The Shadows Between Us by Tricia Levenseller is a Young Adult Dark Fantasy Romance novel.
Alessandra Stathos, the overlooked second daughter of the Count of Masis, is cunning, ambitious, and drop-dead gorgeous. With her older sister finally engaged, she is free to make her debut in society, and she's set her eyes high. She intends to woo the Shadow King, marry him, and kill him to claim his kingdom for herself. When she catches his eye at a ball and is invited to court, things seem to be off to an auspicious start.
Unfortunately for her, she's not the only person trying to kill Kallias. Someone else is too, and they are very persistent about it. Alessandra finds herself forced to work with her chosen target to make sure he lives long enough to make her his queen. But the more they work together, Alessandra encounters a new problem in her plan—she just might be falling in love. After all, who better for a Shadow King than a cunning, villainous queen?
It was published February 25, 2020. A companion novel following Alessandra's older sister Chrysantha, called The Darkness Within Us, is to be published July 9, 2024.
Tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Kallias and Xanthos' father, the previous Shadow King, personally beat the latter to death and left him to die on the side of a road just to ensure Kallias inherited the throne. All just because Xanthos didn't inherit the family's shadow powers.
- Ambition Is Evil:
- The main character is a Villain Protagonist, a remorseless murderess, and an unashamed schemer. She is also extremely ambitious and initially intends to kill Kallias to claim his throne for herself, only to fall in love with him instead.
- Leandros/Xanthos is far worse. He's willing to slaughter his entire family to ensure he claims what he believes is his rightful throne, and while his father might have had it coming, his mother and younger brother certainly didn't.
- Bad Boss: Kallias regularly executes his guards for any lapses in their duties.
- Big Bad Friend: Leandros Vasco, who is really Xanthos, Kallias's long-thought dead older brother and the original heir to the throne. He's also the one who murdered their parents and has been trying to assassinate Kallias so he can have a clear path to the throne.
- Big Brother Bully: While Kallias loved his older brother, he fully admits that Xanthos was a very poor sibling and could be very cruel to him.
- Cain and Abel:
- Alessandra and her older sister Chrysantha. Initially, it seems Alessandra is the Cain and Chrysantha is the Abel, but while Alessandra genuinely hates her sister, she never does anything to actually harm her. Chrysantha, meanwhile, is initially portrayed as the more virtuous sister who takes after their gentle mother, but her letters to Alessandra where she regularly insults the latter hint that she's just as unpleasant as Alessandra is and is just better at hiding it. She flat out has no issues leading the police to her sister's doorstep and getting her arrested.
- Kallias and his older brother Xanthos. Kallias is the Abel, as despite his despicable nature he genuinely loves his family and would never do anything to harm them unless provoked. Xanthos, meanwhile, has no issues killing his entire family to claim the throne he believes is rightfully his.
- Deal with the Devil: Kallias' shadow powers come from a deal his ancestor made with a literal devil thousands of years ago.
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas:
- Kallias is not a good person, but he genuinely loved his mother and still mourns her death. It's all but stated that while he is willing to forgive his older brother for killing their father, he won't forgive him for killing their mother, and tries to beat Xanthos to death with his bare hands for the act.
- Subverted with Leandros/Xanthos. He loved his and Kallias's mother, but that didn't stop him from killing her, both because he wasn't sure if she was in on it and because she would've ruined his plan to claim the throne.
- Even Evil Has Standards: While infiltrating a brothel, Alessandra is genuinely horrified when the madame sizes up her "assets" in front of a ten-year-old girl.
- Foreshadowing: When preparing to infiltrate a brothel, Kallias dyes his hair to disguise himself. Alessandra idly notes that with his new hairstyle, he looks just like Leandros. In the second-to-last chapter, it's revealed Leandros is Kallias' brother Xanthos, which is where the resemblance comes from.
- Loving a Shadow: Leandros/Xanthos freely admits that he was never really in love with Alessandra once his cover is blown. He just wanted her because she was his brother's, and he wanted everything his brother had.
- Parental Favoritism:
- Alessandra's father favors her older Chrysantha over her because she acts like the girls' late, gentle mother. This only furthers Alessandra's resentment of him, to the point that she has no intention of helping him save his dying estate.
- Kallias's father favored him over his older brother Xanthos, because he inherited the family's shadow powers. So much so that he decided to murder Xanthos just to ensure Kallias inherited the throne, setting off the events of the novel.
- Parents Know Their Children: One of the reasons Leandros/Xanthos murdered his mother is because she was close to seeing through his disguise and figuring out he was really her son.
- Really Gets Around: Alessandra has had multiple lovers in the past, something she tries to keep a secret as abstinence before marriage is expected of young women in Naxos' high society and it could ruin her chances with Kallias. Kallias, as it turns out, doesn't particularly care and finds the idea conservative and sexist.
- Red Herring: Right from the beginning, there is some kind of connection foreshadowed between Leandros and Kallias, with the implication that the two are the same person since the reader is initially unaware of how Kallias's powers work. Later on, however, it's obvious that the two are different people. The actual connection is that Leandros is Kallias's older brother.
- Rightful King Returns: A dark example. Leandrose/Xanthos is the rightful heir to the throne as the eldest son, but only intends to press his claim when his younger brother is dead because he's convinced Kallias would never give up the throne to him.
- Spare to the Throne: Kallias wasn't the original Crown Prince. His older brother Xanthos was, but he was killed several years before the start of the story. Or so everyone believes.
- Villain Protagonist: Both Alessandra and her love interest, Kallias, are evil and horrible people by any stretch of the imagination, and the story follows their growing romance. A key element in the story as the two grow only more in love with each other the more they learn about each other's more villainous traits.
- Woman Scorned: Alessandra murdered her First Love Hektor after he revealed he didn't care about her and had already found another lover to replace her with. Contrary to her expectations, Kallias finds this hilarious when he learns about it and immediately pardons her. He arguably becomes even more attracted to her after learning this side of her than he was before.
