“You are my son, the light for the tree of my life. I could never be ashamed of you.” She strokes her son’s head once and then releases him with an encouraging smile. “Now, let us return to the sea. We’ll come back in a few years.”
The two begin to leave, but the older Ilryth doesn’t move. He sinks down to the sand where his younger self was, tail bent under him. He hides his face in his hands.
“Come back and fulfill your duty…coward…” He heaves over, digging his hands into the sand and unleashing a scream that causes the world around us to splinter. “How many times must I be reminded of my failures? How many times must I watch you die?” Ilryth leans back, arm outstretched, as he reaches toward his mother, well beyond his grasp.
I cross over to him with deliberate, purposeful steps. His every word resonates palpable pain within me, as if this agony were my own. It rumbles through the foundations of this illusory world, causing lightning-shaped cracks of darkness. At once, it shatters, like a mirror crashing into stone. Between the edges of the fractured images, ghostly hands reach out, grasping at the boundaries of this reality, clawing.
“Ilryth, I think we should go.” I place a hand on his shoulder, but my focus is on the monstrosities trying to tear apart this dream turned nightmare. There are faces moving behind the separating picture of this memory. Entities that have the tiny hairs on the back of my neck rising are trying to break through.
The duke is as still as a statue. His unseeing gaze is transfixed on a spot of sand right before the door. His skin has turned cold. The luster is fading from him. All color drains from his body.
I kneel at his side, tilting my head, looking up into his face. He still has yet to even register my presence.
“This isn’t real,” I say purposefully. Though it feels quite real to me now. Every rumbling of the earth. Every roar of the monster that has haunted my own dreams is tangible. Ihopethis is not real. “We must leave whatever this place is. Now. It’s over, Ilryth, time has moved on and so must you. There’s no point in losing yourself in what you can’t change. You have to move forward.”
Ilryth doesn’t move.
I shift, trying to place myself directly in front of him. There’s no way he can’t see me now. “You have to get us out of here. I don’t know what’s happening, but Lucia sent me here to tell you that, I think. You must come back to the real world, with me.”
“Worthless. Coward,” Ilryth whispers with raw loathing. “If I had just…let her go. But I couldn’t. Like I couldn’t hear Lellia’s words.Iheld her back. She was too good to die. It should have been me offered that day, not her.”
The words are a dagger between my ribs. I inhale sharply. My hands fly to his and I clutch them tightly.
“I know…” I whisper. “I know what it’s like to feel like you’re a burden to all those around you. That, no matter how hard you try, it’s never good enough. You can’t love them enough, sacrifice enough for them…”
He still doesn’t react. Still looks through me. The world around us continues to tremble. The shadows are consuming the edges, eating away at the details.
“Ilryth.” My voice has gone firm. “You’re the only one who can save us from this crumbling reality. You are not that boy any longer. You’re responsible for people,theyneed you, still. I—” The words stick to the inside of my throat. I swallow, trying to dislodge them. They make me sick, churning my stomach. But they’re the truth and right now I can’t be proud. I can’t allow my own fears of being dependent on another to hold me back. “Ineed you, Ilryth.”
He blinks and there’s a moment of clarity on his face. “Victoria?” he whispers across our minds. There’s something unexpectedly intimate about the way he says it, made more intense by our hands being interlocked.
“Ilryth, we—” I can’t speak fast enough.
A loud roar interrupts me and a blustering wind rips over the beach. The roots of the tree groan and crack, falling into a pale sea. In the distance, the fog condenses into a face that is locked in an eternal, angry scream. The visage of hate itself.
Ilryth hunches once more, his eyes going blank as they drop to the sand. He’s reverted to his numb, statue self. “What was the point of it? Of any of it? Have the gods truly abandoned their stewards?”
Mention of the gods draws my eyes to my forearm. It’s words—song given shape upon my flesh. Lucia wantedmeto do this because I had their magic. I look between it and the distant face that is sharpening as it grows nearer.
I don’t know what I’m doing but… “I’m a bloody wretched singer, Ilryth. You see what you’re driving me to?” No reaction to my bitter words. Damn. “Fine. Here goes nothing…”
I open my mouth and begin to sing. Not with my mind, but in my throat. It’s a few wobbling notes. Terrible, really. I never was a good singer. But I sing words as they come to me on instinct, whatever feels right,
“Come to me.
I call to you.
Come, come—”
Clarity dawns on him.Ilryth’s eyes widen slightly. I stop singing immediately. He grabs for my painted forearm.
“You sang.”
“Told you it was bad.”
Yet he stares at me in wonder, as if I were finer than the most skilled prima donna. But the moment is short-lived as Ilryth looks around, finally seeing the degrading world. Yet, he’s not surprised by it. He sighs softly and it betrays an exhaustion deeper than the lowest point of the ocean. His eyes land on the face in the distance, rushing toward us, as if to consume this whole island in a single bite.
“We need to go,” I urge.
