beneath her, lashing out again. She is flung across the room, limp and boneless, tumbling across the crystalline floor, rainbow colors crashing like waves on a sunset shore. The Waywalkers scream once more. And though Aurora rises again, fists clenched, she moves a touch slower than she did a moment ago.
They collide like powder and flame. He towers over her, drawing the power of the multitude around us into himself. Her face is a mask of pain and blood, her eye gleaming in the dark. She seems small then. And looking at her, she who was my all and my everything and is now perhaps my nothing, I know the truth.
I told her before she came here, after all.
I cannot fault her for hating me. I never should have lied to her, or to the rest of them. But I warned her not to come here. I wished to deal with this by myself. My shame. My blood. In my veins and on my hands. I thought perhaps to topple the giant. Slay the monster I remembered from my childhood, the man who laid those bruises on me and my sister and my mother alike.
But as soon as I saw my father, I knew he had become so much more, and so much less, than he ever was before. I thought to wait. Perhaps as he prepared to use the Weapon, he would be distracted enough for me to strike at him. Or perhaps after he had fired it, he might become weakened enough for me to cut him down once and for all. I had no real plan, save to spare Aurora this struggle.
My deception and my devotion. Only one of them for her.
But now …
Now.
I look around me at the Waywalkers, pinned in place against the curving crystal walls like insects upon a board. Their eyes are open, but they do not see. Syldrathi men and women, even children, the Waywalker glyf—an eye, crying five tears—marked upon their brows.
The same glyf my mother wore on her brow.
There is no love in violence, Kaliis, she would tell me.
I reach down to the floor beneath me. My fingers search the shattered crystal broken loose from the wall. I take hold of a shard—long and pointed, like a dagger. And I look at these poor wretches my father draws his power from. The crystal slicing into my palm as I clench it tight.
It would not take much to end them. Cut them loose from this life, and from him. Weakening him. Perhaps enough to topple him?
Mercy is the province of cowards, Kaliis.
But no. That is a choice he would make, not me. And if I am to step out from this shadow at last, I cannot do it by walking into darkness. I am not my past. I am not he who made me. I must stand in the light of the sun.
No matter what it will cost me.
I steal across the trembling floor, the crystal dagger in my hand, struggling through the storm of power building around them. My father and my be’shmai are locked together, the Weapon around us trembling now with tectonic violence. Blood drips from Aurora’s nose, her ears, her eyes. Her arms shake. Her knees buckle.
She cannot win this alone.
But the truth is?
She was never alone.
I loom up behind my father. Like a shadow. Like the past come back to haunt him. Like the voices of ten billion souls gone to the Void, my mother among them. And I wrap my arm around his throat and plunge the crystal blade toward the sweet spot between his fifth and sixth ribs.
The crystal pierces my father’s armor, and for a brief and beautiful moment, I feel the flesh parting beneath, the blade sinking toward the heart I can only assume he still owns.
But then it stops.
I feel his grip on my wrist, though he does not touch me. I feel his hand at my throat, though his own hands are still locked with Aurora’s. I struggle, powerless, gasping as his hold on me tightens. He glances over his shoulder at me, his eye burning like cold flame.
“Tsk, tsk,” he says.
With a toss of his head, he slams my be’shmai backward, sending her skidding across the floor, bleeding and gasping.
And then he turns to me.
I am held in place. Suspended three feet above the floor, utterly still.
He looks at me, the storm raging all around us. He is so changed now. Severed from the ties that once bound him.