Voids.
If luminth can be shaped into weapons and shields, then it can be shaped into something similar. He just never thought of it. Lightbringers encourage obedience, not imagination.
I backstep hard, letting my father’s blade slice empty air inches from my chest. Dropping my left hand, I turn my palm over, and pour luminth into the ground. Not a blast, but a seed.
Light spreads across the ground in a thin, glowing line of molten gold, drawn in a circle. I sweep my hand and the line completes, encircling us both.
My father pauses, eyeing the ground. “What are you doing?”
I narrow my own gaze at him. “It seems there were some things you didn’t teach me.”
Then Ipull.
The circle flares. Light rises from it in a rush, swelling into shapes as I hold my breath.
Three, then four, and finallysixfigures of condensed light, their edges shimmering faintly. They stand in a half-ring behind me, mirroring my stance.
The expression on his face is almost gratifying.
The Voids move when I move. When I step left, two of them step with me. Their hands are shaped into blades of light, cruder than the complexity of Kaelen’s inventions, but sharp enough to cut. Testing, I pass my hand through one. It doesn’t hurt me.
For the first time, I see hesitation in my father. He’s never fought me like this.
He sweeps his arm, and his luminth explodes outward in razor-thin discs of light that slice through air toward me like thrown blades. The same weapon he threw at Kaelen’s mother, cutting her throat on the rampart of Umbraxis.
My Voids react on instinct, stepping into the path. Discs hit them, carving chunks of light away. Two constructs shatter entirely.
I grit my teeth and press forward. The remaining figures surge at him. He moves like the commander he is, pivoting, slicing, dispatching them with brutal efficiency. Each cut is clean, and I lose another. Then a fourth, leaving only two behind.
But each moment that he’s distracted is a moment he’s not cuttingme.And I use it.
I dart in under the cover of the final two Voids. My daggers flashing, I slash at his ribs. My father blocks. But his blade is angled wrong, distracted by a Void, and my right-hand blade skims his side.
It doesn’t cut flesh the way steel would. The way I know Kaelen’s Voids do.
Itburns.His armor smokes where my luminth touches it, the gold blackening along the edge. And my father hisses, a sharp, involuntary sound.
His eyes snap to me, furious. “You—”
I don’t let him finish. Twisting my wrist, I drive my left blade toward his right forearm, aiming to disable the hand he relies on most for his luminth.
He jerks back, barely avoiding it, and counters with a knee to my abdomen. My armor absorbs some of the blow, but not enough, and I stumble with a choked gasp.
A sharp palm strike hits my chestplate, throwing me back again. And I hit the ground, my vision flashing white and nausea twisting my stomach.
For a second, I can’t breathe.
For a second, I’m eight years old again. Sprawled in the training yard, my ribs bruised, and his face leaning over me.
Get up.
Forcing ragged air into my lungs, I roll to my side as his blade slams down where my head was, carving a deep, jagged cut in the ground.
I scramble up, limbs shaking. He will not stop.
“Yield,” he commands, his voice hard. “This is your last chance.”
The audacity of him askingnow. His refusal to name my mother. The flicker of interest in his eyes at the Voids, the expectation of obedience after everything he’sdone. Not just to me, but to Eres, and Darian, and Kaelen—
