Kneel before the shadow king.

Maxim resisted the fog’s hypnotic pull, nerves crackling as he forced its hold away, focused instead on the sound of the steel guard marching in his wake and the rippling figure waiting at the base of the palace stairs.

Without a body, the shadow king looked like less like a man and more like smoke trapped within a darkened glass, the presence shifting within its false shell like a trick of the light. Only its eyes seemed solid, the glossy black of polished stone.

Like Kell’s, thought Maxim, and then he revoked the thought. No, not like Kell’s at all.

Kell’s gaze had the warmth of a flame, while Osaron’s eyes were sharp and cold and utterly inhuman.

At the sight of Maxim descending the stairs, the shadow king’s face flickered, mouth twisting into a smile.

“False king.”

Maxim forced his body down step after step as his vision blurred and his skin pricked with the beginnings of fever. When his boots struck the stone of the plaza floor, the twelve men of his final guard fanned out, taking up their places around the two kings like points on a clock. Each drew a steel short sword, its blade spelled to sever magic.

Osaron barely seemed to notice the figures in their steel trappings, the way they moved together like fingers on a hand, the way the shadows bent and swirled around their armor and their blades, never touching.

“Have you come to kneel?” asked the shadow king, the words echoing through Maxim’s skull, ringing against his bones. “Have you come to beg?”

Maxim lifted his head. He wore no armor, no helm, nothing but a single sword at his hip and the gold crown resting in his hair. Still, he looked straight into those onyx eyes and said, “I’ve come to destroy you.”

The darkness chuckled, a sound like low thunder.

“You’ve come to die.”

Maxim’s balance almost faltered, not from fear, but from fever. Delirium. The night danced before his eyes, memories transposing themselves on top of truth. Emira’s body. Rhy’s screams. Pain lanced jaggedly through Maxim’s chest as he resisted the shadow king’s magic. Sickness quickened his heart, Osaron’s curse straining his mind as his own spell strained his body.

“Shall I make your own men kill you?”

Osaron’s hand twitched, but the steel guard circling them did not move. No sword hands lifted to attack. No boots shifted obediently forward.

A frown crossed the shadow king’s face like a passing cloud as he realized the guards weren’t real, only puppets on clumsy strings, the armor nothing but a hollow enchantment, a last effort to spare Maxim’s own men from this grim task.

“What a waste.”

Maxim straightened, sweat sliding down the nape of his neck. “You’ll have to face me yourself.”

With that, the Arnesian king drew his sword, spelled like the others to break the threads of magic, and slashed at the shadowy mass before him. Osaron did not duck or dodge or strike. He did not move at all. He simply parted around Maxim’s blade and re-formed a few feet to the left.

Again, Maxim attacked.

Again, Osaron dissolved.

With every lunge, every swing, Maxim’s fatigue and fever rose, a tide threatening to overtake him.

And then, on the fifth or the sixth or the tenth attack, Osaron finally fought back. This time, when he took shape again, it was inside Maxim’s guard.

“Enough,” said the monster with a flickering grin.

He reached out an insubstantial hand, fingers splayed, and Maxim felt his body stall mid-stride, felt the bones beneath his skin groan and grind, pain lighting up his nerves as he was pinned like a doll against the night.

“So fragile,” chided Osaron.

A twitch of that hand—more fog than fingers—and Maxim’s wrist shattered. His short sword clattered to the ground, the metallic scrape of metal on stone drowning out his pained gasp.

“Beg,” said the shadow king.

Maxim swallowed. “No, I—”

His collarbone snapped with the vicious crack of a stick over a knee. A strangled scream broke through his clenched teeth.

“Beg.”

Maxim shuddered, his ribs shaking beneath the force of Osaron’s will as it tap-tap-tapped like fingers over his bones.

“No.”

The shadow king was teasing, toying, drawing it out. And Maxim let him, hoping all the while that Rhy was safe inside the palace, far from the windows, far from the door, far from this. His steel guards trembled in their places, gauntlets gripping swords. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet.

“I am the king … of this empire—”

Something cracked in his chest, and Maxim spasmed, blood rising in his throat.

“This is what passes for a king in this world?”

“My people will never—”

At that, Osaron’s hand—not flesh and bone or smoke at all, but something dense and cold and wrong—wrapped around Maxim’s jaw. “The insolence of mortal kings.”

Maxim looked into the swirling darkness of the creature’s gaze. “The … insolence of … fallen … gods.”

Osaron’s face broke into a terrible smile. “I will wear your body through the streets until it burns.”

In those black eyes, Maxim saw the warped reflection of the palace, the soner rast, the beating heart of his city.

His home.

He pulled the final strings, and the guards finally stepped forward. Twelve faceless men drew their swords.

“I am the head … of the House Maresh,” said Maxim, “… seventh king of that name … and you are not fit … to wear my skin.”