Chapter 29 #2
"I did, actually," he replies with genuine enthusiasm.
"Though I suppose you've been conducting your own little symphonies lately.
The Obur incident was quite... creative.
I particularly enjoyed the part where you arranged their remains in geometric patterns.
Your darkness, Kaan, fills me with unexpected pleasure. "
"Pest control," I say, my voice hardening as fury builds in my chest. "Someone had to clean up the vermin. Though I'm curious—which of my courtiers has been sending you reports? I'll have to thank them personally for their... dedication."
The promise in my tone makes it clear that 'thank them' involves forceful applications of shadow magic and probably screaming.
"Oh, my dear boy," Erlik chuckles with genuine amusement.
"You think I need spies? The screams were loud enough to hear from here.
Very impressive projection—your mother would have been so proud.
She always did appreciate creative expression.
Right up until she decided that diplomacy was more entertaining than destruction. "
The mention of my mother sends a spike of grief and rage through my chest, but I manage to keep my expression neutral. "How thoughtful of you to remember her so fondly."
"Oh, I remember everything about dear Melisa," he says, his smile turning sharp as broken glass. "Her final performance was particularly memorable. Such conviction in her beliefs, right up until the very end."
The servants clear the current course and bring something that appears to be dessert, assuming dessert is supposed to glow faintly and make soft weeping sounds when you touch it. I ignore it in favor of studying my father's face, searching for tells that might reveal what game he's playing.
"Speaking of performances," Erlik continues with dangerous mildness, "I notice you came alone tonight. How disappointing. I was so looking forward to meeting dear Nesilhan."
Here it comes. I can see the trap being set, can feel the careful maneuvering that's about to pin me exactly where he wants me.
"She's recovering," I say carefully. "The recent... unpleasantness left her in no condition to travel."
"How thoughtless of you," he says, his tone sharpening with genuine displeasure. "To deny me the pleasure of meeting the woman carrying my grandchild. After two centuries of separation, surely you could have made the effort to bring your family home."
The possessive way he says 'my grandchild' makes my blood run cold, but I force myself to remain calm. "Perhaps another time, when she's feeling stronger."
"Perhaps," he agrees, though his smile promises otherwise. "Though I have to ask—does she know what happened to the last woman who bore your child?"
The words slam into me with vicious accuracy. My shadows writhe in response to the spike of rage and grief that crashes through me, and I have to grip my wine glass to keep from launching myself across the table.
"Careful, Father."
"Oh, but I'm simply curious," he continues with false innocence, leaning forward with sharp attention.
The room seems to darken around me as memories I've spent two centuries suppressing claw their way to the surface.
The poison in my veins responds to my emotional turmoil by spreading with renewed vigor, silver fire racing through my system.
"Does she know about Isil. How her belly swelled with your child even as madness consumed her?
How she would press her hands to her stomach and whisper apologies to the life growing there, begging forgiveness for the monster she was becoming? "
"Stop," I whisper, but he's just getting started.
The memory rises unbidden, dragging me back to that day when everything innocent in me died?—
I'm seven years old, my small hand clutched desperately in Mother's as the guards drag us both into the throne room.
The chains burn her skin wherever they touch, leaving angry red welts that weep and blister.
The scent of seared flesh mingles with her jasmine perfume until I can taste copper and charred meat with every breath.
"Please," Mother whispers, dropping to her knees so we're at eye level. Her beautiful face is already marked with tears, but she tries to smile for me. "Don't make him watch this. Erlik, please—he's just a child."
"He must learn," Father says, and when I look at him, something cold crawls down my spine. His face is a mask of terrible calm, but his hands shake where they grip the throne's armrests. "This is what happens to those who betray everything I've built."
"Kaan, evladim, " Mother says, her chained hands cupping my face with desperate tenderness. "Whatever happens, remember that I love you. Remember that this—" her voice breaks, "—this isn't who your father truly is."
"I tried to make peace," she whispers as tears stream down her face. "I tried to build a world where you wouldn't have to choose between light and darkness. Where you could be both."
"Such noble intentions," Father says, rising from his throne. For just a moment, his face crumples—actual grief flickering across his features before the mask slides back into place. "Such beautiful, devastating naivety."
The power that flows from him isn't clean—it's agony given form. Divine wrath that tears through her shadows like claws through silk. Her dark radiance begins to unravel, thread by thread, and each strand that disappears takes something vital with it.
The screaming starts immediately.
Not the quick cry of sudden pain, but the sustained shriek of someone being slowly unmade.
Her back arches until I hear vertebrae crack, her mouth opened in a rictus of suffering that steals the breath from my lungs.
Blood streams from her eyes as the light literally burns out of them, leaving smoking holes where warmth used to live.
"Stop!" I scream, my small shadows lashing out instinctively. For one impossible moment, they actually reach her—wrapping around her writhing form like protective silk. "Father, please! You're hurting her!"
