Captain Parker had approved my visit without comment, but her expression had said enough. Are you sure about this?
I wasn’t, but I needed answers only one person could provide.
The guards at the checkpoint nodded as I passed, professional but wary. They’d been briefed on Lord Alstone’s condition—the black eyes, the fragmented speech, the way the master’s corruption had eaten through whatever humanity remained.
He was not my uncle anymore. Something else was wearing his face.
The dimensional barriers flickered at the cell’s entrance—my own portal magic, ironically, repurposed to contain him. I’d designed the containment grid myself with clean geometry and efficiency. I could focus on that kind of work without thinking about what it was holding.
Or who.
Lord Alstone sat perfectly still in the center of the cell, his hands folded in his lap. When he looked up, his eyes were completely black. No iris. No white. Just obsidian darkness reflecting the barrier’s shimmer.
Keane. His voice held multiple tones layered over each other, like someone speaking through water. The prodigal nephew visits his fallen mentor.
You were never my mentor, I said, my voice coming out steady. You were my jailer.
He laughed—too many voices at once, harmonizing in ways that made my dimensional sense ache. Such anger. The master showed me how to move beyond petty emotion. How to see the patterns underneath.
I pulled out my tablet, already recording. Whatever information I could extract from the madness might help us later.
I want the truth about my parents.
The black eyes fixed on me with unnatural stillness. Wisp pressed against my legs, grounding me.
Truth. He tasted the word like it was foreign. Truth is such a limited concept when you’re bound by linear causality. But, yes. Foster and Sophia, your parents. The multiple voices resolved briefly into something that sounded almost human. They chose poorly.
They discovered the first corrupted wellspring. I was repeating the information I’d gotten from Levon. He hadn’t been sure who killed them, but I continued, And you had them killed for it.
I saved the family legacy, my uncle admitted. Old fury broke through the master’s overlay. This was Lazlo Alstone’s voice, bitter and sharp. Foster would have exposed everything. Destroyed centuries of Alstone influence for the sake of truth and morality. He was weak.
My hands clenched. He was your brother.
He was an obstacle. The black eyes gleamed with something that might have been pride or might have been the master speaking through him. The third seat should have been mine by right. I was older, stronger, more willing to do what was necessary for our family’s power.
But the wellspring chose him instead.
Silence. Then that multilayered laugh again.
The wellspring. Venom now, centuries old. The wellspring rejected me. Wouldn’t acknowledge my claim. I couldn’t even enter the royal tower suite. The bloodline wards recognized his magic, not mine. Do you know what that feels like? To be judged unworthy by sentient rock?
I filed that away. The wellspring’s judgment. Its ability to distinguish between brothers based on character, not just blood.
So you killed them both, I said. Made it look like an accident.
Car accident was cleaner than vampire attack. Fewer questions. Less investigation. His head tilted at an angle no human neck should allow. Sophia would have supported him. She always did. They were a unit. Removing one meant removing both.
And then you took me.
And then I prepared you. The master’s influence surged forward again, drowning Alstone’s voice. Made you compatible with the network. Corruption isn’t destruction, dear nephew. It’s evolution. Transformation. Becoming part of something eternal.
My stomach turned. You tortured me for months.
I tried to save you from their weakness, he said, but you rejected perfection. Chose these… children. Chose the cleaning girl who doesn’t even understand what she is.
I kept my expression neutral.
Where are the Lightfords? I asked, steering toward tactical intelligence.
