Chapter 46 Face Your Creator
(Easier Said Than Done)
Kazimir
I waited for Thorne to go through the portal with Istvan before closing it behind them.
Except my hand wouldn’t move.
Close it, I commanded myself. The portal hung open, a tear in reality that any passing mage could sense. Close the fucking portal.
My fingers twitched. Stayed frozen.
She was already disappearing around the corner—gray robes with red stitching that looked like veins of blood. Two of Auremar’s mages in gold and white followed her like obedient dogs.
Amaryska.
The shadows responded before I did, coiling around me protectively. My hand finally obeyed, collapsing the portal with a whisper of dying magic. I stood alone in the narrow alley, every muscle locked in place.
The last time I’d seen her, she’d been standing over my father’s headless corpse with an expression of such profound satisfaction it had chilled even me. She’d disappeared right after, her revenge complete after using me to destroy Vargus.
Now here she was, working for the very king I’d sworn to destroy.
Move. Follow her. Don’t let her—
My feet carried me forward. Of course they did. I’d always followed her, hadn’t I? Even when following meant the knife, the runes, the—
Focus.
I melted into the shadows, trailing at a distance.
My mother had taught me this particular trick when I was seven, right after she’d carved the concealment rune into my left shoulder blade.
Shadows recognize their own, my son. The memory came with phantom pain—the exact pressure of her blade against bone, the smell of my own burning flesh as she sealed the magic.
Soon after, I’d learned to hide from the sound of her footsteps on the stairs, though it had never worked for long.
She moved through Kheldvar’s vertical maze with confidence. The two mages flanking her kept a respectful distance—not equals, then. Subordinates.
Which meant my dear mother had climbed high in Auremar’s service.
Of course she had. Amaryska never did anything by halves.
The walk felt endless. Time moved strangely, stretching and compressing as I noticed everything and nothing—the exact rhythm of her footsteps (the same rhythm that used to echo up the stairs), the way other pedestrians unconsciously moved aside for her (sensing the predator among them, just as I had), the precise shade of gray in her robes (storm cloud gray, the color of her eyes, my eyes).
They turned into the merchant quarter.
She was heading directly for the street we’d left earlier. Toward the houses we’d already emptied of their heroic-blooded occupants.
I kept pace, moving to the rooftops now. Shadow-walking between buildings. Part of me—the Dark Lord part—cataloged exit routes, noted potential ambush points, calculated the exact angle needed to drop down and snap her neck before her mages could react.
The other part couldn’t stop counting her footsteps.
I’d counted them as a child too, listening from my room, trying to predict if she was coming for me or going to her workroom without me. Forty-seven steps meant workroom. Twelve meant my door.
Stop it. You’re thirty-three years old. Count something useful.
She paused outside Brightwater’s warehouse, studying the entrance with that particular tilt of her head I’d learned to read before I could read books. Considering. Calculating. Deciding which bone to break first.
No. Which door to break first.
“The records indicate Lord Brightwater often sleeps in his office, Lady Amaryska.” The eager young mage stepped forward, practically vibrating with the need to please her.
Lady Amaryska. She’d come far from the island sorceress who’d traded her soul for power.
“The door is ajar.” Her voice carried despite the distance—silk over steel, beautiful and terrifying. The same tone she’d used when she’d said, “Hold still, darling, this will only hurt for a moment.” A lie. “Check inside.”
The mage disappeared into the warehouse. The smell of bitter herbs drifted up to my rooftop perch. Old blood. The scent of her workroom. I could taste copper on my tongue.
You’re not there. You’re here. On a rooftop in Kheldvar. Thirty-three years old. Dark Lord. Not—
The mage emerged, face pale. “The office is empty, my lady. There are signs of dissolution magic. Shadow residue.”
My mother’s stillness was absolute.
The stillness before the storm that I’d learned to fear as a child. Before her hand moved and the world became pain.
My left shoulder blade burned. Not real pain. Memory pain. Except my body didn’t know the difference.
“He was here,” she said finally.
“Who, my lady?”
