The first time Taehyung had shown Elyagon the fake coins, his younger brother was elated. He had smiled, now a blessing so rare, then as habitual as the changing seasons, the falling leaves whirling in the wind, the warmth of the sun seeping between the fissures of the wisteria growing around the castle. Space was Taehyung's plaything, his clay to mold and shape, so their reality was whatever he—they—had desired.

No more arguments. No more shouting. When the coins were out, all that had faded. Friends, twin brothers, mirror reflections yet different, but the hunt brought even nemeses to heel.

"Find a coin, and I will grant you whatever you want," Taehyung had promised. Such a hopeful, fragile, childish dream whispers away from collapse. All it would take was a louder shout from the king or queen, reckless banter from the servants or guards, to shatter the lie Taehyung had fashioned.

They are our children, those voices had shouted. It is better for the kingdom. But they need us—you. They speak to me, Caos. Voices. A slap. You are blind, you mad wretch! Open your eyes, Gwyneth. Screams upon screams. An endless torrent, a bottomless pit. They will kill you! They will kill us all! No, no, no—

Elyagon didn't need to know what happened behind the curtain. Elyagon—his sweet brother with his then-tawny hair, the shining personality who had braved every murky territory, the perfect prince, who Taehyung had wished would grow into everything he was not.

Taehyung was older, only by a minute but older still, so he had to protect Elyagon's innocence. No, no, wrong. It wasn't about age. Never was. It was the way Elyagon had looked at him as if the entire world would crumble or mend at the slightest movement from Taehyung's fingers. It was the cheerfulness in those lilac eyes oblivious to the perilous ship that was their family—an ignorance only afforded to starry-eyed children. It was the consternation furrowed in those creased brows that made him want to burn the world just to see Elyagon smile again.

In the end, Elyagon never did find a coin. What he had found was much worse.

Blood. And murder. There had been no time to explain. Elyagon's knees had hit the hardwood before Taehyung could even open his mouth, and they had stared at each other in silence. Reflections. Two sides to the same coin. Between them, a knife and a mother—dead and cold, sullied with blood.

It was the only way. That was Taehyung's excuse when Elyagon distanced himself and erased every resemblance to Taehyung—all except those lilac eyes. Taehyung was the oldest, the most sensible. His duty was to protect his siblings, so he did. And he liked to believe he still was.

Sitting in a spare chair in Jimin's room, Taehyung repeatedly flipped a fake coin in the air and caught it. Arguments sounded somewhere in the far background of his conscience, but like in his younger years, he drowned them out with his treasure hunt.

Find a coin, and I will grant you whatever you want.

He had thrown and caught the coin over fifty times. For all fifty of his wishes, he wished to silence everyone. But what he couldn't do then, he couldn't do now. And like his parents' arguments, the fight between Jimin, Namjoon, and Two couldn't be quelled.

"We refuse to send you anywhere by yourself, whether to buy supplies or stab us in the back," Namjoon said, his arms crossed over his chest. The linen clothes the innkeeper had given them did little for warmth and let the manacles around their wrists gleam under the haze of the morning sun. Namjoon drew invisible shapes with his gestures, unbothered by the rattling of his severed chains. "Any one of us could go collect supplies. Why do you need to go?"

"I do not know why you think we are here for rest, Prince Namjoon. We are here to find Nero as fast as we can before they find us," Two replied. Who they were didn't need an explanation, and if anyone had any comment on the matter, they kept their mouths shut in fear of cursing their meager fortune. "If this matter means so much to you, you should wake the other princes from their slumber. Since you like voting, perhaps a majority's favor will change your mind."

"There is no need for that," Jimin said. "I know Medeia, and I myself am enough to gather supplies."

"You do not know the first place to begin searching for Nero."

"Do you?" Namjoon asked.

Two blinked, her eyes narrowing as if she couldn't believe her ears. "Of course. Do you take me for a fool?"

"I take you for a cunning assassin who can betray us at any moment."

Two threw her hands into the air. "Oh, please. Yes, I am an assassin. How many more times will you bring that simple fact to light? As I said before, I have no intention to kill you, so you might as well use my assistance while it is available."

