The Shadow of Theron, page 1
THE SHADOW OF THERON
By
Kathryn Troy
* * *
Copyright © 2023 Kathryn Troy
Edited by Tee Tate.
Cover Design by MiblArt.
All stock photos licensed appropriately.
Published in the United States by City Owl Press.
www.cityowlpress.com
For information on subsidiary rights, please contact the publisher at info@cityowlpress.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior consent and permission of the publisher.
BOOKS BY KATHRYN TROY
Curse of the Amber
A Vision in Crimson
Dreams of Ice and Shadow
The Shadow of Theron
CONTENTS
Find Your Next Read
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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
Sneak Peek of Curse of the Amber
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Acknowledgments
About the Author
About the Publisher
Additional Titles
"Give him the bow, and let us see whether he can string it or no." Homer, The Odyssey
Want even more from Kathryn Troy? Read CURSE OF THE AMBER and be sure to find her at kathryntroy.blogspot.com
A curse, a resurrection, and a centuries old witch hell bent on revenge.
Quintus is a dutiful son and soldier, sent to Britannia to improve his marriage prospects and ensure the Druids never rise again. Roman soldiers destroyed the last Druid stronghold in a battle of blood and fire. So, he never expects to be sacrificed to their sacred bog, trapped forever by the gods below.
Two thousand years later, Asenath Hayes discovers the most well-preserved body in history. And the last thing she needs is for him to wake up.
As the young archaeologist delves into Druidic rituals to grasp why Quintus was offered to a Welsh bog and then resurrected, she is forced to complete her research with the “missing” body, dodge her ex-lover and mentor with his own agenda, and keep her gorgeous new houseguest under wraps.
But, smitten with her as he seems, Quintus says he wants to go home.
Asenath is drawn to Quintus by the secrets they share, even if it scares her. As Asenath is pulled deeper into the mysteries of the bog, she must risk everything to keep him from hell’s cold grasp as she uncovers forbidden rites, awakened deities, and an attraction that transcends the ages.
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1
It would have been a pleasant day, if not for the hanging.
The sun glistened off the newly constructed gallows—it was not often Lighura had a public execution—and people greeted each other in the square, staking out spots with a good view as they consumed their sweet buns and boiled eggs.
Lysandro was not hungry. He couldn’t see how good people could be content to stuff themselves before a man was set to die, before the stench of a man expiring in his own piss filled their nostrils. He could smell it already.
Kato brushed against his elbow.
“You’ll be able to see better from here, Don de Castel.”
“I can see all I care to from here, thank you.”
The innkeeper nodded. “As you say, Signor. But if you change your mind—”
Lysandro nodded and planted his feet on the ground, fists clenched at his side.
The crowd snapped to attention as the door to the magistrate’s office opened. Lysandro’s stomach soured at the sight of Marek. He exuded a sense of utter disinterest in the events of which he himself was the director. But Lysandro saw the glint of malice in Marek’s eyes that he was unable to hide. He relished the power over the life and death of the wretch behind him, his broad chest inflated with self-importance. In short, Lysandro loathed him.
His attention turned to the bound man following the magistrate. Two of Marek’s officers stood beside him and another behind, forming a diamond around the condemned. It was clear this man would not go easily to his death.
He writhed and twisted his body to get away from the men holding him, one at each elbow, kicking and flailing his legs out in a childlike tantrum. He was so focused on trying to escape their grip that only inchoate groans passed his lips. When they ascended the steps to the platform, the man’s struggling became more desperate, more violent. The crowd gasped when the man wrangled one arm free, and it looked like he might escape. But he fell to the ground as two of Marek’s men fumbled after him, fighting to keep him in their grip. They forced him to his feet again.
Without saying a word, Marek turned to face his underlings. They redoubled their efforts, squeezing the prisoner tight between them until his feet barely touched the ground. The man’s struggling didn’t cease, but his range of motion was now severely restricted. The captive’s eyes went wide in fear, showing the whites of them like a man held in the throes of a hysterical fit.
Drop back, Lysandro thought. He couldn’t stop his mind from racing through all the ways the man might free himself. It he could just loosen their hold on him again, he could run. But he’d never make it. Not without help.