She didn’t answer, already moving toward the next address. The Fekete twins’ clinic. Where they’d find more emptiness, more shadow residue, more evidence of my efficiency.
I followed.
They reached the clinic. Found it empty. Moved to the next location. And the next.
Each empty house seemed to tighten something in her posture. I watched her shoulders, reading the tension there. She was getting angry.
“Seven locations,” the second mage reported nervously. “All empty.”
Amaryska turned in a slow circle.
My shadows deepened instinctively, wrapping tighter around my form until I was less a person and more an absence of light. For one heart-stopping moment, I thought she’d spotted me. But her gaze passed over my hiding spot without pause.
“Send word to His Majesty,” she commanded. “Someone is collecting bloodlines. Someone with significant shadow magic capabilities.”
Someone. Not my son. Did she know? Of course she knew. Amaryska was never a fool.
“The Dark Lord?” the eager mage suggested.
“Possibly.” She tilted her head—that same gesture she’d made while deciding which bone to carve next. “Double the collection teams,” she ordered. “And send scouts to check the other kingdoms. If someone is collecting them…”
“They’re planning something,” the second mage finished.
“Or preventing something.” Uncertainty flickered in her voice. “We will return to the capital. I need to consult the old texts.”
They left, my mother’s gray robes disappearing into the darkness.
I released my hold on the shadows and remained on the rooftop. My hands were shaking.
She was hunting the same bloodlines. Which meant Auremar was planning another ritual sooner than we thought. We’d been right to act quickly.
The runes in my bones burned hotter. All of them now, not just the shoulder blade. A symphony of remembered agony.
You’re not seven. You’re not twelve. You’re not seventeen and bleeding in a demon’s lair.
I was thirty-three. The Dark Lord of Skyspire. I’d killed my father at his own dinner table. I’d escaped a demon that should have broken me.
My mother was just another enemy. Another obstacle to remove.
Except my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
A clock tower chimed somewhere in the distance. Time to return to Skyspire. To sort our rescued bloodlines and plan the next move. To hold my wife and tell her that her mother’s killer was my mother.
I couldn’t keep that from Arabella any longer.
I raised my hand to tear open a portal back to Thorne—
“I knew it was you.”
The voice slithered from the darkness behind me, and every muscle in my body locked.
Not metaphorically. Not feeling frozen. Actually, physically unable to move.
Turn around. Face her. Kill her.
Nothing happened.
I heard her footsteps. Soft. Measured. Twelve steps to my door.
Move. MOVE.
“Still so dramatic.” The footsteps stopped. She was close enough that I could smell her, and it made me feel sick. “Though I suppose I taught you that.”
My body finally obeyed, turning slowly.
Amaryska stood at the rooftop’s edge, gray robes rippling in the evening breeze. The red stitching looked like fresh wounds in the moonlight.
“Amaryska.” The Dark Lord spoke through my mouth, cold and controlled. (The child underneath was screaming.) “I thought you were dead.”
“Hoped, you mean.” Her gray eyes studied me with clinical interest. The same look she’d given me before each carving session, assessing which rune would fit where. “You’ve grown powerful. More than I anticipated when I left you to that demon.”
Her casual admission struck with brutal force.
When I left you—
Time fractured.
I blinked and I was seventeen, waking up in chains in a demon’s lair, my supposed allies’ laughter still echoing. They’d known exactly when to strike. Exactly where I’d be vulnerable.
I blinked and I was thirty-three again, standing on a rooftop, staring at my mother.
Left you to that demon.
“When you left me?” The words came from somewhere deep and raw.
“Oh, don’t look so surprised.” She tilted her head. That gesture. That fucking gesture. “You were always too clever not to figure it out eventually. Though I’d thought the demon would take care of you. Imagine my surprise when you turned up a year later, even more powerful than before.”
“It was your idea all along.” My voice was still steady. Still controlled. (The child was howling now, clawing at the inside of my skull.) “You helped them sell me to that thing.”
“I orchestrated it.” No shame. No regret. Just that same matter-of-fact tone she’d used when explaining why she needed to break my fingers before carving the strength runes.