The lines on Namjoon's face hardened into a scowl. He looked like he had aged years in seconds, the byproduct of a mind elemental's gift. "Or you could be waiting for the perfect moment to round your assassin friends and strike us when our guards are down."

That was it—the final straw. Time moved too fast and too slow at once. Two clutched the front of Namjoon's tunic and shook him with as much violence as her enfeebled body could muster. Namjoon, on the other hand, quickly fell into the defense and prioritized getting her off, while Jimin just stood to the side, his face folded into an expression Taehyung couldn't describe. All that came to mind was disgust—absolute disgust.

Catching the coin for the last time, Taehyung dropped it back into the pouch on his lap and clapped his cupped hands. "Enough!"

Everyone immediately turned to him—staring with varying forms of anger and contempt. When Two and Namjoon refused to untangle themselves from their skirmish, Taehyung yanked them apart with a gruff sigh. Even on opposite ends of the room, Two and Namjoon sparred with hardened eyes, behind which a world of silent insults ranging from crude to downright foul were tossed back and forth.

"I said enough," Taehyung all but growled. "We are not here to argue. As much as I did not desire to choose this route, I am sensible enough to admit we must leave Medeia as soon as possible. Quarreling over the most ridiculous problems does nothing to speed up that process."

"That's what I was trying to do," Two said, her arms crossed and her posture arrogant, smug. "But then this Sapientian here decided to let his tongue run loose. So much for coming from a legacy of savants when not one word from your mouth demonstrates intellect."

Before Namjoon could step forward, Taehyung pulled him back using the darkness gathering at the corners of the room, courtesy of his increasing frustration. Unexpectedly, a rush of fire licked through his blood, and a current of vertigo threw his mind off-kilter. Fighting the urge to lay down, rest, and sleep, he failed to notice Jimin walking straight up to Two, a savage look in his now-deadly eyes, hours and days of restraint finally cracking.

"Is that all, assassin?" Jimin whispered.

Two mirrored the look, but hers was more practiced, piercing as if she were a sharpened blade, Jimin a dull one. Any hope of planning how to gather supplies and find Nero was gone.

Taehyung knew this was inevitable. They were all tired, and yesterday's toils did nothing to alleviate the fatigue, especially for Taehyung. As much as a warm bed and shelter beat sleeping outside in a snowstorm, they were too on edge to even feel the effects.

"Jimin, Two, please." Taehyung tried to imbue as much exhaustion into his voice as possible, something he knew worked on Elyagon when he was younger. He paused, nearly shaking his head in confusion but managing to stop himself at the last second. His head was just muddled from his enervation. That was all. "We are all tired and frustrated, but we must work together. Let's drop our pride for a moment and think reasonably."

Taehyung was so glad Jimin had a modicum of sense left in him. As Jimin stalked to the other end of the room, far away from Two, Taehyung exhaled and continued.

"Instead of sending one person, three of us can go to the markets. Two can search for Daryxias while the other two buy supplies. I have two pouches of coins left, after all." Just as he finished, Taehyung pulled out the two said pouches and tossed one to Jimin. "We can go along with Two. And Namjoon, it is best if you stay here. If Darius or Meskit come near the inn, you should sense their presence. In the markets, there are enough people to escape, but in an inn, you are vulnerable."

The wary glances Taehyung received made him tense until he heard Two mumble, "I have no objections."

After a short silence, Jimin and Namjoon nodded as well, though Jimin stared at his pouch of fake coins with slight chagrin.

Without warning, pride swelled in Taehyung's chest, and in the corner of his vision, he thought he saw youthful eyes sparkling with delight. His fatigue spiked again, but he ignored it.

"Then it is decided." With a turn of his heels, Taehyung left the room, not bothering to check if Two and Jimin were following him. What he did notice, however, was how those youthful eyes dogged him, seemingly too close and too far at once, tinged with a warmth that immediately told him they were illusions of his delirious mind.

Elyagon had not looked at Taehyung like that since childhood. He knew—knew it very, very well. But still, he felt the heat of the gaze hotter on his neck and the weight of the coins heavier in his pocket no matter how much he repeated the truth.

* * *

They were arguing again—her parents.

