Page 86 of Crown of Storm and Silence
"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.
