“Kneel.”

They never come to kill me, no matter how potently they yearn to.

The assassin kneeling behind me reeks of it: the craving to end me. He clamps the fury inside his fists; the animosity burns beneath his shadowed hood, and I know the impotent wish gnaws at him behind his salty sweat and steel blades.

But he dares not. Not as long as our cur of a king wants me alive.

Still, the assassin kneels so close, he could do it before anyone would know. An effortless kill, here, in secret.

My spindly body is frail. My diaphanous white gown lacks any armor. My snow-pale hair floats in wisps around a face as narrow and as hollow as a skeletal landscape. The vanity mirror reflects my fracturable body a fraying thread away from him kneeling behind me. His leather-gloved hands could encircle my susceptible neck…

Do it. The dare romps along the rim of my smile.

But his gaze travels instead to the coin purse tumbled among the combs on my vanity, and his barbed wishes rot behind his sneer. “Whose life today, Queen?”

His hiss raises gooseflesh on my neck.

And so his cowardice consigns me to another day in this never-ending scream.

I set my plum-hued lips into rigorous apathy. Always, I give the cutthroats the same reply—her; they know who—but tonight, another answer tests the tip of my tongue: Him. Kill the man who shackled me in marriage, got her on me, and now forces me to keep living even though my barren womb signifies our world’s doom. Everyone aside from him wishes me gone.

But then, requesting his death would be a profligate squandering of gold, because not even an assassin can kill the unkillable, and my hated jailor-king is unkillable—for now.

I shove that aside. “Her.”

The mercenary angles his head, loosing a lethal curiosity. “I’ve heard that none return alive. That she’s—”

“—as mortal as you and I,” I cut him off, toying with a ruby-red ribbon on my vanity as candle-glow gilds my bony knuckles. “And her protector has been banished, meaning she must draw her own blade now to defend herself.”

“But the court wizard and the healer remain by her side.”

“I weary,” I clip out, “of your cravenness.”

He stills, the fiery blaze in his eyes scarcely banked, and then he rises as smoothly as blood. “Consider it done, my queen.”

He genuflects and strides fluidly from my bedchamber, his dark cloak unfolding around his boots like dead skin. At the door, he stoops to retrieve the dagger and two swords deposited earlier at my threshold.

He flows out of sight like an unimportant fact.

Like the others, he will die trying to cut this thorn from my side.

His choice.

I stand from my vanity and begin to swish after him to shut the door on regret.

“Oh, you naughty, naughty queen.”

I halt, rooted in place, the hair prickling on the back of my neck.

The familiar whisper insinuates itself far too close to my ear: “Dispatching another wicked soul after your goodling child.”

“Villain!” My lips peel back from my teeth as I pivot. “Intruder, show yourself!” Helpless, my glare stabs every corner, every movement, but only shades and shadows cluster around my etched wardrobes, around the brass mountings on the stone wall, and amid the silken ripples of my canopied bed.

Nothing human. But he must be human, this nighttime visitor who invades my bedroom, uninvited and far too often recently.

I curl my lip. “Do you enjoy these games, snake?”

“Do you want a game, my queen?” The dare laughs on the air. “Shall we play chase? How flattered I would be if you misspent all your gold, or better yet, spent yourself, hunting me through our crooked lanes.”

“Why would I?”

“I would make a delicious prisoner. The most delicious you’ve never had. Lavish me with your pursuit.” His unseen fingertip trails—no, brazens—across my lips.

My clawed fingers snatch at empty space. They close on my own flesh, my nails nearly gouging my palm.

His snicker takes a jaunty skip through the air, behind me now.

I whirl again, my dressing gown tangling in my pathetically stick-like legs.

His voice retreats toward my open window. “If only I let myself be caught, you would be my favorite captor.”

A rush of air hurls apart my gauzy draperies, baring my bedchamber—and me—to the frosty, starlit air and the crescent moon. The moonlight pales my hair to milky fronds that wilt down my gown.

His laughter vanishes into the firmament.

A single opalescent feather drifts to the stone sill, a gorgeous vestige snipped off an unwary bird, iridescent in the moonbeams.

Then its lustrous vanes dissipate, too, dispensed into silvery dust.

His calling card, whoever he is.

He must be a magic-user if he can cloak himself from human sight. But the First Demesne is not a city of mages like the Seventh; only two known magic-users reside here, and neither can be this mad visitor.

So where has he appeared from? Why single out me to skewer with his trite and uninspiring prods? Other women in unlocked chambers would spread their legs and part their mouths to his foul, invisible tongue. They would unbind their corsets in fulsome unrestraint for the thrill of this unseen lover.

And yet he plagues me, a queen crafted of gaunt corners, carved sharp by the knife edge of cynicism, my soul more raptor than woman.

