King Of Shadows: The Shadowcrown Duet

by Kay Elle Parker

  Red eyes blinked once, the light in them fading as the demon’s brain caught up with her body. Itzel remained kneeling for one second, two, then simply keeled over with a clatter of brittle bones on stone.

  Allianna bent over and braced her hands on her thighs as a wave of dizziness washed over her. The sheer relief of having the necromancer out of her life was overwhelming. One less problem to weigh her down. Taking a deep breath, she straightened and wiped her soiled hand on her pants.

  By the time the day was through, there’d be more than demon blood on them.

  Leaving the body where it was, Alli moved deeper into the necromancer’s chambers warily, steering clear of anything that triggered her newfound magical abilities. No doubt the demon had set wards around her quarters, and until Allianna figured out where they were and how to break them, she was going to be especially careful in her explorations.

  Whenever her instincts quivered, she stepped around the area and made a mental note of its location while the shadows twisted around her legs. There were several, and they piqued her curiosity as to just what Itzel was hiding. To cast wards was a serious business; it took time and energy, not to mention some of the darker wards required blood to seal them.

  She picked up a few bottles, felt varying reactions—some sent jolts of electricity up her arm as though the contents reacted to her presence, while two others gave her a ridiculous sense of dread. When she found Itzel’s collection of organs in jars, however, all she felt was revulsion.

  A close inspection revealed that none of the specimens resembled anything human, but it was obvious the demon had been using them for something—as part of her rituals, as tributes to whatever vicious deity she’d worshipped, maybe just as a snack.

  Allianna shuddered and stepped away. The whole space would be cleared, every last trace of Itzel removed from the rooms, and if needed, Alli was prepared to cave the chambers in to keep the stench of evil from permeating the rest of the realm.

  Her body grew stiff and sore as her wounds made themselves known. Adrenaline faded and let pain rise to the surface of her thoughts. Her back wept with the gouges from Itzel’s lethal talons, the material of her shirt sticking to both the wounds and the blood drying on unmarked skin.

  While she wanted to rub Itzel’s death in Antzel’s face, she was in no fit state to face the consequences. The demon would want to kill Allianna for sending his mother back to hell, and for costing him a valuable asset in the form of the necromancer.

  Alli might be in possession of a great deal of his power and ability, but she wasn’t sure just what he would still be capable of. Meeting him head-to-head when she was less than one hundred percent battle ready was a suicide mission. The strength in Kian’s body alone would be enough to finish her if she made a wrong turn in a fight.

  So rather than summoning the demon to the necromancer’s quarters so he could see what his wife had done, Allianna cloaked herself in the comfort of her shadows, drinking in the power they’d drained from the dead demon, and slipped out of the tainted chambers with a shiver of relief.

  One hurdle down, several to go.

  As she let the shadows guide her back to the next level up through the darkness that didn’t feel quite as oppressive, Allianna prayed for Kian.

  Chapter Eleven

  Kian knew his time was up.

  His struggles to fight for control were slowing, and even those brief moments were akin to slogging his way through a pit of molasses where he was sunk up to his chin. It was easier to let it suck him under and give Antzel what he’d wanted all along—complete surrender.

  Allianna had surprised Kian by biting his shoulder during the ritual before Antzel could, but not as much as she’d taken the demon unawares. A smart and impressive move, one that gave her the upper hand. She’d effectively trained the demon to heel on command before he could do the same to her.

  Clever, clever girl.

  Antzel sat and sulked in his armchair in his room, tapping his fingertips together with agitated little movements. He was infuriated Allianna was still on the loose, and pissed that his mother wasn’t answering his summons, which was unheard of. Normally the necromancer came running at the crook of her baby boy’s finger, but not tonight.

  Tonight, she was conspicuously absent.

  Islador stalked in circles around the room, his impatience to go track Allianna and fetch her to safety humming in the room. Witnessing his Second’s concern over the female alleviated a lot of Kian’s remaining worry about leaving her with Islador when the inevitable happened.

