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By the gods. He was the phantom, the scourge of the kingdoms as Skul Drek, but this was still his damn mother.

I pressed a hand against his chest. “Don’t you remember?”

One finger traced the edge of my jaw. “I recall you always, Melder.”

I frowned and the pulse of his copper eyes flickered to deep crimson. A sign he was studying me, trying to crack open my skull and uncover my thoughts. “We came here for a purpose.”

I held up the bone shard. Elisabet believed my craft could awaken connections to these bones, but Skul Drek would be the one to summon the fallen prince. True enough, one of the unwoven threads reached for the shadows of my phantom husband.

Skul Drek tilted his hooded head. One long, darkened finger touched the end of the filament.

Together we jolted in surprise when the strand burst in its vibrancy and slithered through the mists and rot of the mirror, fading into oblivion.

I was met with a vicious sort of grin when he looked at me again. “There. Now, let me taste you.”

I patted his misty chest. “We are not alone and have no answers yet.”

“It is a challenge with a rent soul,” Elisabet said, a subtle laugh to her tone. “Focus will latch onto one subject. At first, it was to kill for his duty. With your bond, he will only see you. For in our darkest halves is where our obsession lies.”

“You speak as though you’ve had experience,” I said. Had she been drawn into the darkness of her king when his soul was torn apart much the same?

Elisabet merely hummed but did not explain deeper.

Teeth bared, shadows deepened around Skul Drek. “Leave us, queenie.”

His voice was rough, like grit lined the back of his throat. Darkness, viciousness, cruelty—all of it flared at the slightest word. It seemed should he perceive offense to me, it would flash more swiftly than anything.

I stroked his shadowed face. “Remember, we are here to find your brother?”

Upon mention of the prince, the missing thread flickered against the mists again. A connection from the bone, to the chest of Skul Drek, to the distant nothing.

The craft of Skul Drek could touch souls, steal them, devour them. I never considered he might be able to speak to them.

Craft was ever-expanding. A puzzling piece of lore and unknowns. Powers were unique with soul craft, more so than bone and blood. If it was possible for Skul Drek to summon certain souls—gods, the things we might learn from those who died before us.

Skul Drek closed his eyes, then let out the wicked laugh that once frightened me. Now my hair lifted with anticipation, as though my heart stirred from his villainy.

“Yes,” he said. “Princely brothers were lost.”

Elisabet shifted on her feet. “You will need to learn how to use your craft if you are ever going to free your wife from those who wish to darken her soul.”

“Then give your lessons, queenie. I’ve souls to take.”

“You must remember him.” She pointed to the faint thread attached to the bone. “Use the bond your wife has awakened, a bond of brothers, and call to him.”

“Hmm. Princely brothers of he and we.” He touched the bone shard, closed his eyes again, then the next word came out in a snarl. “Nothing.”

“Try harder.” A smile lightened Elisabet’s features. “Do you recall snapping your wrist as a boy?”

Almost on instinct, Skul Drek jolted away, like he’d been shocked with pain. He bared his teeth. “Rooftops and rain.”

“Yes.” Elisabet nodded. “You tried to prove you could patch the rooftop of the stables all on your own after Nivek denied you the chance to help with the outer walls.”

The more Elisabet spoke, the brighter the thread shone.

“Your brother said you were too young, and you took great offense.”

I bit down on my bottom lip. Gods, I could see it. Knowing Roark, his fierceness and damn stubbornness, it was not hard to imagine him insisting he could be like his elder brother. A man I never met, but one Roark had clearly admired.