The Shadow King whispered of similar betrayals across centuries. I shoved him down viciously. This was my rage, my pain. Not his.
“You were becoming too powerful, too quickly. I was afraid of what you’d become.” She paused. “And I was right to be afraid.”
The rage exploded.
My shadows erupted outward in a wave of darkness, racing across the rooftop toward her.
(Tighter, the child begged. Make her stop breathing.
Make her stop talking. Make her STOP.) She sidestepped with infuriating grace, her own magic flaring to life—essence magic, the brutal foundation from which my dominion had evolved.
Crimson threads erupted from her palms, seeking to bind rather than command.
I lunged forward, channeling raw power through the combat runes in my arms. She deflected with a gesture, more threads whipping from her fingers to intercept my strike.
I was already moving. Using the momentum to spin and strike from a different angle. My shadows formed into blades, slicing through the space where she’d been a heartbeat before.
The air reeked of copper and the metallic tang of essence magic.
“You sold your own son!” The words tore from my throat—not the Dark Lord’s controlled fury, but younger.
“I tried to contain a weapon that had grown beyond its purpose.” She danced backward, weaving defensive spells with the same precision she’d used to carve runes. “You were meant to kill your father, nothing more.”
Nothing more.
I was seventeen again, watching my father’s head roll across the floor, looking to her for approval and finding only cold satisfaction.
And now my mother was still talking about me like I was a tool that had outlived its usefulness.
I caught her wrist as she tried to cast something particularly nasty, her essence magic already coiling around my bones, trying to bind me from the inside out. The contact sent shock waves of pain through us both—her magic recognizing the runes she’d carved, trying to turn them against me.
Her eyes widened. She hadn’t expected me to be strong enough to resist.
“And Arabella’s mother?” I yanked her closer, shadows wrapping around her throat. “Was murdering her part of your grand plan too?”
Surprise flickered in Amaryska’s expression. “How did you—”
My shadows tightened, cutting off her words. But she hissed a single syllable through clenched teeth—a command that burned through my shadows. I recoiled as she twisted free, but not before I sent more shadows flying toward her chest.
She twisted at the last second, taking the blow to her shoulder instead. Blood splattered across the rooftop.
Real blood. Red and hot and—
It was my blood on the floor and she was saying, “Hold still, darling.”
I realized she was moving, speaking words in a language that predated the kingdoms. A portal began to tear open, reeking of sulfur and old magic.
No. NO.
“No!” I lunged forward, shadows racing to seal the portal, to trap her here where I could finish this—
She stumbled backward through the tear in reality, clutching her wounded shoulder. Our eyes met for one frozen moment—mother and son, creator and creation, betrayer and betrayed.
I blinked and she was gone.
The portal snapped shut, leaving me alone on the rooftop with nothing but the echo of my rage and the scent of her blood on the stones.
I stood there, chest heaving, shadows in chaos. My hands were shaking again. My whole body was shaking.
The shame of letting her go was worse than the rage. Worse than the pain in my bones.
The scrying crystal burned against my ribs where I’d tucked it into an inner pocket. I could contact Arabella. Tell her… what? That I’d found my mother? That she’d orchestrated my betrayal to a demon? That I’d had her and let her escape because I couldn’t stop being seven years old?
That my mother had killed hers?
No. That conversation required me to look my wife in the eye. To be present enough to handle whatever came after.
Not while I was still bleeding emotion all over a Kheldvar rooftop.
Pathetic.
Let Amaryska hide behind Solandris’s walls and think herself safe. Let her believe the portal had saved her. Because when I finally got my hands on her again, there would be no portals. No escape. No blinking between ages while she slipped away.
Only the reckoning she’d earned with every scar she’d carved into my bones.
I raised my hand—still shaking, fuck—and tore open a portal back to where Thorne waited. Then we’d go to Skyspire.
Time to stop being seven years old and start being the Dark Lord who would burn the world to ash if that’s what it took to get revenge.
The portal swallowed me, and I left my mother’s blood drying on the rooftop behind me.
A promise. A threat. A preview of what was coming.