Crown of Shadows (Court of Midnight and Deception #1) - K. M. Shea Page 0,5

never missed a target, and never bungled an operation. But given that my newest contract was to take out the next Night Court monarch, my chances of success were small.

As a fae I was forced into obedience to my monarch. The same kind of magic that kept all fae from lying also made it that we couldn’t raise a hand against our rulers.

There were ways around it. One might be able to arrange an accident, and the magic couldn’t keep us from annoying our monarchs. But coups and assassinations were near impossible.

My only chance of eliminating this new monarch was to kill him or her before he or she was officially sworn in, activating the ancient magic that governed us.

I’d stated this when I initially refused the contract, but the contractor insisted that merely trying was enough to consider the contract fulfilled.

Fae aren’t known for our generosity, which meant there was a fairly good chance this was a trap for me rather than an actual attempt to kill the next king or queen.

Which was why I took the contract. Traps didn’t worry me—there was no one they could hire who was skilled enough to kill me. But it would always be more efficient to eliminate a threat I was aware of rather than blindly encounter one.

Besides, I had no love for the Night Court throne. The idea that a monarch could save us was a fairy tale. It made no difference to me if the candidate died.

I hadn’t moved since putting the used rice paper away, but I heard the rustle of a rat, and looked down through the crack in the floor again.

Sure enough, the rat—my target—scurried down the stall aisles, moving to the far end of the barn, where he would pass just under the hayloft I hid in. He was sweating in his silken robes, and his complexion was waxy.

He was one of Queen Nyte’s old officials—her steward, if I remembered correctly. He was as crooked as they came, and had lorded his position over others while funneling extra funds into his pocket and punishing anyone who didn’t try to curry favor with him.

I wasn’t killing him because of his sins. He’d angered a fae noble lady from the Autumn Court when he refused to repay her for a magical artifact he’d purchased from her. She hired me to kill him as revenge.

He should have known better. It was well known she’d inherited the artifact from her brother, who had “mysteriously disappeared.”

That’s the way we fae operate. We can’t lie, but we twist and distort reality, struggling to amass power and taking what we like until it inevitably catches up with us.

It’s a never-ending game, even though the players die off like flies.

I was soundless as I crept across the loft. When the crooked official scurried under the hay chute I was positioned at, I dropped down, landing directly behind him.

“Mortem.” I breathed the name of my dagger. Its blade glowed a golden yellow color, and before the official even knew I was there, I stabbed him in the back of the neck.

The magic in the blade made it a simple thing to cut through bone and sever his spinal cord, resulting in a near instantaneous death.

All of the air in his lungs left with a gasp, and he collapsed to the ground, dead before I stepped back from the body.

I wiped my dagger off on his shirt then felt for a pulse, confirming his death. A few moments later I left the stables, keeping to the shadows where my magic and my dark gray clothes would cloak me.

I mentally mapped out my plans to contact the fae lady from the Autumn Court and begin tracking the night mares.

Killing had very little impact on me—I was just as much a villain as the fae I murdered.

But this game of power and dominance had been in existence for centuries. No one could escape it. It dragged us all down eventually.

Chapter Three

Leila

My phone blasted my ringtone so loudly I jumped. I’d picked out a Lord of the Rings ringtone because I loved those movies, but it was pretty startling to have the Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack blast out of your butt pocket at a volume loud enough to wake the barn cats.

I fumbled with the phone for a moment before I managed to swipe and accept the call. “Hey, Mom!”

“Hi Leila. I’ll be home soon—I’m leaving the store right now. Would you tell Paul? I tried to call