  “You wanted me to go find her,” Isla grumbled sourly. “Now you won’t let me out of your goddamn room to do my fucking job.”

  “Your fucking job is whatever I say it is,” Antzel snapped back. “There’s something coming, and your task is to defend me no matter the cost. The little bitch can wait in whatever hovel she’s squirreled herself away into. I hope she’s suffering.”

  Such hatred, such bitterness, aimed at the woman he loved, Kian thought sadly. The demon viewed her as nothing but a vessel, while Kian saw only the beauty and innocence of his little rose. Her laugh, the way she blushed and flirted with him when she was younger, the light of mischief in her eyes...those memories stayed with Kian in his prison.

  Taunting him. Loving him.

  It was entertaining to realize Antzel hadn’t put two and two together. Any idiot would balance Allianna on one hand and something’s coming on the other and figure out that they were one and the same.

  His little rose was a hellcat when she was riled, and God knew Antzel had done enough to her to send her temper into orbit. Kian could only hope she’d recovered enough physically to take on the demon and end this fiasco for them all before too much time passed.

  Kian really wanted to see Allianna again before the demon consumed his soul.

  He considered it his dying wish.

  If Islador had come to the same conclusion as Kian, he wisely kept his mouth shut. He would stand behind his queen and help her remove the demon from the Shadow realm, eradicate the stench of evil from the hallowed halls, and eventually, Kian hoped fervently, sit by her side to rule the kingdom when it was healthy and whole.

  His Allianna would make it a strong, proud realm once again and make reparations for the damage he had brought upon his own empire, his own people with his stupidity.

  “If you’d allow me to leave the room,” Isla said patiently, stopping his paced circles and turning to face Kian, “I can call back some of my soldiers you’ve so recklessly scattered over every realm in the universe and organize a secure, impenetrable guard. I’m one man, Kian. There’s only so much I can protect you from before I fall.”

  “If you fall, you die,” Antzel threatened.

  Islador rolled his eyes. “That’s usually the way of it, my Lord.”

  “Lose the sarcasm.” Antzel shoved to his feet and stalked across the room. His anxiety was slowly growing the more he tried to summon the necromancer without compliance or a reply. With the nerves came wisps of fear, a sweet and erotic scent from something so vile. “Why haven’t the useless fucks found my wife yet? She was half dead, it’s not like she can prance around from realm to realm.”

  Allianna had control of the portals, Kian wanted to say. The skill and the knowledge. She could blink through space and time with a thought, spiral through worlds in milliseconds. The universe was laid at her feet, a map she had only to jab her finger at to go there.

  Isla’s temper began to fray at the edges, and Kian willed him to hold onto it. Antzel was itching for a fight and he would go for his Second without hesitation if pushed. “Half the soldiers under my command have never seen Allianna. They have no idea what she looks like, what she is capable of, and you’ve cast them into realms that may or may not be friendly toward Shadow warriors. They’re hunting for an unknown prey while fighting for their lives against hostiles.”

  “They’re trained for battle. You trained them!” Antzel snapped.

&nb
sp; Isla harrumphed and shook his head in disbelief. “Many of the trainees you sent out haven’t been in the field without a commanding officer. They haven’t been exposed to a battle environment. Instead of waiting for me to return from a mission you sent me on, you jumped the fucking gun and have likely culled your army down by at least forty percent. That percentage grows higher the longer they remain out of the realm.”

  “They should earn the title of Shadow warrior. Dying on an assignment means they weren’t up to my standards, Islador. The number of dead will reflect you and your training methods. Don’t think you won’t be held accountable.”

  Accountable. Now there was a prospect Kian understood very well. He was accountable for this whole clusterfuck, simply because he hadn’t used his head for one brief moment. That lapse in attention and judgement had sealed his fate and the downfall of everyone around him, his realm, his only and only love.

  He remembered the day...well, not so clearly now. The letter on his desk, private and confidential, and the official-looking document inside. His fingertips on the paper as he read, mumbling the words out loud as he always did.

