Their bonds repaired the breach. Mine didn't. Sixty percent, since the Sundering, and not a point higher in seven hundred years.

The mechanism that restores a damaged court is old and brutal. Human darkness brought across the threshold and forged into Fae power. An omega claimed by an alpha. Her soul-architecture rewritten through the mate bond, her humanity converted to court magic. Hunger. Grief. Calloused survival. The currency the human world produces in surplus, and the Fae can't generate themselves. Each willing surrender is a percentage point. Each freely-given choice another fraction.

The strongest alpha finds the strongest omega. Subjugates her with the magic of his court. Forges the soul-bond that drags the percentages back from the dark. That is the work. There's no other mechanism. There's never been another.

I am Prince Caligo Umbrius. The strongest alpha Shadow Court has produced in nine centuries. The Blood Debt—the prophecy that names omegas to courts that need them—selected mine three years ago. And tonight, in the unlit corner of a merchant's study eight miles from the border, my own ward has just opened for her without permission. She doesn't know why. She doesn't yet know me. She will.

Lord Nephilik enters from the eastern passage. Four hundred years old. The sharpest male in my service. His shadows move cleanly—the shadows of someone at full power. The contrast isn't something I enjoy.

"The asset took the documents," he says.

"Timeline?"

"Three hours ago. Fourth floor, three locks, second desk drawer. Total time inside the property: eleven minutes." He pauses. His shadows flatten against his coat—the pattern that means he's deciding how to deliver bad news or interesting newsand can't yet tell which this is. "The third lock opened before she completed the pick sequence."

The shadows along the throne room walls ripple. Not by my direction. My shadows have developed opinions about this girl that I haven't authorised and don't intend to address.

"The ward?"

"Recognised her. The bolt drew back before her tension wrench applied rotational pressure." He meets my eyes. "That's a triple-warded Shadow Court lock, installed by your own detail, eight miles from the border. It shouldn't open for anyone without your explicit permission or court blood."

"She has neither."

"No."

"She has something else."