“You’re here to play out the events to defeat him.”
Nick rubbed at the dull ache that was starting to pound in his temple. “I still don’t get it.”
Kody sucked her breath in. “I think I do. My father, along with Acheron and you, was defeated. Cyprian had won and the world was doomed.”
Madoc nodded. “Only one person can defeat a Malachai.”
Another Malachai.
“Yeah, but not me,” Nick said. “The father loses power around his son, and his presence weakens me, which is how he kicked my butt to begin with.” A sad indictment against the curse that was guaranteed to continue to punish the Malachai bloodline.
“Only if you don’t have help.”
Kody nodded. “That was why Cyprian went after the people he did in our time together, Nick. He was systematically wiping out your allies.”
“Neutralizing your allies and family,” Madoc corrected her. “The ones who fed Nick’s strength and gave him the will to fight.”
Nick gaped as he finally understood. “The battle isn’t over.”
“It’s just beginning, and because Cyprian went to the past, we know that he needs more power for whatever he’s planning. He wants you stronger …”
“To inherit even greater powers.”
“Exactly. If Cyprian can teach you hate and agony long before you finally succumb to it, the greater his abilities.”
Kody scowled. “But he’d already defeated Nick. Cyprian stood alone. He’d won, and we had lost everything.”
Including their lives.
“No, Nyria.” Madoc splayed his hand against the wall, and the monitors there flickered. “Your memory’s still splotchy.”
He showed them an image of their daughter who was speaking to a group of friends Nick remembered from when he’d last gone to the future.
Simi’s children were with her and Kyrian’s.
But there was one young man he didn’t recognize. “Who’s the boy next to Simi’s daughter?”
“Your son.” Madoc’s tone was flat and emotionless.
Yet Nick didn’t get it. “That’s not Cyprian.”
“No. He’s your son with Nyria.”
Nick gaped as he met Kody’s shocked stare. There was something she’d never mentioned to him. “We had a son?”
Eyes wide, she shrugged with an expression every bit as baffled as his probably was.
Madoc nodded. “You’re not fighting to save Cyprian. You’re fighting to save Bash.”
Ambrose sputtered. “How? Why? What? A Malachai has to be born in violence. Those are the rules. We can’t have sons unless they’re born to replace us.”
That was the curse.
Madoc inclined his head to Nick. “Nick—or you, rather, Ambrose—broke the curse. I can’t tell you how for obvious reasons, but you did. That’s how you and Nyria were able to have children without violence, and raise them.”
He glanced back at the happy faces of the children he’d once known. Madoc still remembered the day he’d first met his half-brother.
Back then, he’d been ambivalent. As a Dream-Hunter, he had siblings in the thousands. One more had never mattered to him.
