And then Salvatore stepped through the broken doorway. His eyes were wild, his jaw clenched, a dagger flashing in his hand. The blade caught the firelight and came down—once, twice—again. Each blow thudded through the air like a heartbeat turned to stone.
My mother’s body folded. Blood poured from the wounds, slick and red, pooling beneath her. She tried to crawl away, her hands dragging through it, but he grabbed her hair and drove the blade home one final time.
Then he dropped the dagger beside her.
He stared at what he had done—face ghost-pale, mouth open—and fled into the night, leaving her to die alone.
The mirror died, and the room snapped shut around me. My chest split open as if something had struck it; blood thundered in my ears so loud I could taste it.
I spun. My fist found his face—bone answered bone, a hot, satisfying snap that ran pain up my arm and lit my blood like wildfire. I didn’t flinch. I didn’t think. Rage moved me wholly.
“You fucking son of bitch put me here?!” I barked, voice as ragged as torn leather. “I’m in this hellhole because of you?”
“Lazarus, please—let me explain—” Salvatore choked, stumbling back, a smear of blood glinting at his lip.
I shoved him. He hit the stone with a sick thud that echoed through the chamber. The sound tasted of iron and old things.
“You killed my mother? Because you were too weak to face punishment alone?” I spat.
“You don’t understand!” he cried, panic stilting his voice.
My vision swam red. I slammed him again, harder this time, my fingers clawing into his shoulders until the stone bit through skin.
“I trusted you,” I roared, my voice tearing my throat raw. “I believed in you! All the pain, the trials, the screams in the dark, the beasts tearing our flesh, eating the corpses of our own—and you brought me here!”
He gasped, writhing under my grip, breath a shallow rasp, his face going the color of wet clay. “I didn’t mean—” he choked.
“You fucking betrayed me!” I snarled, venom sharpening every word. “You’re just another monster. Like him.”
The anger was not a fire. It was acid—thin, hot, eating through everything. My grip tightened. I drove him into the stone again. Shadows writhed on the wall, black tongues licking at his outline as if the room itself thirsted for his end.
“I should crack your skull,” I hissed close to his ear. “I should watch you bleed and finally make you pay.”
Severen’s laughter coiled through the chamber—rich and delighted. It fed on the heat of my fury like carrion.
I had Salvatore pinned; my hands ground his shoulders into the stone, the taste of iron thick on my tongue. His eyes bulged, his lips moved, begging me to stop, but I couldn’t hear him—only the roar of blood in my ears.
My breath came out as a growl. “Why would you kill my mother?” I hissed. My voice cracked, rough and raw. “She was the only parent I had left. You took her from me!”
He tried to speak, but the words tangled in his throat, swallowed by my rage.
“I never even got to tell her I was sorry,” I said, the words shaking loose before I could stop them. “The day before she died, I yelled at her. I begged her to tell me who my father was, and she wouldn’t. I said things I didn’t mean—gods, I said things no son should ever say. And I left her like that. Angry. Alone.”
My fingers tightened on his skin until my knuckles turned white. “I went back the next day to apologize. I wanted to make it right. I wanted her to know I didn’t hate her.” My breath shook, broken, every word dragging itself from somewhere deep. “But she was gone. Because of you. Because you killed her. You fucking stole that chance from me!”
I slammed him into the wall. His head cracked against the stone. Blood ran down his chin, bright in the torchlight.
“I live every day with that guilt,” I rasped, my throat burning. “Every night I see her face and I think she died believing I despised her. And now I know the truth—that you did it. That you took my last chance to fix it.”
Salvatore’s face was pale, his breath shallow. He stared up at me with something between terror and regret. But I didn’t see him anymore—only the ghost of my mother, lying on the floor, her blood soaking the earth.
“You took her from me,” I whispered. “Youdestroyed my life.”
The rage blurred my vision. My hands shook. I could feel his pulse fluttering weakly under my thumbs, feel the life straining to stay.
Severen’s laughter curled through the chamber, low and thick, feeding on the silence that followed.
He tilted his head toward me, eyes as bright as coals. “What is this hunger in you, Lazarus? This obsession with knowing who your father was? What makes you crave a name that was never meant for you?”