Snow remembered each pound of a fist against the walls, their tremors causing dust to fall like sand from the dilapidated ceiling, layering her hair with gray ash. She remembered the screams and howls, fearing for her life in her own home as if wild beasts lay behind the door—as if the shadows stretching over the yellow light from the doorsill were those of monsters, not her parents. Her younger brother would curl up into a ball as she wrapped her arms around him, two children feeling the pieces of a shattered family fall onto their shoulders—a burden no child should bear.

The war had fractured them—the Crimson Death, too. But what tore them apart beyond repair was her older sisters' departure.

We don't want to live with this wretched family anymore, they had said the day they left, their single bags flung over their shoulders, their tattered dresses marking them as peasants even in their finest state. Why should we be the ones who cut our hands gathering the shards of your disaster?

Snow understood how they felt every moment they served their mother, only to be scolded by their father, belittled by the townspeople, and beaten by the war. Life was unfair. Snow's mother had told her stories that always amounted to those words, but she hadn't realized how true they were before her sisters had left.

In the beginning, she felt betrayed, cursed to care for her family as her three sisters all found suitors well beyond their upbringing, as they were spoiled with riches and lavish gifts. She hated them—more than the war, more than the plague. Every day, in her bed, she prayed to the Gods, Lexitem, anyone, to strike them down, make them feel remorse for the pain they had caused.

But nothing ever happened. If anything, they became happier, and their upbringing was almost a past life, a nightmare.

Then, as Snow took up their responsibilities and began to aid her mother when she became of age, the hatred ebbed away, and understanding filled the hole it left behind. It cultivated within her a new desire: freedom.

Even though she knew it was wrong, knew she was abandoning her brother, she tried to leave many times, so many that she had lost count. But no amount of dresses and jewelry could hide that she was nothing like her sisters, that she was better at throwing knives than cooking a meal, that she enjoyed strategizing how to win more than planning daily chores, that she wanted absolute control rather than mindless submission.

No one wanted her. No one except her brother—who had grown tall, and handsome, and clever, and charming, and so, so ill. The praying she had done to the Gods to curse her sisters had fallen to her brother. The day she saw him cough up blood, she knew it was her fault, so it was also her responsibility to fix it, cure him, save him.

Opportunity came to those who did everything in their power to achieve it. Becoming an ambassador to Lux. . . It wasn't a miracle; it was carefully set pieces falling into the right place. It was the efforts of a young girl who stood victorious in a field of red, showing the world that she, too, could be seen and heard.

She had braved many storms, many typhoons. Kartas overflowed with them—in every corner, everywhere, so much that even the sky was too small to hold them. And Snow promised to become the biggest one of them all—was the biggest one until she arrived at Lux, until she met Jungkook, Elias, Nickelyn, Faelaux. . .

There were two different people in this world: storms and mortals. In Umbra, she was a storm, but in Lux, she was nothing but a puny human. She often wondered when her place had flipped. But as much as she praised herself for her intelligence, she never figured it out, even as she sat on her bed, listening to Nickelyn admonish her to do something—anything—because the Captain was still gone and Faelaux was moving. And there was nothing they could do.

"Erinhaw is a dunce, too blinded by sentimentality to see what is plain before him," Nickelyn repeated for the fourth time, pacing the room as she pulled on the roots of her hair. "He knows nothing, Snow. Nothing. Faelaux's actions go right under his nose, and even if they didn't, he sees him as a young man crying about inequality and injustice only to do nothing about it. Whispers are flooding the ranks about Faelaux planning to overthrow Jungkook's tower and take the throne. Hell, if Elias knew about him, it is very likely all the generals know, too. In fact, they may even be in on it. They may be the ones leading it and using Faelaux as a figurehead because the people find him more favorable. It is easier to sympathize with a fellow commoner-turned-general than a noble, you know? And even if they are not, they are too focussed on a missing member of the House of Thurdiel—"

Tuning Nickelyn's voice out, Snow ran her hands through her untied hair and stared at the ground, at the slit carvings in the wood. They danced in front of her eyes, bending and curving into images from her past, into smiling faces and frowns and the shapes of the clouds over that meadow she played in all those years ago.

"Snow? Snow!?"

