The vision pulls me closer. I watch as the scene begins to distort, twisting in on itself, blurring at the edges. The smile fades from young Solric’s face. Everything changes.
Smoke fills the mirror. The acrid stench of burnt flesh somehow reaches me even through the glass. Bodies appear scattered across what was once a great golden city, their faces frozen in terror. Buildings reduced to rubble, blood pooling in the cracks between marble tiles.
My father kneels in the centre of it all, cradling an older woman’s lifeless form. Her robes are torn, soaked with blood that’s already going dark. Her hazel eyes stare at nothing.
His hands shake as he smooths her blonde hair back from her face. When he speaks, his voice breaks.
“They killed everyone, Mother.” The words are choked, wet. “The entire council, all the advisors. They left me nothing but ashes to rule.”
I watch grief carve itself into his features, the way his shoulders hunch inward like he’s trying to make himself smaller. He’s just a boy.
“This is what broke him,” Lady Nerida says softly beside me.
The scene shifts, blurring like I’m moving through time. Now he’s older, maybe mid-twenties, standing in a throne room before a crowdof silent courtiers. A man kneels at his feet, bound and trembling. The prisoner looks guilty of nothing more than fear.
“You questioned my judgment,” my father says, his voice carrying across the chamber with terrible calm. “You spoke of the old ways, of mercy, of restraint.”
He reaches down and places his hand on the man’s shoulder.
The prisoner’s scream is immediate, inhuman. His body convulses, muscles seizing as invisible fire pours through his veins. The crowd flinches back, but no one moves to help. No one dares.
On my father’s chest, visible through the open collar of his robes, the sun sigil blazes to life. Golden light spills from the mark, illuminating his face from below.
And his expression?—
He’ssmiling.
He looks the way I must look when I heal. Lost in euphoria, drunk on the sensation. The resemblance makes my stomach turn.
The prisoner writhes. Blood runs from his nose, his ears. Still my father doesn’t let go.
“Enough,” someone in the crowd whispers. But it’s not enough. It’s never enough.
When he finally releases the man, letting him collapse in a sobbing heap, my father’s breathing is heavy, ragged. His hands shake slightly as he flexes his fingers, already craving the next touch. The sigil on his chest pulses once more before fading, leaving a faint golden glow on his skin.
His face is harder now. The softness around his eyes has vanished, replaced by something cold and hungry. Each use of his power justified by the last, each cruelty a necessary response to the one before it. The addiction is written in every line of his body: the way he can’t quite stand still, the way his gaze tracks movement through the crowd like he’s searching for his next victim.
I realize my throat has closed up, because I’ve felt what my father felt. I know exactly how good it feels, how the power floods through you like liquid fire, how it whispers that just one more time won’t hurt, that you deserve this pleasure, that you’ve earned it.
I know what he became because I could become it too.
“Lady Cyra,” Lord Evander says quietly. “You need to see this next part.”
The vision changes again.
A moonlit garden. The air smells like jasmine and night-blooming flowers. My father stands alone, then she appears: Mother, approaching in the simple silver robes of a Daughter of the Moon.
She’s breathtaking. Her hair is long and dark blonde, falling in thick waves past her shoulders without a single thread of grey. Her face is unlined, luminous with youth, all soft curves and delicate features. Her green eyes – my eyes, but without the gold flicker – are brighter somehow, unclouded by the years of secrets and hiding that would come later. Her skin is smooth and sun-kissed, her cheeks rounded with the fullness of someone who hasn’t yet known hunger or fear.
She’s younger than I am now. Maybe nineteen, twenty at most.
“You carry too much pain,” she tells him, her voice like music.
When she reaches up to touch his face, I feel it. The pull of her magic, cool and soothing. It flows into him, visible as a faint silver glow where their skin meets. For the first time in months, his expression softens. The hard edges melt away, revealing the man underneath.
I watch them lean into each other; watch the way he looks at her like she’s the only thing keeping him tethered to his humanity.
The mirror shifts again, and dread pools in my stomach before I even see what comes next.
