Page 58

“What was the point of models like it? Him,” he quickly amended when Soraya glared.

“For companionship. Oh, that’s funny to you?”

Ikarus folded his arms across his chest, not bothering to stifle his chuckle. It was as deep as his voice. “You expect me to believe that you spent the entire one hundred and seventy-odd years we were trapped underground developing your weapons and technology to be as big and devastating as possible for when we eventually surfaced, yet you wasted time creating creatures like him—for companionship.”

“Contrary to what you might believe, there used to be more to us than this war. We were real people once with hobbies and lives—and then you came and—”

“Ruined everything?” Ikarus finished, brow cocking in that arrogant way that made her want to break something. Preferably his face.

She didn’t give him the satisfaction of a reply.

The elevator came to a stop, and they followed her younger version and Bertok into the throne room.

Ikarus was quiet while Aleena was wheeled inside. There was no hint of emotion in his eyes when her heart gave out and the entire palace began to shake. Not when Soraya fell through the floor, or even when Bertok was shredded by those massive stalker claws.

When they were back in the palace hallway and the real screaming began, though, he looked away.

Painful as this memory was, Soraya couldn’t help but scoff. “What’s the matter? I thought you’d be loving this, reliving your victory.” She pointed to where two fairies had grabbed a Vordellian soldier by either arm and flew in opposite directions until they ripped him in two, just one of many broken and bloodied bodies all around. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it? For us to be afraid of you? To take revenge on the people who trapped you underground for centuries even though none of us were around when it happened. Well”—she gestured around with a hand—“here you go. Enjoy.”

He looked to the left. To the middle-aged man begging an approaching Dar’rak to spare the three children cowering behind him. When the soldier raised a hand and the man’s neck snapped, Ikarus looked away, his jaw so tense Soraya was surprised she couldn’t hear bones splintering from how hard he was grinding his teeth together.

Was this … bothering him? Oh. So he did have a heart buried inside that dead thing he called a chest? Interesting. Soraya wondered how hard she could push him before he cracked.

“What’s the matter? Not enjoying the show? Is watching thousands of innocent civilians being slaughtered not as fun as you thought it’d be?”

Again, Ikarus said nothing. He drew a deep breath, closing his eyes as though trying to shut out the carnage happening around them.

Carnage that Soraya had no intention of letting him miss.

She strode around him and pushed his chest. “This is all your handiwork. Go on. Bask in it. Take a good look at what you did and tell me why we were wrong for trapping you beneath.” She pushed him again, reveling in the way his stony expression cracked just that little bit each time.

She reached out a hand, intending to grab his face and make him watch all he’d done, but he stepped to the side. The tip of Soraya’s pinkie brushed against his jaw—and then she fell through a crack in the world.

There was no more Ikarus. No more Vordell or fires or screaming, just falling, falling—then stone.

Soraya gasped, pain shooting down her bones from where she’d slammed into the hard floor, secondary only to the pounding inside her skull.

It took some time—along with a few very deep breaths and muttered promises to skin Ikarus alive in several different ways when her head stopped spinning—but she was eventually able to roll onto her side, then into a crouch, and then, wincing every bit of the way, stand.

She was in the middle of a hallway with black stone walls and tall arching windows.

Soraya squared her shoulders. Was this … Was she back in Ikarus’s castle? How was that possible? She couldn’t remember him sliding out of her mind—but then how was she here? And why wasn’t she in the dungeon?

Two Dar’rak healers suddenly stepped into the hallway, their heads bowed low, hissing to each other in their language.

Soraya’s spine went rigid. Her hands flew to her sides, fingers instinctively reaching for weapons that were not there as the healers came barreling closer—

Then passed right through her.

Soraya blinked. What in the …

She turned, watching those cloaked figures disappear into a room ten feet away. How had they not noticed her? And how had they just walked straight through her as though she was a ghost? As though she wasn’t here?

Unless she wasn’t?

The answer came when another healer came sprinting down the hallway, this one’s arms filled with dark cloth, and ran through her in the same manner as the other two.

Because she was no longer in her memories. She was in Ikarus’s.