Page 82 of The Vespertine Treaty

"Cain!"

Friedrik’s voice cut through the haze of red. I didn't stop. I grabbed a chair and smashed it against the stone pillar, the wood turning to splinters in my grip.

"She’s gone!" I bellowed, turning on him. My vision was swimming, the shadows in the room swirling into a vortex around me, darkening the lights, suffocating the air. "She left! She ran!"

Friedrik stood in the archway, his hands raised, his eyes wide with a fear he rarely showed. Behind him, Silas loomed, his face grim, his hand resting on the hilt of his blade as if he contemplated drawing it against me.

"Calm yourself!" Friedrik shouted over the roar of wind my magic was generating. "Think! Where would she go? How would she get past the perimeter?"

"I don't care how!" I snarled, pacing like a caged tiger, kicking through the debris of the dinner that would never be eaten. "She is mine! She belongs here! I will tear this cursed realm apart brick by brick until I find her!"

"You are destroying your own home!" Friedrik stepped forward, brave or stupid. "Look at you! You’re losing control. If she ran, acting like a rabid animal won’t bring her back!"

"I am a rabid animal!" I roared back, the shadows lashing out, knocking a bust of an ancestor off a pedestal. It shattered, the sound echoing the fracture in my sanity. "I wanted to give her everything. I almost gave her... me."

The vulnerability of that last word made me want to vomit. I hated her for making me feel it. I hated her for leaving. I wanted to strangle her; I wanted to fall to my knees and beg the empty air to bring her back to me.

Friedrik watched me, his stony brow furrowed. "Then go get her, you fool. You are the most powerful being in this realm. Whyare you standing here tearing apart furniture instead of tearing apart the world?"

I froze. The rage stuttered, hitting a wall of absolute, chilling dread.

"She is my weakness," I whispered, the admission tasting like ash. "Just as it was foretold."

Friedrik scoffed, the sound like grinding stones. "Prophecies are riddles, Cain. Not instructions."

"It wasn't a riddle, Friedrik. It was a promise."

I walked to the window, staring out at the dead lands my lineage had created. "I was only a child when my mother died birthing my sister. Still a child when my father dragged me to her bedside, pointed at her cooling corpse, and told me that love was a parasite."

I gripped the sill with one hand, the stone cracking under my fingers, while my other hand blindly snatched the crystal decanter of brandy from the side table. I didn't bother with a glass; I took a long, burning swig, letting the alcohol sear the back of my throat, hoping it would drown out the memory of my father's voice.

"He told me then, you ancient fool,” I rasped, slamming the bottle down. "He told me he had seen it in the stars. He said a Life Heir would come, and she wouldn't just kill me. He said she would be the doom of the Alistair line. That she would act as a mirror to my Void, amplifying the hunger until I consumed everything I touched."

"Your father was a sadist," Friedrik rumbled, stepping closer. "He wanted you cold. He wanted you weaponised. Why trust the words of a male who hated the world?"

"Because he was right!" I roared, spinning on him. "Look at me! I have known her for a month, and already I am unravelling. I am losing control. The prophecy wasn't a warning, it was a diagnosis. And if I don't bring her back and prevent this from happening... she will be the end of us all."

Silas hadn't moved. He was staring at something in the distance, his head cocked to the side, his eyes unfocused. The bond. He was listening to his familiar.

I didn't care. I was already calculating and assessing. I was already deciding who was going to die to get her.

“Cain…” Silas’s voice was low, cutting under the noise.

"Get out," I hissed, my hands trembling with the need to destroy something else. "Get out before I kill you both."

“My Lord,” Silas said, stepping fully into the room, ignoring the swirling darkness that plucked at his clothes. "Stop."

"I said?—"

"Rock found something."

The name of the familiar made me pause, but only for a heartbeat. "I don't care about your rat, Silas."

"He found Poppy."

The name froze the air in my lungs.

Poppy. That little fucking fox. The insufferable creature Ophelia coddled like a child. The creature she slept with, ate with,whispered secrets to when she thought I wasn't listening. Her familiar.