Angra’s father killed his mother—and Angra used this similarity to break Theron.
“No!” Theron screams.
“You’re the same,” the slave encourages. “He’s coming. He’ll always come for you.”
The flash of a blade. Theron stands over the man, the corpse, blood pulsing through a wound across the man’s neck.
Theron didn’t remember it any of it, the Decay tugging him this way and that as it tried to eat away at his mind. Some of it he wanted—like a power strong enough to spread through the world. Some of it he didn’t dare admit he wanted—like overtaking Winter, forcing my kingdom into a path he thought would make it safe. For me.
He remembers it all now, though. He sees it as I see it, my connection to the magic linked to his blood drawing out the memories as, moment by moment, heartbeat by heartbeat, the Decay crawled into his mind and settled inside of him like a dream he could feel but couldn’t recall.
And now, after weeks of unconscious games, Theron can’t fight anymore. He resisted—he fought it almost as much as he wanted the chasm opened. But one desire trumped all others, one Angra latched on to, wrestled into submission.
Theron’s desire for a unified, equalized world.
He groans and I pull back from him, my throat raw.
“I need you here,” he mumbles. “This is right. Thisisright, this will save everyone . . .”
“Theron?”
He turns to Mather, his voice deep and resonant. “Get her out of here!”
Mather obeys. He grabs me under the arms and lifts me, sweeping Cordell’s dagger into his belt as he does. I kick against him, surrounded by the uncontainable certainty that I’ll never see Theron again. Angra will consume him,the Decay will destroy anything good in him. Gone, like everything else Angra took, all the other parts of our lives that have been cleaved away.
Unless I save everyone.
I cannot live in a world where Theron is Angra’s toy. And that’s my only other option, isn’t it? To not live in this world.
Mather shoves me out into the hall and slams the door on Theron, throwing the heavy bolt to lock him inside. As soon as it’s in place, Theron’s groans turn to shouts, the chain rattling in a cacophony of noise.
“Release me!” Theron screams. “Soldiers! The prisoners escaped—release me!”
I collapse against the door to his cell, listening to him shout, lost to the madness of Angra’s Decay. Detachment consumes me, clouds every part of me, and all I can do is blankly gape at the hall.
Mather runs to the cells across from us. The soldiers didn’t lock the doors with keys, merely shoved bolts that can’t be opened from the inside. He tugs at those bolts now, and they groan but only budge a little as he snaps panicked words at me. “We don’t have much time! We need—”
He stops.
A man stands at the bottom of the staircase. Thin black hair twists atop his head in loose coils, golden patterns swirl along the thick maroon fabric of his cloak, the collar rising high around his ears.
And a scar stretches from his temple down to his chin.
When the man steps forward, Mather flies toward him, raising the only weapon he has: Cordell’s conduit. I fling my hand out to stop Mather before I even know why.
Rares. The librarian in residence from Yakim.
“You . . .” is all I can manage. His presence here makes no sense, clogging my mind with details that don’t fit.
Like the way he watched me in Yakim, studious, amused. Like the outfit he wears now and how similar it is to something else, something that—
The tapestry in the Donati Palace’s gallery. The heavy robes, the dark skin.
He isn’t Yakimian.
Rares isPaislian.
He smiles, a quick flash of recognition. “The lie was necessary, dear heart. I didn’t know you; you didn’t know me. Of course, you still don’t know me, but if you want my help, we must hurry.” He swings toward the stairs, leaving me gawking after him, Mather staring with a wrinkled brow, and Theron shouting for freedom from his cell.
