Her voice crackled through the darkness.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” The sentence wobbled, much like the image of the infant, but I grabbed hold.
I sneered. “I’ve called the only summit of gods in the history of immortals. I’ve murdered major deities for disrespecting something I care about. I’m the linchpin to a prophecy that will save the world, but do you know what’s better,sister?”
Only the flickering spotlight remained in a sea of darkness. No children, no imagery, no versions of love assaulted me as I peered into the nightmare’s core.
“Noneof that was true before I became father’s favorite. I’m the Crowned Prince. I was granted a kingdom, a realm, a world, before proving myself in the slightest. He had two children, and what did you get, again?”
“Stop it.”
“He. Gave. You.Nothing.”
“Stop it!” Hurricane winds blew through the nightmare as she appeared, screaming at me amidst the crackling clouds of the Court of Nightmares.
I took a step toward her. “He gave you his time, his patience, his love, becauseheis good. But you? Izi, you had to slurp your worth to pretend you had relevance.”
“I’m his only daughter,” she hissed, matching me step for step. She pressed her face so close that her nose was nearly on mine. “He won’t evenlethimself be disappointed in your monumental failures while your essence remains. All that wasted potential. All the citizens you put in danger with your selfishness. I’m the heir you’ll never be. The best thing you can do for our kingdom is die.”
I looked at the cloud crackle overhead, witnessing the blue-gray rumble as electricity silhouetted godly shapes who pointed and laughed.
I took one step forward, forcing her toward the cloud.
“No one with power needs to scheme, needs to manipulate, to lie. Power doesn’t steal. Power simplyis.”
Another step, then another.
She extended her hands, mouth in a snarl, still leaning toward me, but unwilling to let us touch. “There is more power in words, in knowledge in the battles that exist within the mind than you?—”
“I am humiliated that I ever called you sister, you amateur. You ledHeavento our doors. You were so desperate for relevance that you spent cycles upon cycles snitching to the only realm that could take us down just to remain in the game.”
One more step.
The lightning crackled again, this time so close I could taste its ozone.
“It should have beenme,” she cried. She jammed her finger into her chest, snarling as she rolled onto the balls of her feet. “I have the fight! I have what it takes! I’m the heir that should have ascended!”
I could barely exhale through my laugh.
“Yeah? Then prove it.”
I exploded with energy. Two flat palms against her chest, I used my final steps to push her into her crackling nightmare and watched as the cell of lightning bolts crackled around the cloud, trapping her in the cellar of her prison.
I stood and watched the silhouettes as she cowered, as she raged, as she fought.
She ran, she cried, she ran, she battled, she ran, she ran, she ran.
I’d been prepared to kill her.
I had no idea how much time passed as I watched Izi—the succubus I’d once called sister—trapped in her own nightmare, before I knew there would not be escape.
I had one thing she didn’t.
In my lifetimes of weakness, I’d experienced the one thing she’d never had.
I knew Love.
Chapter Twenty-Six
