At that moment they heard a crash from backstage and the stage door burst open to reveal a panting and extremely disheveled Director Levain. A dazed kind of horror dawned across his features as he slowly took in the destruction. His throat bobbed, and then he lunged forward to throw himself at Asterin’s feet, a choked sob escaping his lips.
“Your Majesty, Immortals have mercy, thank you. Forgive me.”
The applause died, shifting into leery mutters, and Asterin caught the word sabotage muttered numerous times.
I will have absolutely none of this, Asterin thought to herself. She grabbed him by the shoulders and heaved him onto his feet. For his stature, he was surprisingly unwieldy. “Director. Director.”
Finally, Levain looked up, devastation written into every line on his face.
She spoke with authority. She spoke so that her voice rang, and she let the acoustics do the rest. “What happened was unfortunate, but completely out of your control. Most importantly, no one was hurt.”
Levain gaped. “Y-Your Majesty . . .”
The doors at the end of the hall swung open, and Alicia dashed up the aisle, followed by an usher struggling to keep up. The youngest Elite leapt nimbly onto the stage and hurried to Asterin’s side. The usher took the stairs and bowed hastily to Asterin before turning to Levain. He held a hand to his mouth and began whispering furiously into the director’s ear.
Alicia kept her own voice hushed. “There’s been another incident, Your Majesty.”
“Of what sort?” Asterin demanded.
Levain had paled considerably by the time the usher withdrew. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and exhaled. “It seems that there has been some sort of explosion at one of the theater cafés,” he replied. “The plumbing, apparently.”
Asterin’s mind returned to that smudge of darkness slithering out of the piano and up the walls. Priscilla’s horrible, lipless grin flashed through her mind, and suddenly she found herself back in the palace, helpless as the woman—the monster—summoned two serpentine shadows, two nooses. One for Quinlan. One for Luna.
I will end you, Priscilla had said. Or better yet . . . I will break you.
And then Priscilla had gifted their lives to her and forced her to choose.
“Your Majesty?” whispered Alicia. “Are you all right?”
Asterin shuddered and yanked herself back into the present. She glanced up to the ceiling, but nothing lurked there now, despite the absence of the chandelier’s light. No oily stains of gloom to suggest anything out of the ordinary. Within minutes, the shadow had disappeared completely . . . only to wreak havoc elsewhere.
She heard the crackle of ice and looked up to find Casper trying to forge a rough version of the path she had conjured earlier from the lower balcony. The chandelier had severed the one she had made, but the Elite persisted until he and the others could slide down it. They strode across the stage toward her.
Belatedly, Asterin’s attention snapped to the royal box, her eyes searching for her unguarded mother. The tension in her shoulders loosened—three other Elites had already taken up position at Elyssa’s side.
She turned to Levain. “My Elites and I are going to get to the bottom of this,” she promised him. Quietly, she added, “I fear darker forces may be at work here.”
Levain frowned. “Darker forces?”
Eadric came to her right side, understanding sparking in his eyes. “Forbidden magic.”
Asterin nodded. “I saw some sort of shadow come out of the piano right before the chandelier fell. I don’t know where it came from or how it got here, but we’re certainly not just going to let it run rampant, are we?”
Levain gave her a look of bewilderment and eventually shook his head.
Time to get out of this dress, she thought to herself. “So,” she said, turning to survey her Elites with a grim little smile on her face. “Who’s ready for a hunt?”
Chapter Four
King Eoin called his home the Shadow Palace.
“How big is this place?” Orion asked, turning in a circle as they walked down an endless corridor of silver tiles. The floor glimmered like liquid mercury beneath his feet, and wherever he stepped, it rippled outward, mimicking the shallows of a lake. The only light came from Orion himself, his skin glowing like torch flame even through his clothes, and the stars behind Eoin’s eyes.
“As vast and wonderful as my imagination allows,” the god answered, not bothering to temper his pride. “Just as the Shadow Kingdom is a part of me, the palace is my hjerta—my heart—born from will and wishes. Here, I’ll show you. Close your eyes.”
“Why?”
“Don’t you want it to be a surprise?”
Orion obliged him. There was a pop. When he opened his eyes, a doorway had materialized to his left, its surface adorned with etchings of birds midflight. He looked to the god with a question in his eyes.
“Go ahead,” Eoin encouraged.
Orion tugged at the handle, but the door didn’t budge.
“Try pushing,” said Eoin.
With a pink tinge rising in his cheeks, Orion gave the door a push and it swung open.
Orion gasped in awe as they emerged into a cavernous chamber with a ceiling open to the stars. The room was furnished with ornate rugs and metallic golden ivy that snaked along the walls, along with glimmering bronze candelabras dripping with jewels that set the room softly aglow. Dozens of windows of every shape and size opened the walls like paintings, each revealing a different impossible view of the Immortal Realm. There, through a diamond-shaped window, were the mountains he had spotted earlier, though they were much closer now. The panes were positioned so close to a waterfall that droplets of gold actually splattered upon them. An elliptical window next to the diamond one showed an orchard filled with fruits he could not name being plucked by creatures with foldable, knobby stilts for legs. And there, through a hexagon, he marveled at the Shadow Palace itself, and when he waved he could see a tiny glowing figure in a hexagonal window waving back.
“This is incredible,” Orion breathed, rushing from window to window, utterly mesmerized and eager for each new wonder to reveal itself to him. He suddenly whirled on Eoin, the light from his body blazing so brightly that he almost blinded himself. “You’re extraordinary.”
Eoin raised a hand to shield his eyes, but Orion still caught his bewildered expression. “The windows won’t actually lead you to any of these places, so please don’t go around trying to open any of them.”
“Can they, though?” Orion asked.
Eoin shrugged. “Maybe. I’ve never had any reason to try, since I can just—”