Snow raised her head. Nickelyn was kneeling before her on one knee and studying her incredulously, her hair an uncontrolled mess.

"What in the name of Caeluros is the matter with you?" Nickelyn asked, her lips quivering. "We don't have time to become distracted. Didn't you hear what I have been saying?"

Snow nodded. "I have been listening to your rants for the past hour."

"Yet, do you not understand how dire our situation is? How, any day now, Faelaux may just wake up and decide to overthrow Lux?"

Snow sighed. "Nickelyn—"

"We need to plan countermeasures."

"Nickelyn, please—"

"We need to gather allies."

"Nickelyn, stop—"

"We need to fortify Lux's internal defenses and—"

"Nickelyn, Nickelyn! Be quiet for just a moment. . . please." Finally, Nickelyn stilled, her hair more tousled and her entire body humming with agitation. In contrast, Snow was collected and unnaturally calm, like a serene lake left well undisturbed for decades, centuries, eons. She knew she was losing. It had been so long since she had. "I need you to go to Lumina and find Lord Aegus. You are correct; we don't have time. Not anymore since, at this point, it is safe to assume that the Novires are not returning."

Nickelyn lowered her head, then rubbed her eyes to cover her face before the fear showed. Her breath wavered with every exhale. "Is that what Faelaux told you that day in the woods?"

Flashes of his reddening eyes, trembling fists, and sharp tone surfaced in the darkness of Snow's mind. "He told me nothing about what he promised, nothing at all actually." But perhaps that was better. Perhaps he had told her something he did not want to reveal, something she needed to decipher.

Standing, Nickelyn crossed to the other end of the room, where the window displayed dawn approaching, the sunlight cutting the room in half with an orange tinge. They had been conversing for so long that the light reached Snow's bed, colored her skin with warm tones.

"I will travel to Lumina," Nickelyn said, facing the window, facing the city of Clarica far below. "While I am gone, you better watch your back, Snow. Faelaux is onto you. I can feel it."

Snow couldn't see, but she felt the trepidation in Nickelyn's voice. "I will make sure he can't kill me. If there is anything I learned from that outing, it was that Erinhaw and Faelaux are very close—almost like father and son even."

Nickelyn turned her head back slightly, not enough for Snow to see her face. "What are you planning?"

Snow laced her fingers over her mouth, refusing to look in Nickelyn's direction. "I think it is high time for a private chat with General Erinhaw."

* * *

Ruscao was shit.

The city reeked of manure seeping into every timber and wooden frame of the cottages lining the streets. Sewage systems and gutters traced the edge of the paths, flowing downhill to the farmlands on the outskirts of the agricultural fields, but they didn't help alleviate the stench. The winds blew in the smell of the ocean from the far south, carrying a whiff of the shit being carried away. Adrian had grown accustomed to tasting it on his tongue every time he inhaled.

Although the buildings here were not as tall as those in Lumina or Clarica, there were still hides stretching from roof to roof, creating patches of shade for people to rest in and shelter should snow fall. Unlikely, but it was always a good idea to be prepared.

Only a few traders wandered the streets with their portable shops and open wagons, singing hymns, encouraging people to look at their goods and purchase this for that and that for this. But no customers, no citizens, were out. There were guards, perhaps militia, patrolling the streets and some of the houses Adrian had passed, but compared to what he had imagined, Ruscao was dead.

Through the windows, eyes peeked at him from behind thick drapes, trailing his every move until he was out of sight. The pattern had continued for so long that Adrian didn't even acknowledge them.

If his assumptions were accurate, the city felt afraid. Every roach, rat, crow, dog, cow, horse, and human shuddered from it, with it, and Adrian did, too, if only because he was starving. Since there was no one out—or, at least, no one worth stealing from—Adrian had gone without food for approximately five days. On his way down south, while he jumped from wagon to wagon, hoping for the best, he ate a few raw potatoes and carrots he found. It wasn't the most appetizing meal, but it was free. He had no right to complain.

Once he had set foot in Ruscao, he thought he could sneak a bag of coins off a noble, but damn Faestuna, no one was around. He did swipe a heavy pouch off a man in what he deemed were expensive clothes, but it was full of rocks. After stealing another and finding more of the same, Adrian assumed that the man was either mad or that he just loved rocks. He hoped it was the latter.

