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I stared at him. At the monster who had made me. At the man I had spent my whole life trying not to become.

And I realized something.

The Unraveling power he carried, the corruption my mother had accidentally poured into him, it wasn't part of him. It was woven into him. A thread. A connection. Something that had been bound to his soul years ago.

Something I could cut.

Lily understood at the same moment I did. Her hope flared through me, bright and fierce.

Do it. End this.

My father was still talking, still gloating. He didn't see me gathering my power. Didn't feel me reaching for the thread of corruption woven through his soul.

I found it, dark and twisted and hungry. The Unraveling. The power that had destroyed so many. The corruption my mother had created by accident and my father had wielded with terrible purpose.

It was not part of him.

It was a chain.

And I was a Threadbreaker.

I reached for the corruption inside my father. Reached for the thread that bound the Unraveling to his soul.

And I began to cut.

CHAPTER 35

AUGUST

The corruption did not want to die. It fought me the moment I reached for it, the Unraveling twisting beneath my power, fighting back. It had grown fat on his grief and rage, and now it fought back with everything it had.

My fingers closed around the thread of darkness woven through him. Cut, I told myself. Just cut.

It screamed, though it wasn't a sound but a sensation. A howling in the space between thoughts, a clawing at the edges of my mind. It didn't want to be severed. It wanted to spread. Wanted to leap from my father to me, to find a new host, to continue the hunger that had driven it for over two decades. I held on.

My father convulsed beneath me. His hands clawed at the carpet, at his own chest, at the air. His mouth was open, but no sound emerged, the scream trapped somewhere in his throat. In the place where the corruption had lived so long it had become indistinguishable from him.

His eyes found mine. Blue meeting hazel. And for one terrible moment, I saw something in them I had never seen before.

Fear.

Of what I was trying to take from him. Of the emptiness that would remain when the Unraveling was gone.

“August.” Lily's voice, distant and worried.

I couldn't answer. Couldn't spare the breath. Every ounce of my focus was on the thread in my hands, the dark, twisted thing that writhed and fought and would not be cut.

I pulled harder.

Something warm dripped down my upper lip—blood, copper at the back of my throat. My hands were shaking. I was pushing too hard, asking too much of my power.

The corruption pushed back.

Images flooded my mind. Temptations. Power without limit. A world where no one could ever hurt me again. Where I would never be weak, never be afraid, never be the boy crying in his father's study while a cold voice told him love was weakness.

Take me, the corruption whispered. I can make you stronger than he ever was.

“No.” The word tore from my throat, raw and ragged.