Tame it.
Keldarion rises to his feet, forming two ice blades in his hands. His eyes flick up to mine.
I rush toward him, feeling myself slipping, but manage to spit out, “I was born this monster, twisted and wrong.”
“I know,” Keldarion says gruffly. “And I’ve loved you every damn day of it.”
A terrible scream tears out of me. This fool, this damned fool. A blade of thorns forms in my hands, and I slice at him. Ice chips and showers us.
My father drifts closer. “Do you think love will save him? Do you think it’s strong enough to unmake me? He was created for destruction, Winter Prince.”
Ezryn steps between us and the Baron, hammer raised again. “Maybe he was. But he gets to choose what he becomes.”
The baron smiles, slow and cruel. A blast of green flame erupts from his palm, slamming into Ezryn and sending him shooting across the cavern.
“Ezryn!” Keldarion cries.
“You’re getting stronger, Father,” I say. “Soon, you shall be here with us fully, at the death of the queen.”
“Two great powers ruling the Vale, one my mate and one his sire.” Rosalina’s voice carries across the chasm. I look over at her. She’s kneeling beside Ezryn, but when she catches my gaze, she rises slowly, as if we have all the time in the world. As if all her other mates aren’t about to perish.
I prowl over to her. “You’ll be at my side, willing or not.”
“I wonder who will truly rule.” She places a finger to her lips. “The sire, who the power stems from but who is still and willalwaysbe a visitor to our world…or you?”
“My home is wherever I make it.” Malekai turns his attention toward her.
Careful, my mate, I say in her mind.Don’t displease him.
So we bow to someone?she replies in my mind before facing my father. “Where is your own home then? Why the need to claim ours?”
“All the worlds shall be mine,” he snarls.
Rosalina tilts her head, curls falling over her brow. “I see. You don’t have a home of your own, do you?”
I have never seen my father so much as flinch, but he stalls, only for a second, horrors playing across his face. Then he turns to me, the mask firmly in place. “Muzzle your whore, son, or I will.”
But my mate’s words are still spinning in my mind.So we bow to someone?
I turn to my father. Is his power greater than mine?
My gaze drifts to Farron and Dayton, his former pawns, now freed and facing my mother with their own magic. They were bound to his will, because he gifted them a seed of his power…
But I was born with it. It is in my blood.
“Caspian, listen to me,” my father booms, ancient voice echoing off the stones.
“No,” I say. Or the Prince of Thorns says. Something synergizes inside me. My two wills agree.
We are not his pawn.
His magic may run through my veins, but it is not his to control.
“Caspian!” Keldarion grips me by the shoulders.
I whirl. My face reflects in his armor: eyes green, then purple, then green. A ringing sounds in my head, and flames flicker up and down my arms. I cry out, briars breaking free from the earth and wrapping around my legs.
Rosalina yelps. The baron shoots a ball of green fire toward her, and she throws up a golden briar in time to block it. She calls up more, and Ezryn stands, swinging his hammer.