He resumed his search after that, though less enthusiastically, and as the day waned into night and night brightened into day, more and more people emerged from their cottages. The streets were filled yet quiet as if the people were afraid to awaken a hibernating fiend that fed on their flesh. It was a ridiculous thought, but Ruscao was ridiculous. It was fitting, really.

He didn't understand what had happened, why these people were acting so defensive, until one day, while he was strolling through the nearly empty streets, he found it—the reason these people were locking themselves in their homes. It was a wooden stage, not too big, not too small, but just the right size, stained with copious amounts of blood. And on a spike stuck at the center was a rotting head.

The beheaded man's hair was half-bald, only a few black strands hanging tightly onto the roots, and his skin was yellow, green even, maggots crawling through the wounds on his cheeks. His eyes were gray, his irises nonexistent, and his mouth was open as if he wanted to say something but was killed before he could.

Even in that horrendous state, Adrian recognized the man—his nemesis. Erian Novire, the Captain of the Royal Guard, the hero of the Black Night, the man who brought destruction to the House of Leontas.

He couldn't stop a single tear from rolling down his cheek as he stared at the stage, at that same face from years ago, now the decapitated instead of the decapitator. Anguish welled up within him, bursting out the dam he had sealed it behind. It was supposed to be Adrian who did that. It was supposed to be Adrian who got his revenge. Not. . . Not. . .

A little girl walked past him just then, and in his anger and confusion, he grabbed her harshly by the wrist, pointed a single finger at the head of Erian Novire, and demanded, "Who did this?"

The few people nearby turned their heads and hurried by as fast as they could without running up the roads to the avenue, talking and laughing stiffly yet keeping an eye on Adrian all the same. That was all the effort put into stopping him, eyes willing him to regain self-consciousness, but his temper was not one to listen during good occasions. And, right now was a bad occasion—a very, very bad one.

The girl startled and glanced at Adrian's fingers around her before looking him in the eyes. She was shaking like a sick leaf, one beaten black and blue but too stubborn to accept its doom. "I-I don't know their names, s-sir." Her voice was rough as if in disuse. She wore what looked like a dress that was now a nasty mess of tattered holes, and her skin was blemished in filth. Clutched in her hand was a rolled-up note tied together by a single blue ribbon, and on her wrist, visible between the gaps of Adrian's fingers, was a welted brand.

A slave. The truth gutted him like a battering mallet striking his heart. In her eyes, pools of navy blue descending deeper into the dark madness, there was another boy just like her, standing like a beacon in a similar greasy rag, glaring at Adrian with disapproval. A boy with sapphire eyes and golden hair, with light stripes on his wrists and forearms where jewelry once rested, with a void of hollowness as if he would melt and join the black water surrounding him. Adrian flinched, a sour twist attacking his insides. He wanted to throw up what scarce food he had in his stomach.

Letting her go, he turned away. "I apologize," he whispered, ashamed. "Please, ignore me, and go on your way."

Hesitation. An imperceptible wince. And lastly, a bow, crooked where the girl's spine was bent. She shuffled down the street, relying more on her right leg than her left, but she did not go too far as to escape his sight. Her presence was a somber reminder. Holding in the screams hanging on the tip of his tongue, he hissed through his teeth and directed his attention back to the stage, the head, reality.

Erian Novire, that monster was dead, and Adrian, well. . . he was a monster, too, wasn't he? He scoffed, collapsing onto the ground in front of the stage that looked too large for one so small, that looked too similar to the one in Clarica to be before him now. Birth and death. Creation and destruction. One less monster existed in Kartas, but with its passing, another was born.

Monsters beget monsters, Lucius's voice in his head said, sneered. You knew the price, Leontas. It is time you accept it.

Damn Lucius. Even in death, the bastard still tormented him.

Clicking his tongue, Adrian stood and brushed the dirt off himself. Enough wallowing. He would show Lucius, make him watch from the heavens as Adrian succeeded, as he lived a decent life without relying on the Lotus. Lucius was the one who had needed Adrian, not the other way around. This was his chance, his new lease on life. His past would not destroy it.