He cannot seem to keep himself away. I’ve even woken a few times in the night to the susurration of the curtains on a little sigh that was not mine, as if he’d come to visit, found me asleep, and vaulted off my sill again, rousing me only with his departure back out of existence.

Bestirring myself, since dwelling on nobodies does not befit a queen, I march to my bedchamber door, still ajar from the departing assassin. I touch my fingertips to shut it and—

—blink, instead, at the most powerful man in the known world, standing outside my bedchamber.

My heart clenches.

He clasps his lace-cuffed wrists behind his waist, the motion making the brass buttons on his mauve coat wink. Veined with threads of green and gold, the coat’s rich fabric flares out like a short skirt below his hips. Coal-dark breeches button below his knees, and immaculate white hose encase his muscular calves. Silver buckles vie for attention on his black high-heels.

This extravagant attire lends incredible power to an otherwise featureless man.

Behind his ears, mud-brown hair curls with indolent gloss. And beneath a few fallen curls, his low-lidded eyes study me, groping out every detail of my sour mood, his expression deceptively mild behind his trimmed beard.

An awful taste puckers my mouth. “Husband.”

He inclines his head down the corridor, in the direction the assassin retreated. “Is this not tiring?”

Dispatching assassins after our daughter? I think. Or existing?

I shrug in jaded affliction. “Everything is tiring now.”

“Is it?” His oddly tilted eyes, the only aspect about him not bland, fix their attention on me again. “Then perhaps we should liven things up.” He sidles near, his manner moderate as always, but nothing at all lazy lurks behind those flat eyes. “Kneel.”

My spine snaps tighter than a cord. A hiss escapes between my teeth.

A hard smile shapes his lips. “No taste for that?”

For obeisance—to him? My grimace grits out, coiled and hideous.

Another step as hard as his smile brings him closer. “I wonder,” he murmurs, “what would… urge you to kneel.” His fingers gently cup my wrist, and I tamp down a sordid response.

I refuse to kneel to anything, not to fear, not to fate—and definitely not to him.

In truth, though, no matter how I refuse, no woman chained to such power can stray far. At a tug on her chain, she must bow like a supplicant before the power on the throne, or she must spread herself submissively on her marriage bed—as I had all the years he required it.

And if my king chose to use force now, no one in the seven cities would stop him.

Even if I fled, were I so imprudent, none of the Seven Demesnes would harbor me, not when he rules the other cities through his six brother kings. I would be draggled back through mud and muck like an errant weed, his errant queen, whom he would plant back in the center of his poison garden.

Another step toward me, though, brings him up short. His brows shooting together, he glances down.

He unsheathes a tiny dagger from his coat pocket.

I weasel free of his one-handed grip and swish back, proffering him a mirthless smile. “Is your own spell biting you, my magnate?” My mouth gnashes into a grin. “Is it not letting you bring your piddly blade into my room?”

He looks up. The knife clatters to the stone corridor.

He sweeps into my room, weaponless and wordless.

I startle backward like a skittish rabbit and maneuver out of his grasp. “Tell me why,” I spit out. “Why did you have your wizard cast this spell today to block all weaponry from being brought into my chamber?”

He catches my wrist and reels me in, sliding his palms up my upper arms. “Why?”

“Yes.” I claw my fingers but dare not strike—although I tremble to—oh, how I tremble. I suck in a breath and inhale the buttery scent of the remnants of whatever rich fare he fed upon earlier. And his presence; his power fills my vision. It glints in the gold crown upon his head, in the threads of his attire, in the rings on his forceful hands.

Pinning me in place with his formidable grip, he brings his mouth right to my ear. His beard brushes across my neck. “My queen is… unprotected—vulnerable. A small spell for your life,” he scrapes out, “is a small price to pay.”

To keep alive a barren woman you never bed? I want to smack the words into his face, but pride pins them back down with sharp needles.

Why does he deny me a knife, a sword? An escape from this life?

Out of cruelty? Because I am cruel, too?

If only he permitted me a weapon, or if his wizard’s spell allowed me to shatter my mirror, I would take up the most promising shard. I would impale my heart. He wouldn’t notice; he wouldn’t care. So—

“Why?” I grate out.

“Why?” He slides his mouth across my hair—a mockery of affection!—down, down across my chin, until his lips hover just over my throat. There, he laughs, low and crafty, digging a reaction I don’t want all through me. “I’ll leave you to wonder that, my queen.” With that, he’s gone.

---

Y’all, WHAT DO YOU THINK??! I hope to God I’ve FINALLY gotten the beginning right? This is the start of Heiress of Secrets, which should be coming out February 29th if I can get my act together! The book is finished but needs to be edited. It follows a range of characters including older heroines, too! The queen is 46, her daughter Seriah 25, and I’m loving it so much. Every story line has its own romantic subplot.

If you want an ARC (advanced reader’s copy to read and hopefully review once it comes out), you can subscribe here.

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Thrice the Shadow. [nope, still no idea what that means]

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