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“I was supposed to rescue you,” I snap.
Rowan shrugs, his filthy rags rippling with the motion. “And I thought I could take on a dragon,” he says. “And here we are.”
His chains rattle as he raises a hand to gesture at the iron bars, as if I’d somehow forgotten that we’re three levels deep inside a dungeon somewhere. Then he settles back and watches me with an intensity I associate with chess games inside the World’s End pub.
“So,” he says, with an ease of nonchalance that instantly puts me on edge. “Were you ever going to tell me that our father was the one who trapped the Kingdom of the Fall in the Lands Below?”
I sigh, then sink forward. I feel like I’m collapsing in on myself.
“No,” I answer. “I wasn’t.”
Rowan clicks his tongue, then glances at the ceiling. “You said our father died in the war,” he replies, again with that casual tone. “You said he was a real sweet guy.”
Irritation prickles just beneath my skin.
“I’m not going to apologize,” I snap. “I tried to give you a normal family. Or at least the memory of one.”
Rowan shrugs again, then turns back to me. “How’d it happen?” he asks.
I shift on the stones, run my fingers through my hair, and close my eyes. “It wasn’t just you,” I begin, in a soft, halting voice. “I was never going to tell anyone, ever. You understand?”
Rowan doesn’t answer. I push on.
“Varitan, our father. He found a way to, I don’t know, rip reality,” I say. “To punch a hole in the Worlds Above that led into the Lands Below. He was already a powerful magician, and stars, we already had a massive house and an army of servants and ambassadors from every single kingdom bowing and scraping at our door. But, clearly, that wasn’t enough.”
I swallow thickly. I feel like I’m stumbling in the dark, reaching for the shadowy outline of long-buried memories and hoping I don’t cut myself on their jagged edges.
“He partnered with Rensivar first,” I continue. “I think he wanted a dragon on his side. And then the two of them, they tried to find someone who would pay for what they could do.”
My voice fades. My mouth is dry, and my throat feels like it’s filling with sand.
“And the Kingdom of the Summer took him up on the offer?” Rowan asks.
I nod. “King Grathgore was the highest bidder,” I say. “But our father didn’t trust Grathgore because he enslaved magicians, so Rensivar presented the magic and then claimed it was his. And—”
I pull in a breath. I’ve never told anyone about this; I tried to shove the memories as far down as they would go, hoping they might stay buried.
“That’s how we were able to escape,” I whisper. “Mom had tried before, you see, because of—” My voice pinches, then cuts off. I clear my throat and try again. “Because of what our father Varitan was doing to you,” I say. “Before you were even born.”
Rowan snorts, then spins his fingers in the air.Go on.
“But he always found us,” I continue. “No matter where we went, how far we ran, he always found us. So, Mother figured the only place he wouldn’t go was into the prison he’d built for the Kingdom of the Fall.”
I stop, then struggle to swallow around the lump in my throat. Memories I’ve tried to murder tumble back into the darkness. Whispers and tears, the creak of carts, the roar of dragonfire screaming across the night sky. Varitan had to be there to keep the portal open, of course, and he hadn’t dared to leave us at his estate. My mother had tried to run away one too many times for him to let her out of his sight.
Still, it hadn’t been that difficult to sneak out of our tent at night and join the crowd of refugees from the Kingdom of the Fall as they dragged what was left of their lives through a black hole in reality. In the chaos of those first few days behind the barrier, locked in the Lands Below, it was easy to blend in, to pretend we belonged, to create a story about my valiant father who’d died fighting for the Kingdom of the Fall. But my mother was always worried someone would recognize us, and as the Lands Below grew more civilized, she pushed further and further away. Until we ended up in the World’s End, on the very edge of the void.
Rowan makes a low, growling sound in the back of his throat. His chains clank as he shifts on the stone.
“That’s fucked up,” he finally says.
Despite everything, a smile somehow makes it down three flights of nasty dungeon stairs and twists the edges of my mouth. The years I’ve spent trying to get Rowan to clean up his filthy language. Voids, talk about failure.
“Yeah,” I agree. “Yeah, it is.”
We fall silent. My little sun illusion drifts above us, sending dim flickers of golden light along the slime-encrusted walls of our cell. Somewhere in the distance, the sound of dripping water echoes off stone, which only makes my sandpaper throat feel worse.
“He’s still working with the dragon?” I ask, finally. “With Rensivar the Wicked, I mean?”