  A well-known fact throughout the realm.

  No matter what he read, he had to at least breathe the words, give them the smallest voice. That habit, that innocuous fucking routine, had summoned the demon from the bowels of hell and installed him in Kian’s body quickly, quietly, and without anyone but Kian aware of the intruder inside the Lord of Shadows.

  The document had been a short and simple spell. The necromancer, Kian had later found out through Antzel’s memories, had done all the sacrifice beforehand. All it had needed was Kian’s voice to trigger the magic hidden inside the sentences written in flowing handwriting.

  Like a moron, he’d brought Antzel to life and opened the demon’s world from hellfire and sulphur to realms beyond the imagining, power beyond reason, and a prophecy he’d had no right to claim. Kian’s cancer was self-inflicted, twenty-five years of a rotten tumor eating through his brain and replacing Kian with a monster of biblical proportions.

  Smuggling the necromancer through to the Shadow realm had been one of Antzel’s initial accomplishments when he successfully took Kian over for the first time. And from there...

  From there, Kian’s life went down the drain, day by day, month by month, until years swam past in a murky haze and he drowned in the filth of his own failure.

  Until he failed the woman he’d loved from a baby.

  A baby who was now a queen.

  “I hold myself accountable, always. If I lose one man or twenty, I know their names, I know their lives, and they stay with me wherever I go. I do not forget, I do not toss them aside like they didn’t exist. That’s more than I can say for you, Kian.” Disgust ripe in his voice, Islador headed for the door. “I’ll set guards outside the door, in here if you feel it’s necessary, but I am not sitting here babysitting you while Allianna bleeds to death somewhere.”

  “Islador, I haven’t given you leave to go.”

  “I’m taking it,” Isla replied and was gone an instant later.

  The volcano inside Antzel erupted. The beast strained and shoved at the flesh casing of Kian’s body, determined to break free and wreak havoc in his devil-given body, but shadows slithered from the darkness and pushed back, containing the brutal conflict within Kian’s skin. A most painful but essential action.

  “Motherfucking insubordinate asshole!”

  Kian smiled to himself. Despite the fact his vision was becoming blurry, the small window to his eyes shuttering closed, he was happy knowing Antzel’s time was coming to an end. Having personal contact with the reaper wasn’t preferable, but he would accept the front-row seat graciously and applaud when he—and Antzel—fell.

  The demon didn’t know he was already beaten. He couldn’t sense Allianna’s presence in the realm or smell her the way Kian could. In Antzel’s mind, Allianna was a coward, a lowly female incapable of organizing her wardrobe let alone a full-scale battle for leadership of the realm.

  Amazing what arrogance could conceal.

  When the last fragments of Kian’s soul tumbled into the abyss, he didn’t fight the pull of eternal gravity. Secure with the knowledge Allianna would be safe, that she would thrive as queen, Kian opened his arms and released himself from the torment of Antzel’s possession.

  *

  Striding away from the cesspool of Kian’s meltdown, Islador ground his teeth together and tried to get his head back into the game. He couldn’t stay another fucking second in that rancid environment, listening to a tyrant rage against a woman he professed to adore in one moment, and disparage the next.

  Islador’s love for Allianna was unshakable.

  His loyalty to Kian, however, was quickly waning.

  He dodged a stream of his men scurrying past with their eyes forward and just a little wild. A couple dragged behind, fatigue sucking at their feet and showing on their faces—faces smudged with blood and black ash. One limped slightly while another favored his arm.

  “Hey, you two.” Isla stepped in front of them, bringing them to a startled but grateful halt, and eyed them more critically. Ripped uniforms, bloodied material...they hadn’t had a good time on the hunt. “How badly are you hurt?”

  “Twisted my ankle, sir.” The limper said nervously. “I can continue on patrol.”

  Fucking Kian and his rushed orders, Isla thought. “And you?”

  The one cradling his arm shrugged. “I think it’s just a sprain, sir.”

