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My father standsbefore his subjects, before the beasts who pace around us, who wait for us to make a wrong move so they can pounce on his command. And hewillcommand it. I know that deep in my heart. If we don't shift, if we don't allow him to control us, our friends will shred us to pieces.
I also know that neither I nor my brothers will shift. We'll never allow ourselves to become his slaves. If this man wants us out of his way, he'll have to kill us.
"Shift," he commands us again, then he gestures to someone.
A rot troll moves forward with a sword and strikes, but rather than attacking us, he cuts our ropes away. Not that having our hands free will do much good. Without weapons, surrounded by our enemies, we're as good as bound still, and our father knows it.
Today, we're going to die. My only peace comes from knowing Rayne and Ann are safe. At least until our world swallows their own. And that has to be enough for me right now. Something to cling to as I experience my last moments of life.
"Phantom." He says my name softly, like I'm a child breaking a rule. "You've always been too stubborn for your own good. Do what you should now. Do what's right."
It's strange. He looks like the man I once knew, the one who loved my mother, the one who cared for me and for Dusk when we were children, even with the damage from Ann's light still visible. But the shell of him doesn’t tell the true tale. Not what I see underneath all the familiar things. His eyes are dead. His voice is flat. The father I knew is gone.
“Is there nothing left of the man who loved our mother, who loved his children?” I don’t expect the words to have an effect on him, to make him consider his behavior, but I try anyway, for Dusk and Onyx.
I watch his face for any change, but his gaze doesn’t even flicker at the mention of my mother. “Love is for the weak." There’s no emotion left in him.
And I realize,wearen't going to make it out of here, but maybe Onyx and Dusk can.
A plan forms in my mind, and it's strange. For one moment the world seems to stand still around me. The shadow realm is dark, but I don't focus on that. Instead, happy images fill my mind. Ann’s face when she agreed to complete the mating bond with us, the way her eyes looked, the way I sensed her heart connecting with mine. The way she moved when I touched her. The sound of her laugh and the way she brought joy and wonder to us all.
"It's time," my father says.
Yes, it is.
I look at Dusk and Onyx. Something changes in their faces, and Onyx shakes his head. They know I'm going to try something reckless.
"For Ann," I mouth, then I turn away from the panic in their eyes.
I have one chance to do this, to make it so my brothers have time to get away. I leap forward and grab my father, but as if he expected it, he’s grinning. I try to ignore the look on his face and pull his dagger free, but it's caught in his shirt. I yank the material, shredding it, drawing the dagger and part of his shirt free. Around us, his beasts are going wild, but none of them attack, which I don't have time to think about.
Untangling the dagger from the shirt, I raise it above my head and stare at his chest. Then I freeze, feeling my eyes widen. My father's chest... it's wrong. In the center of his pale skin is a red jagged item, one that glows like the moonstone.
It's... a shard of the stone. Not just any shard, but the central part of the goddess's heart.
And now I know. I understand everything that I didn't understand before.
He’s pierced his heart with the shard of moonstone. The power of it flows through him. It has given him the strength to do all the cruelties his inflicted on us all. But the moonstone changed the man we knew once into this one. It unleashed the physical darkness inside him. The one that has erased all care and love from his heart. Because man was not meant to hold the power of the goddess within him. This power was meant to allow our world to live, not to be stolen by one selfish man.
My realization only takes a moment, and then I'm pressing the dagger down, directing it toward his chest. Toward the stone. But inches before it touches his flesh, my father catches my wrist in a grip too powerful to belong to him. Within seconds, he's twisted me so that the dagger is nearly falling from my hand, and I'm on my knees.
With his free hand, he takes the dagger from me like I'm a child and he flips it around, pointing it at my throat. I hear chaos behind me, probably my brothers trying to fight to save me, but I know they're struggling in vain. I didn't create the distraction I hoped for. I didn't hurt my father enough to distract him from the hold over his beasts so my brothers could get free.
The tip of the steel slices into my throat. "Say goodbye, son," he whispers, his smile filling his whole face.
"No!" I hear Ann's voice above the chaos.
Ann and Rayne—who have no business here in the shadow realm—jump from behind the crowd. She lifts a hand and points it toward us, emitting a light bright enough that I wish I could shield my eyes. I’m not in danger in my human form from being destroyed by her magic, but after the darkness of this realm, the light hurts me.
My father screams, "Stop her!"
A shadow beast hurls through the air at her and she turns to him, the light in her hands brightening. She aims the beam at him and within seconds, he evaporates into ash in a quiet puff not befitting such a torturous death. Many of the shadow beasts split off from the circle that surrounds us, racing toward Ann and Rayne. Rayne withdraws his sword and stands beside Ann, the look on his face saying he'll kill anyone or anything that tries to hurt our mate. I just hope he can. She rids the realm of several more shadow beasts while Rayne fights off a couple others. He’s the easier target and they begin to descend on him, drawing Ann’s focus from my father. Grave trolls roar and move toward them too, and the rot monkeys begin to race toward the battle from their dead trees.
She puts more and more of the beasts down while my father watches her. “She’s extraordinary, isn’t she?”
And that's enough to shake me back to what needs to be done. I smash his hand away, sending his dagger flying, then leap to my feet. His gaze snaps from Ann to me, and I grab him around the throat, bringing him so our faces are inches apart.
“Look at me, father,” I command.