Heavy shadows darkened the skies as he strode through the streets and returned to his search for anyone worthy to steal from with restored passion. People spared some glances his way, skimming their palms over their pockets, patting their belongings as if that would protect them from being stolen. It only told Adrian exactly where he needed to look. He scored five bags, six including the one he just pinched from the inner coat of someone he bumped into. This time, none of them were filled with rocks. Adrian chuckled, already forgetting that stage and letting the haze of time resettle over his distant memories.

The city was still quiet, vibrating only with a low hum from the increasing drones of merchants until a shrill cry pulsated in his ears. For a stretched-out instant, the world halted, froze. Then, people began desperately rushing the other away, away from the ruckus, tripping over each other in the process. Another shout. More feet slamming on the ground with a loud thump thump thump as they expertly passed Adrian like a stampede, weaving around him as if he was protected by an invisible barrier.

He stood still, unsure what to do, never having experienced anything like this before, not in Clarica or Lumina or any other city, town, or hamlet he had visited. Dust blurred the air like yellow-brown fog in the wake of everyone's escape, and it was so thick that even the sun could not breach it. Once it cleared, another sob racked the streets, and Adrian saw that slave girl cradling her wrist, hunched on the ground before two people.

The shorter one was a girl with loosely-tied blond hair curling down her chest. Her arms were crossed over her vested suit, under which was a laced tunic with a ribbon tied beneath the lapels. Bloodlust tarnished the beautiful shades of her emerald eyes, reminding Adrian of Two. Even her wicked smirk stretching across her face from ear to ear unnerved him.

Beside her, a lanky, white-haired boy remained expressionless. He wore a red robe of similar elegance, and on his back was a blade in an elaborate sheath decorated with pink hyacinths. Unlike the girl, he seemed uninterested, detached, but something about him sent shivers through Adrian's blood, shivers that reached his bones and made his legs go weak.

Both of them were dressed like nobles. Their attire wasn't one Adrian had seen often, but even if they were not nobles per se, they had to be wealthy. Them scaring the townspeople and getting away with beating a slave in public was sign enough.

Looking at the slave one more time, he pondered if he should interfere as the blond girl continued smashing her foot into the slave's head.

I should help, he thought. I could help for once in my life. But he didn't walk towards the trio. Instead, he whirled and made his way back to the stage, back the way he had come, ignoring the dwindling cries haunting his steps.

Today was awful in more ways than one, but at least he now knew who to rob next.

* * *

The screams. Elias couldn't handle the screams.

They continued to pound against his skull, striking harder and faster after each shriek Hestiara wrenched out of the slave girl outside the closed door. He was sitting on a chair in the corner of a room, sweating profusely and losing his mind to drowsiness like a thread slowly being pulled to unravel a ball of yarn. Each time he moved or blinked, the room distorted with transparent blue and red colors layering his surroundings, and his back was drenched as if he had just been dipped into a lake.

Everything within him was moving too fast. His heart felt like it wanted to burst out of his chest, break through his ribcage and claw itself up his throat. His mind was racing from one wild thought to another, ricocheting like a rapid ball off a wall. And his blood felt like it was flowing in all possible directions at once—forward, backward, left, right, up, and down—and the discomfort drove him to scratch his forearms until his skin stuck beneath his nails, until bloody lines marked his arms.

This was the toll for forming an alliance with Raos, for allowing the demon scums to poison him while he was unconscious, for being defeated at that battle near the shores of the Daeli Isles so long ago. But he didn't care about that right now. More accurately, he couldn't because the screams muffled all other thoughts, like a hand sinking its grip onto the back of his head and forcing him underwater.

This is what drowning must have felt like—floating in a placid sea as a terrible thunderstorm fought for survival within him, begging him to survive, breathe, and reach the surface so far yet close. At the tips of his fingers but just out of reach because he was pathetically weak—as he watched his father die, as he silently observed Hestiara enjoy her daily torture, as he informed Raos of Hestiara's activities. . .

All of it was indicative of the fact that Elias was, is, would be weak. So weak that he couldn't even save the slave girl being abused outside, couldn't break that measly door separating them. He was a failure, always was.

