Chapter 20
EMBERLINE
Son.
Son?
That word slithered through my head like a serpent, leaving a trail of slime behind, coating everything I knew about Nico with poison. Blackwood.
Nico Blackwood.
No. That… can’t be right.
I looked at Nico, jaw set like stone, hand banded around my arm to protect me, eyes flashing with anger and something far, far worse—recognition.
This is only a dream. Only a dream.
None of this is real.
But the word echoed louder as Cesare Blackwood stepped into the light. The ancient temple came alive as he claimed the abandoned space, power thrumming around him in pounding, nauseating waves.
The towering columns trembled, the containment circle glowed brighter. The circle I’d always made it a point to step around, sensing the threat, every time I’d been inside this place.
I wanted to groan out loud.
The circle my own mother warned me about.
The circle I’d completely forgotten until it was too late.
Nico wouldn’t look at me. Wouldn’t meet my eyes, but all around us, his shadows swirled into a protective shield that nearly obscured the sight of his father, gloating at our predicament.
“No matter what happens, Emberline, if I tell you to run, you run.” There wasn’t an ounce of doubt in Nico’s voice, only cold certainty. “No arguing, you do as I say.”
Lord Cesare Blackwood was Nico’s father.
And nobody knew. Not Dante. Not Gabriel.
Which meant Nico had been carrying this secret for decades, and now everything made sense. His shame. His silence. His claim I would think him a monster if I discovered the truth. A truth I was sure Nico would have kept a secret until his dying day.
Which might just be today, given the murderous look on his father’s face.
“Ah. My son never shared his true parentage, did he?” Blackwood watched him with obvious amusement.
“Not a surprise, given how vigorously he’s rejected his heritage.
He could have been a god. Instead, he chose to be a soldier,” Blackwood spat.
“Rank and file, just like the rest of the drones. Such a complete waste.”
I saw the faintest resemblance between them, the elegant slope of their cheeks, the way their pale eyes peered out above high cheekbones—the father’s gleaming silver, Nico’s a tawny brown.
“There’s no hiding now, is there?” His mockery rolled through the temple.
“The truth will out in the end, as they say, and let us see how your friends embrace you once they know who you really are. The loyal Draconi soldier. The right hand of the future Don. When all you ever were was a traitor in their midst.”
I flinched at the careful cruelty contained in those words, in the sheer venom in his tone. Every word was a lash, an insult, a condemnation. Nico shrank beneath every one, darkness growing in his eyes until black had swallowed up the brown.
I took Nico’s hand. I didn’t want him to have a single doubt where I stood.
Not about him, and not about his monster of a father.
Blackwood’s smile was equal parts snake and wolf when he said, “Tell me, Emberline, how long has my son been lying to you? Did he tell you who he was when he stuck his cock inside you? When he made his sweet promises of forever? When he had his mouth on your cunt, and you screamed his name?”
I forced myself not to react to his coarse, ugly words, leveling a glare at him cold enough to freeze. “It wouldn’t have mattered.”
“If he planted his seed inside of you, did he tell you it would be a Blackwood? Did he tell you I would own you and your spawn for as long as you drew breath? A chain I could yank at any time and have you come crawling back to me?”
“You are even more vile than I ever imagined, and believe me, I’ve imagined quite a lot.” It took everything I had to keep my face expressionless, a cold, contemptuous smirk on my lips.
Breathe, Emberline. Fucking think. There has to be a way out. None of this is even real.
It’s only a dream.
Blackwood laughed softly, gaze locked on my belly, where my palm was flattened on the flat plane of my stomach. “Oh, yes. Blood is blood in our family. And you would never escape me then, little bird.”
I stared at Nico, begging him to say something.
Tell me he’s lying. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me there’s an explanation that doesn’t include you being the son of a fucking delusional monster who’s our most dangerous enemy. Tell me you can get us out of here.
Nico’s jaw tightened, and still, he said nothing, and that long, ruined silence answered everything.
“So what?” My heart was hollowed out of my aching chest, but so the fuck what? We had to escape this circle and this dream. The truth… the truth was a luxury given to those with the time to spend on small grievances and bigger hurts. Right now, our lives were at risk.
Die in the dream, die in real life.
And I had no doubt Blackwood was making the exact same calculation.
Two nuisances off his hands; all he had to do was end us here.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass who Nico’s sperm donor was.” My voice sounded too high, but I kept going. “And right now, all I see is a shallow, weak male who’s too insecure to do anything except throw around insults. But sure, keep going, show off that weak character of yours.”
Pain flashed across Nico’s face, and I squeezed his hand.
Nothing about this was right. I’d asked him for the truth, and he’d hidden it from me. Hidden it from Gabriel and Dante for decades. But if Blackwood was my father…
My lip curled, disgust curdling my belly.
Yeah, I’d keep that a secret, too.
Blackwood’s smile turned brittle. “Lies run in our family, as you can see. If you were only a little cleverer, little bird, perhaps you wouldn’t have been made a fool of by my son.”
Heat flooded my face before something clicked.
