And I hit Vael with everything I had.
The shadows erupted—
Not like a wave.
Like acataclysm.
They screamed from my skin in a thousand voices—howling, writhing, tearing at the air with tendrils of grief and rage, crackling with all the power he had ever tried to take from me.
I gave him everything.
Every lost memory.
Every gaping, bleeding wound.
Every scream that tore through my throat in the shadows of the night while he called itlove.
The broken flesh. The blood. The nights I wept alone for my mother locked inside his velvet cages.
And Finn—
Gods, Finn.
My beautiful, broken boy.
Everything he could’ve been, if Vael hadn’t shattered him.
His face. His voice. The betrayal carved into his bones.
I gave Vael that too.
My stolen childhood.
My loneliness.
My shame.
My hatred, ancient and holy.
He had owned me once.
But not anymore.
I gave it back.
All of it.
And Ibecame the darkness.
The stone cracked beneath my feet. The altar shattered in two. The walls trembled.
The shadows roared around me—and then turned inward. For a second, I couldn’t breathe. My ribs locked. My head split open with light and fire.
A pain lanced through my skull—hot, bright, wrong. Like something ancient was cracking free inside me.
I dropped to my knees, clutching my head as images tore free like a dam breaking:
My father’s voice—laughing in a garden of shadows.
