“Corric?” Disbelief coated her tongue as she turned to him.
“Amara,” Mattock said, regarding her with cold indifference. “You did not return my letters. Have you considered my offer?”
This memory made me feel torn on whether to hate the late King Mattock—the father I’d never known.
My birth mother’s gaze hardened. “I will not tell you where he is.”
“You’d wish the boy dead instead, Amara? These are your options. Bring him to me, or see him die when Firose finds him.”
I recognized the empty depths of evil in his tone. It was the same way I’d spoken when Caym had control of my mind—when I’d been his envoy. Dark bags rested below Corric’s eyes, his cheekbones protruded, but the rest of his face sunk in.
We’d both been pawns in Caym’s heinous crimes.
“What has Firose done to you? You are talking about ourson.”
About me.
Amara crossed the room and cupped my father’s cheek. “Please, Corric. We can fix this. We can build a new life together. We can—”
My hand shot out in anticipation of what came next. Bodiless, and forced to witness the past without agency, I could not help her.
Corric roughly grabbed Amara’s wrists and pushed her until the backs of her knees hit the frame of the open window. Just one shove and she would topple down to the sea cliffs below.
My birth mother’s heartbreak made me bend at the waist, gasping for air like I’d taken a hit to the stomach. All the pain seeped into me. Caym fed off her past anger, her anguish, her desperation, and wielded it against me.
“Stop it!” Mattock growled. His hands trembled. I knew what warred to be released. The same evil lived here with me, in this cursed sleep.
The King’s shoulders slackened, and his grip loosened. He dipped his head of golden hair and refused to meet her gaze.
“I’m so sorry, Amara,” he whispered. “I wish it were all so different. Stay away from me. Keep him away. Keep hiding him.”
Tears streamed down my mother’s dark, rounded cheeks.
Whatever incorporeal form I was in could not cry with her, but I wanted to as she unraveled.
“I can help you,” she whispered, but before she could say another word, he dropped her wrists and hurried to the Egress.
From across the room, he said, “You can’t. I love you, my sunshine.” He turned to enter the carved space in the stone. “To Helos.”
With the command, he was gone. The vision of Amara crumbling to her knees in the South Tower faded to nothing but amber smoke.
“You’re next…” Caym snarled into my ear. “I will destroy everything that you love. I will leave you with nothing.”
I flailed and plummeted down, down, down.
Caym’s cruel laughter enveloped me as I landed with a thud in a glowing amber cave. Before me stood a gray-cloaked figure. His murky green eyes tracked me over a sharp nose, like a wolf. Whenever he pulled me to his depths, I felt closer to death—like he could truly reach me, cut me open, and bleed me dry.
“Is that all you’ve got?” I spat, scrambling to my feet with a rage-soaked cry.
The walls jutted out in coarse dark slabs veined with molten red liquid. We stood on a sinking boulder, surrounded by gurgling, boiling lava.
“Are you ready to give in yet, Mattock? Your father was so much easier to break.”
I gritted my teeth. This place appeared more solid and less like a figment of my imagination; I searched for an escape. It felt dangerous to stay here for too long.
“Never,” I growled and swung my fist in his direction. Before I could make any impact, the ground dropped from beneath me.
I tumbled through amber smoke that threatened to tear me limb from limb; it filled my nose with the putrid smell of rot.
