My shadows flared, sluggish but present.
"But that produces damaged goods. I learned that lesson with my firstborn." Something complicated crossed his face — pride and disappointment and a rage so old it had calcified into something almost like grief. "Kaan. A thousand years old, power to rival my own, raised from birth to rule at my side. Do you know what he did?"
“Let me guess, he must have seen through you and decided to leave.”
"Worse. He rejected everything. Walked away from Kara Cehennem, from his birthright, from me. Fell in love with some light-bearer and decided he'd rather play house than claim his throne." Erlik spat the words like they tasted of poison. "Love. The weakness that corrupts every son I've ever sired."
"Maybe the problem isn't your sons."
The darkness around us thickened. The full weight of his power pressed down — ancient, vast, utterly inhuman. The screaming in the Galleries rose to a fever pitch.
Then he laughed.
"Spirit. I like it." The pressure eased. "Here's my offer, Hakan. Not a demand — an offer. Come with me. Learn what you are, what you could become. I'll teach you to master your power instead of fearing it. When you've seen what the Shadow Court truly is, when you've tasted real strength — then you can decide."
"And my mother?"
"Stays here. As my guest." His smile didn't waver. "To ensure you return when summoned."
"No."
"You haven't even thought about it."
"I don't need to think about it." I stepped forward, letting my shadows writhe despite their weakness. "I don't want your throne. I don't want your power. I don't want anything from you."
Something flickered in Erlik's eyes — surprise, maybe. The displeasure of something that has never been refused. Then his smile turned cold.
"Defiance is charming in small doses, my son. In larger ones, it becomes tedious." He raised one hand, almost lazily. "Perhaps a demonstration is in order. So you understand exactly what you're refusing."
Shadow erupted from his fingers.
Not at me — at my mother.
The darkness wrapped around her throat, her chest, her mind. Her scream was brief, cut off as the darkness poured into her, and I felt it — felt him rifling through her memories like pages in a book, careless and cruel. Two hundred years of her life, everything she'd hidden and survived and carried, and he was picking through it like it meant nothing.
"STOP!" I lunged for him, but shadows caught me, pinned me in place with iron strength. "STOP IT —"
Erlik didn't even look at me. His attention was fixed on Elif, his expression one of clinical interest as she convulsed in his grip.
"Fascinating," he murmured. "The prayers she used to suppress you. The light magic she wove into your food, your clothes, your bedding. Two centuries of desperate dedication, all to keep you small and safe." He smiled. "How sweet. How utterly futile."
"LET HER GO —"
"In a moment." He twisted his hand, and my mother screamed again — a sound I would hear for the rest of my life, in every quiet moment, in every dark room — "I just want you to understand something, Hakan. This? This is mercy. This is me being gentle. If you refuse me, if you try to run, if you do anything other than exactly what I tell you —"
He released her.
She crumpled to the floor, gasping, shaking. Alive. Still alive. But something in her eyes had fractured — some piece of her that had been intact through everything, through the cage and the running and two hundred years of fear, had finally broken.
"— then next time, I won't stop." Erlik stepped over her body like it was debris on the floor. "I'll break her mind completely. Trap her consciousness in a prison of eternal darkness while her body stands hollow and breathing. And I'll make you watch."
The shadows holding me dissolved. I dropped to my knees beside her, pulled her into my arms, pressed my face into her hair. She was shaking so hard I could feel it in my own chest.
"Hakan, please," she whispered. Her voice was raw, barely recognizable. "Don't... whatever he wants... don't..."
"Shhh." I stroked her hair the way she'd stroked mine during childhood nightmares, when I'd woken screaming from dreams I couldn't describe and she'd held me in the dark and said *I've got you, I've got you, you're safe.* "I've got you."
She had said those words to me a thousand times. I had never understood what they cost until now.
