But I have already found him?—
Finnian looked up, the blood draining from his face.
Father’s figure distorted like a glitch. Black circles shadowed around his eyes, sickly and death-like. His head cocked, and his pupils expanded into disks until his gaze was nothing but blackness.
“...Ever love…a son…” Finnian blinked and shook his head.This is…
His attention returned to the flowers at his feet.
He crouched and plucked a petal from one of the blossoms and siphoned the magical properties from it between his fingertips.
No magic laced through his skin and dissolved into his blood.
Fear jumped in his pulse, reckoning him with the realization.
“You are not real,” he murmured. The petal between his fingers, the flowers at his ankles, they melted away like smoke.
He flashed his eyes up onto his father. “You never were.” Gooseflesh crawled down his nape and spread along his back as Father shrank a few feet in height, his face molding into one Finnian recognized well.
He stood in front of a clone of his thirteen-year-old self. Wavy, velvety-dark strands dusted the shoulders of his gray frock coat, brass buttons undone and a burgundy linen tunic sloppily spilling out of the collar. The same outfit he’d worn to Naia and Solaris’s birthday celebration many centuries ago—the day Mira murdered Alke.
The thirteen-year-old replica twisted his head to Finnian. “Pathetic.” He enunciated the syllables like he’d spat the word on the ground. Narrow eyes sat on a detached expression, judgment beaming from them. “The sight of you makes me ill.”
A paralyzing sensation swept through his limbs, coating his palms with a cold sweat. “I will find him.”
The younger copy traveled through the iron bars as if they were an apparition. “You are chained to Cassian—cursedto go mad. You have already failed.”
The muscles in Finnian’s chest seized.
You have already failed.
The phrase felt like stones pulling him down.
Failed—again.
The clone stepped into Finnian’s space, holding him in his icy stare. “You cannot right a lifetime of wrongs by saving Father. What of Alke and the life he lost? Naia and the torment she endured? Nothing has changed.”
“I have a plan,” he gritted out. “My plan will work. It will work. I promise it will work.”
“You are not strong enough.”
“Shut up!” The itch thrummed down his skull, rattling the nerves in his jaws. The urge to reach inside his head and scratch it pleaded on his fingertips.
“You will never be strong enough.”
“Shut the fuck up!” Finnian snapped forward and caught his younger self by the throat. He squeezed until he felt the sweet satisfaction of cartilage snapping like elastic. “What would you know in the short thirteen years of your life? I’ve lived for centuries. I know far more than you ever would.”
“I knowyoubetter than you ever will.” Despite Finnian’s tight grasp, the clone did not gasp or flail for breath. In a blank, unfazed manner, it continued. “Your impulsive nature is why Father is locked away; why you were banished. You have beendown here for five years, and yet, Naia has not tried to come for you once. You are unlovable and that is why everyone eventually abandons you?—”
“Stop.” Finnian’s breath went short. The crescendo in his skull grew louder.
“That's why you are here. You fear loneliness.”
“No.” Finnian hunkered down, supporting his weight with his elbows on his knees, shaking his head vigorously. “I will make it all better. I will fix it. Right my wrongs.”
How could I ever love a son like you?
“You never know when to leave anything alone. If you would’ve let Alke die, you would’ve never practiced necromancy. Mother would have never banished you and you could’ve helped Naia escape Kaimana.”
