Shadow Heir

SOMETHING IN THE SNOW

Outside, darkness had fallen, with only well-placed torches to give us light. The terrible screech sounded again, echoed by smaller, terror-filled cries from the Palm residents as they scurried for shelter. A flash of red caught my eye, and I grabbed Rhona’s arm as she ran past.

“What’s going on?” I demanded. Even in the flickering torchlight, I could see she was as pale as the snow around us.

“The storm,” she cried. “The storm is coming.” She tugged desperately against me and I released her, more confused than ever.

“What’s going on?” said Rurik, coming to my side. “Are they being raided?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “They keep saying that—”

I heard the roar again and this time its owner came into view. My jaw dropped.

“That’s the storm?” I asked.

If you could take every stereotype and caricature of the abominable snowman and roll them into one archetypal snow monster, you’d have what was standing before me. It was about twenty feet tall, covered in white shaggy fur. Three curved horns—one on each side and one in the forehead—protruded from its head. Its eyes were large and black, as were the six-inch claws on its hands.

When it roared, I caught a glimpse of a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth....

Books by Richelle Mead

The Georgina Kincaid Series

SUCCUBUS BLUES

SUCCUBUS ON TOP

SUCCUBUS DREAMS

SUCCUBUS HEAT

SUCCUBUS SHADOWS

SUCCUBUS REVEALED

The Eugenie Markham/Dark Swan Series

STORM BORN

THORN QUEEN

IRON CROWNED

SHADOW HEIR

Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

SHADOW HEIR

A Dark Swan Novel

Richelle Mead

ZEBRA BOOKS

KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

SOMETHING IN THE SNOW

Books by Richelle Mead

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgments

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

Copyright Page

For my brother Steve,

who helps keep our family on track.

Acknowledgments

Bringing Eugenie’s story to a close is bittersweet. She was my first real action heroine—and a fellow redhead to boot. I’ve had a great time writing her series and am grateful to all the friends and family who have loved me, supported me, and helped me come up with new and terrifying monsters for her to take down! Many thanks go to editor John Scognamiglio at Kensington, who took the chance on Eugenie and helped bring her story to print. Thank you also to my amazing literary agent, Jim McCarthy, for guiding these books every step of the way. And finally, I can’t say enough how grateful I am to all the fans that have followed Eugenie on her journeys in both worlds. Your enthusiasm is what continues to make writing such a joy for me.

Chapter 1

I’m sure Ohio’s a perfectly nice place, once you get to know it. For me, right now, it was akin to one of the inner circles of Hell.

“How,” I demanded, “can the air possibly contain this much moisture? It’s like going swimming.”

My sister, walking beside me in the late-afternoon sun, grinned. “Use your magic to push it off you.”

“Too much work. It just keeps coming back,” I grumbled. Jasmine, like me, had been raised in the dry heat of Arizona, so I couldn’t understand why she didn’t have the same revulsion I did to the monsoon conditions of high summer in the Midwest. We both wielded weather magic, but hers was focused primarily on water, so maybe that explained her blasé attitude. Maybe it was just the resilience of youth, seeing as she was about ten years younger than me. Or maybe, just maybe, it was because she wasn’t nearly five months pregnant and hauling around an extra ten pounds or so of offspring who seemed intent on overheating me, sucking my resources, and pretty much slowing down every goddamned thing I did.

It was also possible hormones were making me a little irritable.

“We’re almost there,” said a polite voice on the other side of me. That was Pagiel. He was the son of Ysabel, one of the bitchiest gentry women I knew—and she didn’t even have excess hormones as an excuse. Pagiel hadn’t inherited his mother’s personality, thankfully, and possessed a knack for crossing between the Otherworld and the human world that rivaled mine and Jasmine’s. He was roughly the same age as her, and the fact that I had to have a teenage escort to get me to my doctor’s appointments only added insult to the many injuries I’d endured these last few months.