“Feel it,” he snarls, but there is something hollow beneath his rage, something aching, something desperate.
He lunges, grabbing my wrist. I wrench away, kicking at him, but he’s stronger, fueled by something I do not understand. He catches my hand again, rough fingers closing tight, and before I can fight him off, he drags me forward, pressing my palm flat against his chest.
“Feel it!” he demands, his voice a ragged growl.
My heart is pounding so fiercely, so loudly in my ears, that at first, I cannot tell his heartbeat from my own. I squeeze my eyes shut, as if willing him away, but there is no escaping the press of our heavy breaths, the way the silence between us stretches tight as a drawn bowstring.
But then, as my own chest settles, I feel it. The thud beneath my palm. Rapid, unrelenting, as though it might tear free from his ribs at any moment.
Slowly, hesitantly, I open my eyes and when our gazes lock, I nearly flinch. His ice-blue eyes are glassed over, shimmering like water held at bay.
“I am not a monster, Amara Tyne,” he murmurs. Not Phaedren. Not Daed’s wife. My name, stripped bare, raw on his tongue. “I am but a man burdened with the fates of my people. I am their champion, but in the dark of night, when I am alone, I feel like their failure. For all I have done is bring them death and despair.”
His grip on my wrist slackens, and I pull my hand back to my chest. He kneels near me, shoulders caving inward, his head hanging low. For the first time, he looks defeated.
“Why are you telling me this?” My voice is barely a whisper.
“Because you and I are more alike than you think,” he says. “We have both lost much to the flames that ravaged the Sundered Kingdoms. We are both orphans of the ashes.”
His fingers drift to his mask, tracing the swirling engravings molded into the bronze. “My parents burned in the fires of Rethmar. I was asleep in my bed, unaware, until my brother shook me awake and dragged me through our bedroom window.” He takes a steadying breath. “There was this smell. A stench that clung to us, no matter how fast we ran. Even when we reached the mountains, it lingered. We stood there, watching the flames of Rethmar lick the sky, turning night to day. Only then, in the eerie stillness, did I realize the smell was me. My skin, burnt. My bedclothes, fused to my little body. But I did not scream. Even when the pain had me wishing for death, I would not give the Fae the satisfaction of knowing they had broken me.”
His voice never wavers, steady and measured. But his eyes betray him, heavy with the weight of memory.
“How does a little boy become the leader of an army?” I ask.
He scoffs. “He doesn’t. His brother does. Starving to death was never an option, so we joined the Legion. Little more than a scattered rebellion back then. But my brother was ambitious, and that ambition earned him a name among the people. The Golden Son. The light that would save humans from the Fae. And when he died, the mask fell to me.”
His hand stills over the bronze surface, his breath turning ragged. “But where he wore his as a symbol of honor, mine is a shroud to hide what the flames took from me that day. Not just my flesh, melted from my bones, but the boy I had been. That was the day the world changed forever. The day I became a man with a divine purpose… and a terrible vengeance.”
Of course. For years, the Fae have asked the same question:Who is the Golden Son?His face has never been seen. Time itself seems to pass him by, untouched, an immortal force of reckoning.
But now, the answer is clear.
He is not the first Golden Son. Only the mask’s newest heir.
He is Ronin. An orphaned boy from Rethmar, stripped of his past, burdened with a future too heavy to bear and now, before me, he is breaking.
“Your brother sounds like a good man,” I say.
“Yes. He was,” he murmurs, his voice hollow. “Far greater than his successor.”
“Did he die fighting the Fae?” I ask.
The Golden Son lifts his gaze. “Ambushed near Lake Vysere,” he says. “One of his men managed to tear the mask from his face before the Fae could search the bodies. Slipped away, bloodied and half-dead, and brought it back to me.” He pauses. “The Fae didn’t realize they had killed The Golden Son that day.”
“And your parents?” I hesitate, gnawing my bottom lip. “Do you… do you remember their faces?”
Something flickers in his gaze, something knowing, something strangely familiar that sets me at ease.
He exhales. “I fear I have forgotten them.”
A small, honest smile tugs at my lips. “As have I.”
Without thought, without reason, my hand drifts from my chest, reaching for him.
He catches the movement from the corner of his eye and flinches. I freeze.
For a moment, neither of us breathes.
