“Go back…”
He squared his shoulders, defiance roughening his tone.
“You brought me here. I won’t leave until you show yourself!”
“Go back…” the voice urged again, lower now, threaded with something ancient.
The vision burned brighter.
The ground split, and suddenly—he was a boy again. Eight years old, standing in the doorway as his mother rode away, a newborn in her arms. His father silent behind him, grief like iron in the rain.
“Go back and see.”
The downpour thickened until it drowned the world.
Viktor’s chest seized as he looked closer.
“See.”
It was the day his brother was born.
The brother he had buried in memory.
The brother he had never truly known.
The brother whose fate had haunted him all his life.
He saw him.
The blind man on the Whispering Way.
The figure who walked between worlds.
The Midnight.
Chapter Fifty-Three
If I Cannot Have You
They had stolen one night from the world, knowing it might be their only.
The dream lingered like smoke, curling through his chest even in waking.
The Midnight.
His brother.
The thought haunted him, but dawn was still a breath away, and Amerei was warm against him. He could not hold both at once: the shadow in his blood and the light in his arms.
So he chose her.
She stirred, lashes fluttering, and he tightened his hold with a low growl.
“Stay asleep,” he muttered. “You’re trouble enough awake.”
Her lips curved against his skin.
“So cross, and the sun’s not even up.”