"Elias."

It was his father's ghost again, standing before him in a translucent body that shifted underneath the sunlight beaming through the lacerated windows. Aside from his voice and the hardened disappointment lining his stoic face, everything else about him was fake. A hand reached for Elias's cheek, wiped the tear under his glasses away. It was warm.

"I know it hurts, but don't cry," the ghost said. "Hestiara will make it worse if she sees you like this."

His father's ghost disappeared and reappeared, flickering like a candle in the wind. After he had begun the poison extraction with Raos, his father had always visited him on the worst days when he could barely tell left from right—days like today. But the ghost was a figment of his imagination. He knew it so well, repeated the truth until it became a religious chant. So when the warmth on Elias's cheeks cooled even though the hand was still there, he didn't even flinch until—

Isn't this what you wanted, Elias?

Agony, razor-sharp and swift, zipped up his spine. He gasped, hacking through coughs so strong that his lungs ached. The voice, the whispers, were back, and his neck—it hurt like hell, burned as if someone was holding a fire to it. The hand on his cheek dropped, and when he looked up at his father's ghost, it was gone without a trace.

You killed him, Elias.

Strings of blood leaked from his lips, stretching like drool and gathering in a circle on his breeches. He was heaving through choked pants, blankly staring at the spot his father's ghost once stood.

This is all your fault.

As he sank his nails into his neck and head, patches of his hair furled upward between his trembling fingers. His glasses slipped down his nose, and the pressure behind his eyes made him fear that they would pop out of their sockets. The pain traveled to his temples, the back of his neck, his spine, and his head. It was like a scorching knife being dragged through him, scraping across his bones and boiling his blood.

He died because of you.

"Be quiet," Elias muttered, his voice cracking.

He died because you just sat there and watched.

"I was being held down."

He died because you are weak.

Grunting, Elias pounded his fist against his head and fell onto his side as he curled up into a ball. His magic called the shadows in the room towards him, demanding aid when they could offer none. The voices cackled in his head, mocking him with every syllable and word and—

"Novire?"

Elias whipped his head in the direction of the voice and saw Hestiara paused at the doorway, her clothes bloodied with specks of crimson and her head cocked. Behind her, as always, was Rashi, his hand ready to reach for his sword.

"What are you doing on the floor?" she asked. "I ordered you to stay in the chair."

Suddenly, the voices were gone, and with them, the pain, too. His smarting neck stopped aching. "I-I apologize," Elias said, looking anywhere except Hestiara, hoping she wouldn't notice what had happened. Having Raos see him at his weakest was punishment enough.

When he tried to push himself onto his feet, Hestiara stepped on his back and forced him onto the ground. She towered above him like a giant, a cruel smirk on her lips. Gradually, the pressure she exerted increased until she crushed his spine and forced out whines and pained groans from him.

"I told you to stay in the chair."

Elias bit his tongue and pressed his lips tightly shut.

"You should've listened."

It happened before he could even react. All he heard was a loud snap as Hetiara violently ground the heel of her boot against him to twist his spine at an awkward angle. A silent scream was the only sound that escaped him. Bloody bones of Caeluros, she fractured his spine. That bitch just fractured his damn spine.

Hestiara kneeled, resting one knee beside his head. "Raos will fix that for you, but until then, the pain will be your punishment." Threading her fingers through his hair, she grabbed the back of his head—no, Elias thought—and smashed his face against the ground, breaking his glasses even more and possibly his nose with it. Then, she brushed her hands clean and stood as if she hadn't just broken Elias's spine, as if she wasn't about to leave him with a mouth and nose full of blood. Signaling for Rashi to follow, she walked out of the open door and stepped over the body bleeding out in front of it.

The slave girl's eyes were open wide, staring at nothing yet still looking in Elias's direction. For a moment, he saw his father's face materialize atop hers, but when he squinted and focused his bleared vision, there was only the upside-down face of a dead slave girl. Clenching his jaw, he blinked his involuntary tears away and tried his damndest to avert his gaze, but the girl's face continued to intrude into his sight no matter how hard he tried. She, and the rare specters of his father, was all he saw for a long time.