War of the Princes 03: Monarch Read Free Page B

Prince, using the Spark had freed me from his grasp. Why wouldn't it work now? Maybe I really was dreaming.
    The ground at my feet was glowing. Shadow chasers surrounded me again. Just like before, they beamed with my light and soared away on electric wings.
    The three-headed warhorse stopped to stare at me from across the stream. Everything about the creature was slightly too long, from leg, to neck, to snout. A rider sat astride his back.
    “ They won't let you leave.”
    That voice.
    I'd heard it before.
    It belonged to Prince Raserion.

 
    Chapter 4: The Prince and Me
     
     
     
     
     
     
    “ You'll not depart this place until I allow it,” said Raserion, the Prince of Shadows, leader of the Western armies. “My shadow chasers are seeing to that. I wish to speak with you, Lodestone.”
    The Prince swung down from his seat astride the three-headed warhorse, and walked to the water’s edge. His molten silver eyes lacked pupils, and were the only clear feature on his face. There were insinuations of a nose, a mouth, but no matter how hard I looked at him, I couldn't see any of it clearly.
    He wasn't a real person. He was a shadow, like everything else in this three-dimensional diorama. He was nothing more than the shape of a man; a silhouette among silhouettes. There were no points of a crown atop his head, no insinuations of fantastical armor. He wasn't even overly tall or burly. He was plain in every respect, but for that voice. His rich baritone had all the depth of individuality that his body lacked. He spoke with elegance, but without weakness. Though he sounded neither young nor old, a resounding maturity flavored his every word. When he stopped speaking, the world, whether real or imagined, was a little emptier for the absence of that audible perfection.
    I wanted to tell him that we had nothing to talk about, but when I opened my mouth, the wrong words flowed out from me. “You killed Sterling!”
    And Lina Thayer, and her parents, and my countrymen.
    He cocked his head ever so slightly to the side. “I know no one by that name.”
    Rage boiled up in me at the slight. My arms burned with lightning and I threw a bolt at him before I could stop myself. I gasped, blinking. The electricity never had the chance to leave the palm of my hand. It was being siphoned away by the shadow chasers teeming at my ankles. I looked at my palm as the last tendrils of energy slipped down my arm, over my waist, my legs and down to the shadow chasers. Dozens of them took flight, lighting up the sky.
    “There are billions of them you know. I had no idea how easily they could reproduce when I created them, but I was just a boy.” The Prince stood for a moment, watching them soar. “This friend of yours, Sterling. Shall I presume he was the Lodestone that caused my Margrave Hest's death?”
    H e dismissed my attack like I hadn't done anything at all. I may not have been able to strike him, but my anger remained strong. “She murdered him, and you probably ordered her to do it!”
    “ I did no such thing,” he said, subtly chastising me. “It was a bold attempt but a foolish one on her part. Their deaths were regrettable.”
    “ Let me guess, you're sad to see a waste of resources,” I spat. My whole body was rigid with tension, every muscle tight and ready for action. I wasn't anything close to a trained physical fighter, but I'd bite and claw if I had to. I would never surrender.
    I expected him to do something, to come at me, or attack. He made no violent move, but that didn't set me at ease. I trusted him even less.
    “ If I am to blame, then so is time,” he said, pacing the stream. “In the face of time, belief is both fickle and fleeting. Imagine that a people know a blue horse. They have seen it, it exists, and it is real as the sun. The blue horse disappears, but people remember it for exactly three generations. A hundred years pass. People are educated that the blue horse once existed. Another hundred years