Little bird.
Only one other person had ever called me that, a monster much like this one, carved in cruelty and arrogance. The Overseer.
“Tell me, did she climb willingly into your bed? Or did you force her?” Rage flashed across Nico’s face, and Blackwood pressed on, “Did you tell her who you were before you filled her cunt with your seed and…”
“Enough.” The word exploded from Nico with enough force that the bones of the entire temple shook, darkness surging outward in a violent wave, spilling through the containment field and across the floor, thundering up the walls, extinguishing every flame.
The temple shook, but more than that, beneath my feet, this entire realm shook.
Like Nico had disturbed the very essence of this place.
That darkness had barely ebbed when I was ripped away and pinned up against Blackwood’s chest, his forearm pressed against my windpipe, cutting off my air. A strange, chemical foulness wrapped around me, burning my nose.
Nico erupted, his shadows crashing down like a tidal wave, straight over us. But they never landed because Blackwood cast his own magic, and when their magicks collided, the whole world went dark.
My ears hollowed out, chest aching in the aftermath.
Gods. If they fought like this in the real world, the results would be cataclysmic. They would level a city block with every blow.
The marble floor shattered beneath our feet, yet Blackwood didn’t flinch. He lifted his hand and sent that invisible power slamming into Nico, the impact hard enough to shatter bones, burst organs.
Nico crashed to his knees hard enough, I felt it in the soles of my feet.
I screamed his name as he tried to rise, gathering more shadows, sending them toward his father as I fought to break his chokehold.
Blackwood flicked two fingers, and Nico hit the ground again, blood splattering across the floor, the containment runes flaring crimson.
“He’s never been a true son,” Blackwood crooned in my ear.
“Killing him won’t matter one way or another.
But what about you, little bird? Does my lying excuse for a son mean anything to you, or were those just pretty words?
I watched your fight in the Pit. Glorious, the way you tried to talk sense into him, when he was so intent on slitting your throat.
You really should hate him, but they say love makes people do strange things. ”
“You’re a fucking monster.” I dug my nails into his skin and ripped. He growled, tightening his grip, my vision going dark as I fought for air. “I… wouldn’t admit… I was related to you… either.”
The reality of our situation crashed into me. This was real, and we were both going to die. There would be no waking up, no second chances, no future left for any of us, and the realization chilled me to my bones.
Blackwood was going to kill us right now and end everything.
Our rebellion. The Dynasty.
Blackwood ran his nose up the side of my face, breathing deep. “Stay right here and let me show you just how much of a monster I am. I have to admit, ending him will give me a great deal of satisfaction.”
The moment the pressure let off my throat, I lunged forward, only to be frozen in place. Every muscle locked. I couldn’t even blink.
I could only watch Nico on his knees, panting, blood dribbling from his mouth into a pool on the floor.
Blackwood prowled across the circle with all the patience of a hunter who knows his quarry is trapped. Darkness swirled, then another of those wicked blades formed in his hand, made from shadow, shimmering with nightmarish intent.
Blackwood forced Nico’s head lower, the blade edge hovering just above the nape of his neck.
I couldn’t make a sound, like my voice had been stolen, but inside… inside I was screaming.
“I’d ask if there was anything you’d like to say, but….” Blackwood looked down at his son with disgust. “You were never good enough. I should have done this the day you were born and saved the world the trouble.”
Horror gripped me as the blade rose and rose, snot dripping from my nose, tears from my eyes, and I tried to move, tried to do something to stop this.
Nico panted harder, blood running onto the marble in a steady stream.
“You are an embarrassment to our bloodline.” The blade edge glittered in the candlelight as I fought to get free. “Not that it matters now.”
The blade fell.
Because this was a dream after all, it fell in slow motion, with clinical, perfect accuracy, straight toward that pale, exposed patch of skin on the back of Nico’s neck where his hair parted, as if offering him up to be sacrificed.
Nico turned his head, and the world narrowed until there was only the two of us.
There was apology in his eyes. Regret.
The blade was there—right there—when black smoke exploded through the chamber, and every candle went out simultaneously. I didn’t know where the fume came from, but darkness swallowed everything except for Blackwood’s screamed curse, and the sound of the containment circle shattering.
All around me, the silver runes flared, then went out, and the spell holding me prisoner vanished.
I stumbled forward, clawing through the smoke-filled darkness until I collided with warm skin and fabric.
“Nico.” Strong hands caught me. “Was that smoke yours?”
“Not mine,” he panted. “We have to get out of here,” he caught my wrist. “Run.”
The temple dissolved around us, columns twisting into mist, shadows blurring, Blackwood’s laughter echoing all around us.
“You are running out of places to hide. And I am so very close to finding you in the real world, Nico. So very close.”
I burst out of the dream to a circle of worried faces peering down at me, Nico’s hand still clamped around my wrist like iron, my pulse drumming madly against his fingers. I couldn’t catch my breath. Couldn’t fucking think around my terror.
Blackwood’s son. The secret he’d carried all this time.
The lie that was soon to be out in the open.
And gods help us all.