Something was wrong. Tykon could sense it as soon as he arrived home after a long night spent with Annika. In fact, he had known even before then. Perhaps it was the way that the Principle Warlock had looked at him upon returning to his manor after the battle, with pity and sorrow, as though he had wanted to say something to Tykon but could not find the words—or didn't want to find the words. Perhaps it was also the way that, afterwards, he had told Tykon that he was relieved from his duty of caring for his daughter. That he must go home at once, for his father was expecting him.

He closed his eyes and inhaled, trying to shake away the thoughts and fears that gnawed at his brain. Worrying, he thought, would get him nowhere, but then, if there was nothing to worry about, why did the house feel so strange? Why had he been met with a heavy silence that pressed uncomfortably against his skin and smothered him so that he could barely breathe? Something was wrong, and Tykon could not bear another moment of not knowing what that was.

"Father?" he called out in a strained voice, the sound of his boots squeaking enough to nauseate him as he took a step, and then another, down the corridor. The lights were flickering dimly, as though the magic that the house run off had barely enough power left to provide illumination—but that was impossible. Magic was limitless, was it not? The flowers that hung in baskets and lined the walls were different, too, and it took Tykon a moment to realise why. They had wilted. He tried to convince himself that it was simply because his mother had forgotten to tend to them recently, knowing really that his mother would sooner kill one of her children than allow the plants to die.

There was only one door in the hallway that had been left ajar. Usually, every door was open so that the family could come and go from room to room as they pleased, allowing the house to be filled with life and chatter as they passed on the corridor and peeked into rooms every now and again. Not only that, but it meant a light breeze was always floating through the house from the opened windows and doors. This was not the case now, with every door save one shut tightly. Even such a small, trivial detail as this made Tykon feel like a stranger who was trespassing in a home that was not his, and he gulped as another wave of anxiety shuddered through him.

He went to the room whose door was slightly open at the end of the corridor, supposing that it must have been the one that his father was in. He soon discovered that he was not wrong—or, at least, he did not think he was, for the man standing in the large study appeared to be his father, but there was something missing from him. He was gazing with glassy eyes out of the window and appeared not to have noticed his son's presence yet. This itself was unusual for Wayde, for he was always alert and never liked to waste time daydreaming, unlike his mother, Cliona, who was always lost in her thoughts.

Tykon cleared his throat in order to break his father out of his daze and shut the door softly behind him, though he was not sure why this sudden habit had overcome him. "I wanted to come sooner, to see that you returned from the war safely, but the Principle wished for me to watch his daughter until he returned himself."

Wayde lowered his eyes, having not so much as glanced at his son yet, and nodded. "I understand. You need not explain yourself, my boy."

My boy. The last time that Wayde had called Tykon that, Tykon had barely been two hundred years old, and it was to tell him that his aunt Rowan had passed away in a battle. If he had needed any confirmation that there was something wrong, he had gotten it now.

Tykon searched the study, squinting in the sunlight. It did not possess its usual warmth, he found, in neither colour nor temperature. Instead, it was a blinding yellow that bled through the windows in a sickly haze and lingered as a cold, uninvited guest. "Where is Mother?"

Wayde did not seem to hear the question as he turned to face his son. The arm that had been hidden before came into view and Tykon saw that it was covered in a white bandage spotted with drops of blood. His face was dirty, too, with thick black dust caking his jaw and cheek and blackening his hair to a murky sapphire colour. "You are hurt."

"An inevitability in war," he replied. He could still not meet Tykon's eyes, and his face appeared paler now than Tykon had noticed it to be before. 

The word war surprised him. He had been able to detach himself from the battle before, for he was not a part of it and was only connected to it at all through the fact that he had once been friends with the prime enemy. He had not even thought of it as a war, though of course that's what it was, or what it would turn into eventually. It seemed much realer now, as he looked at his injured father, than it ever had before. "Whatever it is that you wish to tell me," his voice shook as he spoke, "please, Father, just say it. Is it Mother? Is she in the Medical Wing? Is she—?"

"She did not make it." Wayde's voice was hollow, and finally his golden eyes rose to meet his son's blue ones, revealing a whirlwind of sadness that burned into Tykon and stabbed at his chest like the blade of a cold knife. "I could not save her, Tykon. I failed her, and you, and now she is gone. I am so, so sorry, my boy."

Tykon could not make sense of the words at first, not until he looked back at his father's bloodied arm and then the shattered expression on his face—the expression of a man who had lost far more than he could ever, should ever, have to bear—and then the floorboards seemed to disappear from beneath him and he was on his knees, his arms wrapped about himself tightly. Something between a dry sob and heave left him as he shook his head. "But she cannot be gone. She is not gone."

He did not know when Wayde had gotten so close, or when his arms had found Tykon, but they were there and the only thing that was keeping him together. He feared that if he was to loosen his grip, everything of Tykon would spill out of him and seep into the cracks in the floorboards, lost forever.

He thought about the last time he had ever seen Cliona, bright-eyed and worried as she prepared herself for battle. He could not remember the last thing she had said to him, or what he had said to her, and he hated himself for it. The last memory of his mother was a distorted, muddled version of events where he had focused more on his own duties and the chaos and bustle going on around him, and he would never get that time back. She was gone, and already the memory of her was heading the same way, and he could not breathe or speak or understand any of it at all.

"She was not in pain, nor was she afraid," Wayde said, breaking him out of the disarray in his mind. "She died in my arms. She was a warrior, Tykon, and she died as one, just as she had always wanted. She died fighting."

Tykon stumbled up and away from his father, his chest heaving forcefully. "It is not enough. It does not matter if she died as a warrior, if she died fighting. The fact is that she died. She left me—us—and for what, Father? Why did she leave us?"

Wayde seemed as though he could barely answer, choking on his own tears as he remained knelt on the floor, looking up at his son with glistening eyes. "I do not know. We just ... We must believe that there was a reason for it. Perhaps she was needed in another world. Perhaps she has achieved all she can here, and it was simply time for her to pass on."

"We are warlocks!" he shouted, bright blue magic springing from his palms and upheaving a pile of books that sat on the edge of the study desk so that its stray pages rained down and covered the floor. "We do not pass on. We stay, no matter what, and we carry on because there is nothing else for us to do!"

He looked down at his trembling hands as though realising what he had done, and then looked frantically around the study. He was lost. He was not himself. He felt as though he was watching all of this from another perspective that was neither his own nor his father's.

"Tykon, please," Wayde pleaded, standing up slowly with his hands outstretched before him. "We must get through this together. I have called your sister. She is already on her way. As a family, we can survive this."

"No," he whispered, his blue eyes wide as he glanced at his father. "No, I do not think we can."

He did not wait for his father to argue. He left, papers flying and the door slamming in his stead. He could do nothing but run, and think about how he would never see his mother again, never hear her comforting voice or hug her even when it embarrassed him. The woman who had raised him, loved him unconditionally, taught him to be good and kind and always warm, was gone, and he was alone in the streets of Astracia, with nobody to go to.

Once, he might have gone to Ackmard. He had been closer to him once than anyone else in the world. He had been home. Now his home had been destroyed by the darkness. Now it was that very warlock who had been the reason for his mother's death, and he resented him for it. He resented all of them; Maksim, Hilda, even Remy, who had worn the key that had caused the war around her neck as though it was something that should be shown off rather than destroyed.

His mother had been taken from him unjustly, and it was all he could do to collapse onto the cobbles and try with all his might simply to catch his breath and try not to fall apart altogether.