  Isla scowled and both soldiers stepped back as one unit. “Hold your arm out straight, soldier. It’s just a sprain, right?” He folded his arms across his chest and waited.

  Agony bloomed over the young Shadow warrior’s face as he tried to obey. Isla saw the hesitation to cause himself pain, and the need to please his commanding officer. But when the sprained limb hung at a ninety-degree angle, the bone poking through a rip in the man’s uniform as he whined uncontrollably, Isla knew he needed to make one thing clear.

  “Obeying me is advisable. Lying to me, not so much. That is not a sprain, and you both know it. You will never be reprimanded for being injured to the degree you cannot complete your duty, lads. You can’t run, can’t walk quickly, would have difficulty defending yourself adequately in the field,” he said sternly to the limper. His eyes turned cold as he weighed up the broken arm. “And you might think continuing on patrol with an exposed bone is a barrel of laughs, boy, but your family will be the ones crying. I expect my soldiers to be honest and to know their limitations. Is that understood?”

  The limper nodded, frantically peering down the hall where their unit had already gone. “Yes, sir. Please, may we catch up to our team now?”

  “In a rush, boy?”

  The blond-haired Shadow warrior nodded. “Yes, sir. All teams are to work constantly until his Lordship’s bride is found. He threatened us all with hanging if we don’t.”

  Fucking moron had no clue how to command an army. Shit, if Kian couldn’t bring his wife to heel—and how he hated to even think the word wife in conjunction with Kian and Allianna—the Lord sure as hell couldn’t lead a band of highly-skilled warriors to success. “Remind me, who is your superior commander?”

  Both of them looked worried. “You, sir?”

  “Me. So, get yourselves down to the doctor and get patched up. Follow his instructions or I will get mad, is that clear?” When they both nodded, he huffed out a breath. “If you see anymore injured on your way to the medic’s chambers, gather them up and take them with you. On my orders, if any unit leaders give you hassle. They come to me if they have an issue.”

  “Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!” They both snapped salutes as Islador skirted around them and continued toward the great hall, leaving them to hobble away.

  Kian was out of control. The best thing Islador could do, in his personal opinion, was find Allianna before the rest of the terror-fueled realm did, and somehow smuggle her into safer territory until she was healed. F
rom Kian’s lackluster description of his last sight of her, that might take a long fucking time, more than the realm had if Kian’s craziness got its feet under the table properly.

  He marched into the great hall, searching the shadows where he’d left Dhur. He had a job for the golem, and he hoped the big pile of rocks was up to the task. Frowning, Isla studied every nook and cranny, wondering if he’d imagined bringing his new friend back through the portal when he couldn’t find him.

  “Looking for me, boss?”

  The granite rumble of the golem’s voice echoed lightly in the huge room, and Isla jerked before he could stop himself. For a monstrously huge creature, the golem apparently could move sneakily when he wanted to. “Dhur. Yes, I’m looking for you.” Rapping his knuckles against his chest where his heart hammered, Isla chuckled. “Got some stealth to you, don’t you, big guy?”

  Ten feet away, the golem emerged from a dark crevice with a wicked grin. His feet barely shook the ground, unlike the house-bouncing steps in the mortal world where he’d made the earth tremble. “I’m heavy, boss, but I have feet like a cat when I need them.”

  “Perfect. Use them now. We have to move quickly, quietly, and be ready to hide you again if we meet anyone. I have a task for you, Dhur, and if it’s going to work, no one can know you’re here yet. Okay?” He didn’t want to offend the golem by letting him think he wasn’t wanted in the Shadow realm.

  But Dhur seemed to take pride in the fact he already had a place in the realm and was being trusted enough to have an assignment. The BFG had no idea just how much trust Islador was placing on his head. “All yours, boss.”

  “Good. With me.” Isla turned and headed back through the corridors, concerned in several places where they both narrowed and lowered. But Dhur remained faithfully on his heels, a gundog impeccably trained and willing to obey his master’s every whispered command, squeezing through the smallest sections of the labyrinth of realm passageways without complaint.