“I brought you here not toquestionme,” he thundered, “but because you defied me! The Trial of the Blood Circle demanded one survivor—one! Yet you clung to each other like frightened children!”
The shadows tightened. Pain ripped through me, hot and endless. My chest convulsed, ribs grinding. Blood filled my mouth, metallic and sharp, but I barely tasted it.
The real pain was deeper.
All my life, I had lived beneath a lie.
My father had never been a war hero. All those years, my mother fed me stories of valor, banners, and sacrifice—and now I understood why. She wasn’t protecting me from grief. She was protecting me from the truth.
Because my father wasn’t a hero.
He was Morgrath Severen.
A Shadow Lord.
A man who built empires out of suffering and fed on the downfall of those who defied him.
And Salvatore—he had always believed his mother died bringing him into this world. But the way Severen’s voice cracked when he spoke her name, the way his shadows recoiled at it, told me there was more. Much more. His mother hadn’t been weak. She was something else—something that still haunted him.
The foundations of everything I’d believed splintered beneath me. My blood was not my own. My life had never been mine. We were both living inside Severen’s lies.
He loomed above us, grinning jagged and vile, his shadows coiling tight around our throats like living chains. The heat from the braziers warped the air; smoke curled between his teeth when he spoke.
“You think mercy makes you strong?” he sneered. “You think sparing each other buys you freedom?”
He spat on the floor. The sound snapped like brittle reed.
“No. Mercy is weakness. Defiance is failure. You both failed me.”
The shadows dragged me forward across the stone, skin tearing beneath the links. Beside me, Salvatore was hauled like a broken marionette, his body jerking with every pull.
“You were told only one of you would remain,” Severen said. “Yet you spat on my law. You denied me my spectacle.” His voice dropped lower—thick, venomous. “Now you’ll learn what defiance costs.”
His grin split wider, slicing his face in two.
“Your next trial will be agony. You will beg for death, and I will deny it. And because you spat in my face, because you dared defy my command, Amara will bear the penalty for your mercy. Only one of you will rise… or you will both be ground into ash.”
My stomach turned to stone. The world went red.
“Don’t you fucking dare touch Amara,” I snarled. “I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”
Severen’s laughter detonated. It shook the chamber, rattled the chains, made the braziers flare until their flames screamed.
Then, suddenly, his shadows released their hold on us.
The coils of smoke and darkness snapped back toward him, slithering across the stone, vanishing into the folds of his cloak. My body collapsed under its own weight. I hit the ground hard, my palms scraping against the rough limestone.
The air tasted scorched.
Guards rushed forward—sandals slapping the floor, iron spears clattering. They yanked us upright, shoving us toward the archway with the blunt ends of their weapons. The heat from the braziers followed us, the light warping as if it too recoiled from Severen’s rage.
Then came his whisper—low, venomous, slicing into my skull.
Blame Salvatore. He brought you here. It was he who chained you to this nightmare.
The words burned through me, blistering, impossible to ignore.
I turned, the weight of them pressing hard beneath my ribs, every breath shallow.
