“No!”
The vorakh wrapped her hands around my mother’s neck. “Where is he? Where’s your son?”
“Not here! Not here, I swear.”
I heard the crack. Heard the ripping sound. Saw the blood.
And then finally, finally, I listened to my mother. I did what I was told. I closed my eyes.
But it wasn’t enough to save me. It wasn’t enough to stop me from hearing. From knowing. From filling in the rest with my imagination.
My mother’s head was rolling on the floor, rolling away from her body. Rolling … Rolling …
I blinked, pulling myself from the memory, coughing on bile, and gasping for air. Bellamy gripped my arm and I felt caught between both worlds, trapped inside two timelines. I looked down. My hands looked familiar, large and holding my stave, and yet they felt small. A boy’s hands, weak, powerless.
“Yes. You!” the vorakh screamed; her eyes focused on me. “Finish what was started. Finish what was started!” She raced forward, pushing a mage to the ground, and punching another in the face.
I stumbled back as images of blood filled my vision. Her screams punctuated the chant of protective spells in my mind, the spells my father had desperately uttered. Until he didn’t.
Close your eyes, my mother said. And right then and there with hundreds of onlookers, with an active threat before me,I fell prisoner to the memory and did as my mother once commanded.
I tried to open my eyes. To escape. To be here and now. But the memory continued to play out in my mind, visceral and terrifying, putting me back there in a way I hadn’t experienced since that night.
The vorakh screamed, racing toward me. “I’ll still get you!”
My eyes sprang open, my body somehow colder. I felt disoriented, like hours had passed. But then my mind righted itself, and I lunged forward, readjusting my grip on the stave, my knuckles white as I tightened my hold. Every muscle in my body tensed with pain.
I took a shuddering breath. It ended now. No more thoughts. No more feelings. No more memories.
No more fear.
I spoke the words, I chanted the spell, and watched in satisfaction as the black glittering rope erupted from my stave. It coiled around my target as I twisted my wrist, tightening her binds, pushing her hands against her body, trapping her legs together so she couldn’t run.
By the Gods, no one would die by the hands of a vorakh again. No one would suffer like my parents had. I swore that every last monster would be sent to Lethea, even if I had to hunt them down myself. I’d see them all stripped, made powerless, and punished.
The vorakh’s eyes rolled back behind her eyelids, her shrieking more frantic now, as she collapsed to the icy waterway beneath her.
I listened with satisfaction to the thud. The crowd cheered. The threat was over.
But then the vorakh opened her eyes, suddenly lucid, her body shaking beneath my binds. The chill of her vision was gone, her power was cut off. But I was still shivering as she watched me, her eyes roving up and down.
She recoiled, her nose wrinkling, as she turned her body away. “Too much yellow. Too much,” she muttered. “Too much.”
Utter nonsense. Vorakh madness. I snarled in disgust at her rantings. She was probably farther than Lethea.
“Well done, my lord.” Bellamy pointed his stave at her prone body and lifted her into the air as the cheers grew louder.
A wave of dizziness washed over me. It was so intense, I thought I’d be sick.
And somehow, I was still cold, still shivering. My teeth were chattering, and wouldn’t stop. Even as I burrowed deeper into my robes, even as I uttered a warming spell with my stave, winter clung to my body like a cold wet blanket.
“Please,” my mother screamed again. “No!”
“You’ve birthed evil. You’ll regret it when he grows. When you see inside his soul like I have. When you learn what he is!” The vorakh screamed, racing toward me. “I’ll still get you!”
I clutched my chest, trying to shake the image. It was new … foreign. A new part of the memory? Something tonight I had unlocked? I didn’t remember her saying that all those years ago, nor in any of my flashbacks—never once had I recalled the vorakh uttering those words.
I’ll still get you.
