The Throne of Shadows

The Throne of Shadows EVANGELINE ANDERSON The Throne of Shadows, 1st Edition, Copyright © 2023 by Evangeline Anderson All rights reserved. Cover Art Design © 2023 by Reese Dante This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writers’ imagination or have been used factiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to a retailer of your choice or evangelineanderson.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work. Cover content is for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted on the cover is a model. Contents The Throne of Shadows Author’s Note Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 The End? Sneak Peek at Claimed The Brides of the Kindred Prologue Chapter 1 Give a Hot Kindred Warrior to a Friend! Sign up for my Newsletter! Do you love Audiobooks? Also by Evangeline Anderson About the Author The Throne of Shadows A fairy princess with no power is married off to the enemy who killed her brother. But when her new husband offers to help her unlock her magic, she must make a choice between love and revenge. Who ever heard of a fairy princess with no magic? Well, that happens to be my fate. I am Alira Shiningstar of the Royal house of the Seelie Court. I am descended from a long line of powerful Fae, and yet I have no power of my own. I might be forgiven for having no magic, but I have no beauty, either. I am curvy where I should be thin and my hair is dark instead of blonde. I do not look like the other Fae maidens…so why is it that Liath Blackthorn, the Prince of our sworn enemy, the Unseelie Court, wishes to marry me? Liath doesn’t look like a proper Fae either—he is tall and beastly with curving horns and blazing bronze eyes. He tells me that I do have magic—that it is buried inside me. And only he can bring it out. But the things he wants to do to unlock my hidden power leave me hot and trembling. Surely it isn’t right to do such things, even with one’s husband…is it? I don’t know if it is or not—I only know that the touch of my new husband’s hands on my body makes me quiver with need. And inside me I feel a force growing…a shadow that is bigger than both of us. Dedicated to: Jen Moderson for naming the hero of this book Liath. Thanks for helping out my muse, Jen! Hugs, Evangeline Author’s Note In a previous version of this book, a fairy called a “brownie” is referenced. I want to make it very clear that a brownie is a type of fairy from Scottish and Gaelic folklore and not in reference to anyone or anything else. Brownies are household fairies who supposedly helped with the housework when the humans went to sleep. (As in the old fairy tale, The Elves and the Shoemaker.) In return, the homeowners would leave out bowls of warm milk for them and give them other little gifts. However, a longtime reader whose opinion I value has pointed out that readers who haven’t dipped into fantasy fiction before might get the wrong impression of what a brownie is. So I am changing the name to brùnaidh, which is the Gaelic spelling to avoid any confusion. Thank you for reading and thanks especially to those of you who have followed me from my usual genre of Scifi romance into this new world of Fantasy romance, or Romantasy. I hope you’ll enjoy reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it. Hugs to you all, Evangeline Prologue One does not often hear of an ugly fairy princess, but we do exist. I am ugly—by the standards of my court. I am Princess Alira of the Seelie Court—some call it the Summer Court, for it is always fair and bright in my father’s kingdom. And so are the inhabitants—High Fae all of them—with the palest skin, hair like spun gold, and eyes like jewels. I am pale, all right, but I miss the mark in all other respects and thus I am ugly—at least according to my cousins, Asfaloth and Calista and my father, King Euberon, to whom I am a great disappointment. I do not have the fair, golden hair or the jewel-toned eyes, so prized in the Seelie Court, that the other High Fae possess. Nor am I slender as a sapling, with tiny breasts no bigger than Spring buds. This boyish beauty has eluded me all my life. I swear I came from the womb a chubby infant—so big in fact, that my passage took my mother’s life, for her hips were too narrow and her body too delicate to bear me. For this, my father has never forgiven me—for my ugliness killed her beauty and