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This time it read, YOU DID THIS.

Az dropped to his knees, Truth-Teller still in his right hand. Blood sprayed—so real he felt its wetness soak into his legs.

There was nothing worth fighting for. Not anymore. He’d destroyed everything. There was nothing left in the world to care about, either, if he was even capable of caring in the first place.

Then Nyx wailed in terror, again from that far-off place and not the vision before him, and the pain began.

So much pain. Az could feel it in his hands. He lifted the one not holding Truth-Teller, already knowing what he’d see. The oil slathered on what little flesh remained. Bone and tendons where it had melted away.

Nyx’s wail turned into a shriek—a scream. It was the same scream that had once come out of Azriel’s mouth, all those centuries ago, when his half brothers had doused his hands in oil. Then in fire.

Screams for a mother who could not come to save him.

His hands, his hands, his hands—

Feyre

My son was screaming, and I could not reach him.

I’d never known my child could make those sounds, never known that my happy, sweet boy possessed the capacity to be so scared, so hurt. He screamed for me, frantic, and every muscle in my body contorted, willing myself to move off the floor, to rise, to get to him—

He’d vanished. He’d been in my arms one moment, the ribbon binding us, and then he was gone, and then there was the fetid darkness, and my son was in pain and I could do nothing.

I tried and failed to get off the stone floor. To find him in this swirling, endless night.

His shrieks echoed all around me. Someone was hurting him, someone who had no mercy for how small he was, how helpless and innocent, and they would enjoy tearing him apart piece by piece, breaking limbs and wings—

My body wouldn’t move. Couldn’t move. I could do nothing to help him, nothing at all, and I would die from it, this despair and agony.

Please, I tried to beg that darkness. Please.

Anything. I’d give anything for him to be safe. My life, my territory, my—

Would you give that, too?

Rhys’s agonized yells sounded, and I could tell, somehow I could tell that those shouts weren’t his pain so much as a reaction to what he was seeing.

Would you trade your mate for your son?

I sobbed wordlessly, heaving. It had to stop. I knew it wasn’t real, but it was. In a way, it was, and witnessing that unbearable possible future tore me apart. The cost of refusing to heed wise counsel from good friends, the cost of wasting what little time we had on fool’s plans, the cost of choices that were mine and mine alone.

The darkness cleared. Before me lay my son. Or rather, what had once been my son.

And everything in my existence went silent.

CHAPTER

16

Nesta

None of this was real.

Nesta was on her knees, panting hard, and the darkness had dissolved to reveal . . . nothing.

It had formed image after image. Her father’s neck snapping in Hybern’s hands. Her mother, wasted away to nothing on her deathbed, bones jutting out from her sallow skin like dead growth beneath melting snow. Feyre bleeding out, Nyx still and silent across the room. Elain stolen, pleading for help.

She’d already seen all of it. Already faced it.