Page 1 of Crowned By the Shadow
Chapter
One
Senara
I stepped through the veil of twilight flowers into the sanctuary of Moonweaver’s Grove, each footfall heavier than the last. The Grove was the safest place right now, not that I cared. It enveloped us in a perpetual dusk, neither day nor night, neither Sun nor Moon Court. Just emptiness now.
Thorn followed silently behind me, his usual radiance dimmed to barely a flicker. The fiery glow in his left eye had dulled to embers. Neither of us had spoken since we’d lost Wyn.
My fingers traced the bark of an ancient tree whose branches curled protectively overhead. Its silver leaves whispered with memories of the last time we were here, when I had actually felt hopeful that we could stop the Void Dragon Empress. Before we lost an artifact. Before Wyn was taken.
“We should have never brought her with us.” The words escaped my throat, raw and bitter.
Thorn’s jaw tightened. “Eldric didn’t seem to care about her at first, but then he targeted her specifically because of her magic.” His voice carried the controlled rage I’d come to recognize as the voice of the general, not the man. “Once he saw her powers, everything shifted, and he didn’t care aboutanything but her. Not you, not the Crescent Diadem, not the Veilshard Pendant. Just her.”
I sank onto the ground and rested against the large tree, my Moon Mark burning against my skin like a reminder of my failure. “It’s not like her magic is that much different from his own, so why her?” I tried to remain detached, to think about things logically, but it was beyond difficult.
“Because her power is amazingly rare,” Van chimed in. I glanced up at him and questions danced around in my mind. Who, or what, exactly was he? Before I could ask, he continued, “Necromancy isn’t exactly common and with the way she summoned those golems…It’s safe to say she could be a powerful necromancer if given the right training. Something which the Shadow Dragon Clan does quite well, though I’d thought they had died out.”
Thorn slammed his fist against a nearby tree, sending ripples through the magic-laden air. The bark absorbed his rage without cracking, unlike my composure.
The Grove seemed to respond to our grief, flowers closing their petals, vines retreating into shadows. This place that had offered us refuge now felt hollow. Part of me wondered if Kaelyn was still around here somewhere, but I knew that was a silly thought. She’d probably gone straight back to High Lord Echo and reported everything that had happened. Not that I’d blame her. I just hoped that she’d made it back okay, and she wasn’t another casualty of being in proximity to me.
I pulled my knees to my chest, remembering how Wyn had looked at me with such trust when we’d first arrived in the fae lands. “I promised to keep her safe.” It was a promise made as a child, one made a lifetime ago, possibly two if my brushes with death were anything to go by. I still intended to keep it, though.
Thorn crossed to me then, kneeling before me. The fire in his eye flickered brighter for just a moment.
“We will find her.”
“How? We don’t even know which way Eldric took her.”
His hand found mine, our fingers intertwining—Sun and Moon magic pulsing against each other just under our skin.
“Together,” he said. “The way we’ve done everything since you crashed into my life.”
I froze at the sound of hurried footsteps approaching our sanctuary. My hand instinctively went to the dagger at my hip as I surged to my feet with Thorn right next to me, also readying himself for a fight. I relaxed slightly when Volker burst through the curtain of hanging vines. His usually composed demeanor was shattered. Guilt washed over me, as I hadn’t even realized he wasn’t with us anymore.
“I can’t feel her anymore,” he gasped, his silver eyes wide with panic. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and his hands trembled as he clutched a crystal pendant—the tracking charm he’d crafted for Wyn months ago.
“What do you mean?” Thorn stood, tension radiating from his shoulders.
Volker paced the small clearing, the pendant swinging wildly from his grip. “Her magical signature—it’s gone. Just... vanished.” His voice cracked. “One moment it was there, faint but steady, and then nothing. Like someone snuffed out a candle.”
My stomach twisted into knots. The Moon Mark on my skin pulsed painfully, responding to my fear. “That’s impossible. She can’t be?—”
“That’s just it,” Volker interrupted, running his fingers through his disheveled hair. “This pendant works across realms. It shouldn’t matter where they’ve taken her unless...” He couldn’t finish the thought.
“Unless she’s dead.” Thorn’s blunt words hung in the air between us.
“No.” I stood, my voice steadier than I felt. “We would know. I would know.”
Volker held the pendant up, its crystal clear rather than the soft blue it glowed when tracking Wyn’s magic. “There’s another possibility. They could have bound her magic completely—ancient bindings that sever a mage from their power.”
“Those were outlawed centuries ago,” Thorn growled, the fire in his eye flaring.
“The Courts have broken many laws in pursuit of their goals. Who is to say the other races haven’t done the same?” Volker replied grimly.
I closed my eyes, reaching through the soul bond I shared with Thorn, drawing strength from his steady presence. Then I tried to focus on the faint connection I’d always felt with Wyn since we crossed the Veil together—that tenuous thread that had linked us, the way I’d known she was alive when Thorn and the others were convinced that the Veil had killed her.