When Marek turned his face to the crowd, his eyes had narrowed to murderous slits, and his jaw was tightly clenched to preserve the façade of a smile that he wore there. He lifted his chin and addressed those who had gathered:
“People of Lighura—Jair Oreyo is guilty of killing Don Aldo Carras, who caught him stealing silver. His crime was discovered by his widow, Doña Sofia Carras, who tripped over her husband’s body when responding to his screams.”
Lysandro heard the gasps of those around him as Marek recounted the grisly details. Marek was either too stupid or too cruel to show more consideration for Carras’s family. They stood huddled together in a tight circle, their faces pointed at the ground, while Marek expounded on the way Don Aldo’s brains had been bashed against the stairway of their own home and turned the entryway slippery with blood. The women and children who congregated in the square turned their heads away from the platform as if to shut out Marek’s words and shield themselves from the nightmares such lurid descriptions were bound to produce.
Lysandro could feel his face flushing hot. A good man’s guts were being strewn about with words. That he couldn’t stifle them turned him livid.
Seemingly sated by his talk of violence, Marek shifted to patting himself on the back for a job well done. He turned to his officers and beckoned with a small gesture for the prisoner to be brought forward. His men accomplished it, but with great difficulty.
“Any last words?” he asked in a cool, collected tone.
Jair was foaming at the mouth. Lysandro could see the veins on his neck bulge as his face went purple with rage, and he lunged at Marek.
“Liar!”
Lysandro’s ears pricked up. Alarm bells rang in his head like the one in the temple tower—a full-throated clang that deepened his suspicion.
“Murderer!” Jair shouted. “You’re just as guilty as me!”
He pled with his captors, who rammed the noose around his neck. “Don’t listen to him, he’s a liar! Stop, or he’ll do the same thing to you!”
The knife tucked up Lysandro’s sleeve prodded him at the wrist. He calculated the distance and the force it would take to sever the rope swinging from the beam.
He could do it. Avoiding notice, though—that would be another matter entirely. But something else stopped him from sliding the hidden blade into his hand.
You’re just as guilty as me.
Jair was a murderer; he just wasn’t alone.
The corner of Lysandro’s mouth twitched as the officers tightened the noose around Jair’s throat, but his fingers remained loose at his side.
The blood in Lothan Marek’s veins hissed in fury as his brothers dragged Jairo, kicking and screaming, toward the noose. He was being ridiculous. It was one thing to steal from the poor, and another to murder a pillar of the community and think no one would notice. Lothan had no choice but to act. And Jair had the gall to call him out in front of the whole village.
His behavior worked in Lothan’s favor. He was acting like a lunatic with his hair on fire, and Lothan expected people to discount his exclamations as the ravings of an almost dead man. Jair’s outrage was Lothan’s shield, so long as he kept the anger from his face.
Jair had been effective at his job; his taste for brutality had served him well on occasion. He was perhaps the strongest among them, excepting Lothan himself, and it was a bitter shame to kill him. Almost.
All those who shared his blood were a greedy, groveling, worthless waste of a power that should have been his alone. Today brought him one step closer to the magic scattered across their veins being made whole.
Lothan quashed his annoyance as Jair squealed and squirmed to the last minute, wriggling like a worm until the floor gave way beneath him and silence reigned over the square, heralded by a definitive, satisfying crack. Jair’s latent power shivered up Lothan’s spine. The surge of energy buzzed through him like a current, crackling at his fingertips and the ends of his hair. It was delicious. But not nearly enough.
Lysandro was grateful for the silence; it was infinitely better than a roar of cheers would have been. The Carras family remained clustered together as the knot of onlookers unfurled itself, and people returned to their routines to try to forget what they’d seen. Lysandro made his way toward them. Marek approached at the same time, holding a large wooden box in his hands.
“Doña Carras,” he said, presenting her with the recovered silverware.
He looked so pleased with himself.
Don Aldo’s widow stared at him, then took the box into her hands with a dumb expression on her face.
Lothan furrowed his brows. “This is your stolen silver, is it not? I imagined its return would bring you some comfort.” He had to fight to keep the bite out of his voice.
Lysandro could hold his tongue no longer.
“Perhaps she’d be more grateful if you’d preserved her husband’s dignity, rather than turn his final moments into a spectacle.”
Marek looked up at him, his eyes bright with challenge.
