Finnian’s nostrils flared. “My plan will work. It will work. Iwillfind him, and Iwillsave him.”
“And then what?” He tilted his head, the gesture patronizingly gutting. “How do you intend to escape, hm? You have already failed.”
“No!” Finnian sprang forward and caught the lapels of his thirteen-year-old self’s coat and jerked him forward. “I will make it all better.”
A cruel smirk lifted one side of his mouth. “How?”
Sharp, hostile malice flared in Finnian. “I am not the helpless little boy you are. What makes you think I give a fuck about what you say?”
“Because I am always with you, aren’t I?” His younger self spoke with an impassiveness that stiffened the muscles in Finnian’s neck. “You cannot escape me. Youneedme to remind you of what it feels like to be helpless—forced to watch something you love break apart.”
The glittering walls of the room suddenly felt as if they were closing in, like night itself was swallowing him down its throat.
Finnian released his younger self and stepped away, his hand shaking. “No.”
Standing in Mira’s great hall once more, frozen in horror, watching as she suffocated Alke; the fear burning in him as Father was led away by executioners; leaving Naia at the entrance of the palace, unknowing how long it would be until he saw her again—the memories engulfed him, and the same aches, the same heartbreak triggered in response.
“You are pathetic,” his younger self repeated, spitting the syllables with disdain. “You have no idea where Father is, and your time is running out.” His voice rose. “You will rot here with your shame.”
Finnian’s stomach pulsed with nausea. He ground his molars and leveled his thirteen-year-old self with a dangerous look. “I will burn down the entire Land of the Dead if I must.”
His younger self huffed out a contemptuous laugh. “Nothing burns here without Cassian’s permission.”
“I will find a way!” Finnian shouted, his composure snapping.
The hum screeched louder, the sensation spasming the nerves inside of his brain. An itch he could not reach reverberated in his cheeks, down his neck.
He winced and let go of his younger self, throwing his hands over his ears. The ringing did not cease.
Desperate, he ripped the hearing aid out of his ear.
The resonance screamed louder.
Groaning against the tightness in his chest, he clenched his jaws. He wanted to raze his skin, dig through flesh, and pluck out the parasite eating away at his mind.
Come up with a plan.
Finnian turned away from his younger self, the sight of his smug grin only proving to further piss him off.
Get Father and leave this place.
His hands rested on his hips, fixating his attention up at nothing in particular, and sucked in a sharp breath to calm his nervous system.
I must.
The obsidian walls stared back at him. No windows, no form of expression—no paintings or decor of any kind. His own personal nightmare.
Perhaps this was just another cage meant to provoke the delirium within him.
“And what of Everett?” his younger self asked.
At the mention of Everett, Finnian rotated, pinning his younger self with a glare. “What of him?”
“You would burn the Land down, knowing he is here?” A cunning look twisted in his dark eyes.
It took every ounce of self-control for Finnian not to knock his young self’s head clean off his body.
“He is already dead,” he gritted out, slipping his hearing aid back into his ear.