"My brave boy," she gasps through teeth stained red with blood, her voice already growing hollow as pieces of her soul are torn away. "My beautiful ? —"
The words die as Father's power spikes, ripping my shadows away and slamming me back against the wall hard enough to crack my skull. Stars explode across my vision, but I can still see—still watch as he continues his methodical destruction.
Her fingers begin to smoke and crackle, her own shadow magic turning against her as Father's power corrupts it from within.
The jasmine scent of her perfume becomes something horrible—scorched flesh and melting bone that makes bile rise in my throat.
She tries to reach for me one last time, but her arm crumbles to ash before her fingers can touch my face.
"I love—" she starts to say, but her voice dissolves into wet gurgling as her throat fills with liquefied shadow that pours from her mouth like molten obsidian.
Father's face throughout it all is a mask of cold fascination. His dark eyes study her agony with the detached interest of someone examining an insect under glass. When her screams reach a particularly musical pitch, his lips curve in the faintest smile—not of sadness, but of artistic appreciation.
"Beautiful," he murmurs, tilting his head as her shadows begin to fragment. "I'd forgotten how exquisite the death of hope can be."
When she looks at him one last time—desperate, pleading, still believing somewhere deep down that the man who claimed to love her might show mercy—his expression doesn't change at all. If anything, his smile widens.
"Goodbye, my dear," he says with the same tone he might use to dismiss a servant. "Thank you for the lesson."
Then her eyes explode.
The darkness that pours out isn't beautiful—it's the color of ruptured organs and spilled dreams. It splatters across the throne room floor in patterns that will haunt my dreams for centuries, and suddenly, there's nothing left of her but smoking bones and the lingering echo of jasmine that now makes me vomit.
"It's done," Father says, his voice hollow as a tomb. He won't look at the remains, won't look at me. Blood streaks his face from where his tears have turned to crimson.
I can't speak. Can't breathe. Can't process that the warm, laughing woman who taught me to weave shadows into art is now scattered across the floor like discarded meat.
"Love is weakness," he tells me, but his voice breaks on the words. "The sooner you learn this lesson, the stronger you'll become."
I stare at the smoking remains of everything good in my world, my mind fracturing as it tries to understand. The shadows around me writhe with sympathetic grief, but they can't bring her back. Nothing can bring her back.
"You're a monster," I whisper, the words torn from somewhere so deep they taste like blood and ash. "You're a monster and I hate you."
His smile widens at that, genuine pleasure flickering in his dark eyes. "Yes," he says with satisfaction, as if I've finally learned an important lesson. "I am the monster that creates monsters, evladim . And someday, you'll thank me for it."
He steps closer, crouching down so we're eye to eye over the smoking remains of everything I loved. "You have my blood in your veins, my power in your bones. Fighting what you are will only make you suffer longer."
"I'll never be like you," I sob, but even as I say it, I can feel something dark and hungry stirring in response to the violence I've witnessed.
"We'll see," he says gently, reaching out to touch my face with fingers still warm from divine murder. "After all, who else is going to teach you how to use all that beautiful darkness?"
That's when I start screaming.
The memory releases me back to the present, where Erlik watches with obvious satisfaction.
Around the table, the assembled demons and nobles continue their careful pretense of not listening, but I can feel their anticipation.
They know something is coming; they can sense the violence building beneath my controlled facade.
"Does she know what happened to the last woman who bore your child?
" he asks and sets down his wine glass carefully.
"Poor Isil. The way she screamed as Altan's poison ate through her mind, how she clawed at her own face trying to dig out the madness your brother planted there.
Such exquisite suffering—and all because you couldn't protect her from your family's petty jealousies. "
He leans forward with vicious satisfaction. "I wonder... will you be any better at protecting this one? Or will your failures claim another innocent life?"
His smile turns razor-sharp. "Though I have to admit, I do hope she lasts longer than Isil did.
Your first love barely managed many years of screaming before she finally had the courtesy to die.
It would be such a shame if Nesilhan proved equally.
.. fragile. The child deserves to see its mother suffer properly before the inevitable end. "
Something snaps.
The rage that erupts from me transcends emotion and achieves something approaching divine wrath.
My shadows explode outward with brutal yearning, wrapping around Lord Bael's throat before anyone can react.
The demon's eyes bulge as darkness crushes his windpipe, vertebrae popping like kindling as I lift him from his chair.
"Touch her," I snarl, silver veins flaring beneath my skin as the poison feeds on my fury, "and I'll show you exactly what two centuries of Altan's tender care created."
Bael's corpse hits the floor with a wet thud that echoes through the suddenly silent dining room. The other guests shift nervously in their seats, but none dare flee. They know better than to move without permission.
"Kaan," Erlik says mildly, dabbing at his lips with a napkin. "You're ruining dinner. Poor Bael hadn’t even finished his dessert. Though there's my boy—I was wondering when you'd stop pretending to be civilized. Much more honest this way."