“Or perhaps they’d have been grateful if you had arrested Jair weeks ago, after he’d already been accused of thievery by the blacksmith. Granted, his family’s possessions are humbler than this fine collection,” Lysandro continued, gesturing at the box of silver, “but had your justice been swifter—”
The widow sobbed, and Lysandro let his accusation hang in the air.
“The blacksmith’s account was not reliable. He was not as—”
“Worthy of your attention?” Lysandro offered. His mouth set into a hard line. “I shouldn’t need to remind you that the office of magistrate is bound to protect all of Lighura, not just its wealthier citizens.”
Lothan scowled.
“What did you lie about?” Lysandro asked.
“Excuse me?”
The abrupt turn took Marek by surprise. Lysandro lifted his gaze over Marek’s shoulder to the hanged man. “With his last breath, he called you a liar. What did you lie about?”
Marek huffed through his nose and shifted on his feet like a bull in a pen.
“He called me a murderer too. Do you also accuse me of that?”
Marek fixed him with a venomous stare. Doña Sofia’s hand flew to her mouth, and her younger children hid their faces in her voluminous black skirts.
Lysandro didn’t flinch.
He waited for an answer with feigned curiosity. Marek had walked into the trap himself. Lysandro wasn’t about to help him out of it.
Marek’s gaze slid to the widow. “I did my duty here today. No one can say I didn’t.” He turned his back on them both and left.
Doña Sofia let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”
“Someone had to say something.”
She looked down again and brushed her fingers against the grain of the box Marek had given her as her children came out of hiding. Lysandro smiled at them and ruffled the younger boy’s hair before turning his gaze back to their mother.
“Is there anything you need?” he asked.
“We’ll be all right. Thank you again.”
Lysandro nodded and looked to her eldest son. “Take good care of them.”
The young don was a strapping teenager, who tried to act older than he was by appearing to be unmoved by the whole affair. He was managing it badly. The boy’s eyes darted from one end of the square to the other, not finding an answer to the question forming on his lips.
“There’s so much to go through. So many papers. I don’t even—”
“There’s nothing that can’t wait a few days’ time,” Lysandro interrupted. “I’ll come see you soon, help you get everything sorted. Let’s see if we can’t make any sense of it.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s my pleasure,” he replied. “Take care.”
Before departing from the square himself, Lysandro spared one last look at the hanged man, cast in silhouette by the sun’s rays as Marek’s officers worked to cut him down. Lysandro wondered at all he might have inquired of the dead man—all the questions he could never ask.
The cheerful weather was wasted on the somber mood that hung over the dusty little village until nightfall. Lysandro called on his father for a late supper, having finally found his appetite after a full day’s abstinence. He greeted the doorman genially.
“Good evening, Diego.”
“Good evening, Don Lysandro. You’ll find him in the dining hall this evening.”
“The dining hall?” Lysandro asked. “Does he have guests?”
“No, Signor. He simply said he longed for some formality.”
Lysandro raised an amused eyebrow. He thanked the man and headed through the familiar hallways of the house in which he had grown up and found his way to his father. Don de Castel the elder was already seated at the head of a long wooden table in an elegantly papered room of cream and burgundy. Cheeses, warm bread, and a stiff fortified wine lay fanned out before him.
“Standing on ceremony today, Father?” Lysandro asked, seating himself at his father’s right hand and pouring himself a drink.
“Indeed,” Elias answered, not looking up from his plate as he tore off a piece of bread from a larger loaf and soaked it in a spiced olive oil.
“In your dressing gown?” Lysandro asked.
Elias grunted in the affirmative. “It’s my best one.”
Lysandro smiled and took in the image of his father. His robe was one of fine fabric, luxurious and warm against the chill in the air coming off the sea. The wine-colored gown was elevated by an intricately embroidered scroll pattern, with golden threads woven into the cuffs and collar. His father’s face was thin, but sharp, and marked by an imposing chin and a well-kept, respectable beard of silver to match the hair smoothed back on his head. Yes, Lysandro thought, his father looked every ounce a don.
“Marek hung Carass’s murderer today,” Lysandro said.
“Mm.”
“How he got to be magistrate I’ll never know.”
“That’s easy. You didn’t try for it.”
Lysandro sipped at his wine. “Surely there are other able men in this village.”
