Madoc turned away from them. The void was getting wider, a black pit in his gut, dragging him away. The voices became muffled in his head.
“Tradition says there are still four days until the final war battle. You offend me, then try to change the rules?”
“See reason. Chaos has haunted this war. Let us finish it.”
“Fine—but you’ll fight the girl. Not that big brute. He’ll sit out.”
Ash, finally able to speak, called Madoc’s name again and again. He didn’t listen.
He followed the sense of emptiness, his hands numb, his mind blank. He turned toward the side door that led to the guards’ barracks, picking his way through debris. The fire at the front wall was now out; a servant girl sat on the ground, heaving, her hands wrapped around a bucket. The smoke had mostly dissipated, but the scent was still strong in the air.
The emptiness widened, filling his lungs.
There had always been a boulder near this exit. He remembered climbing it when he was young to watch the guards and the servants mingle over the wall. Someone had moved it closer to the main gate.
This was the center of the void. The absence that had felt so wrong since he’d first come. He’d thought his anathreia had silenced, but it had been calling him to this place the entire time, beckoning him like a nightmare he was trying to forget.
As he approached, terror gripped his limbs. He could see a figure lying on the ground beside the boulder—a girl. Her tunic was torn and dusty, her dark hair matted with soil and blood. She was still, and well before he reached her, Madoc knew that she was dead.
Even as the void drew him forward, part of him fought to pull away. Still, he kept going. She was lying in a hollowed-out area. The indentation created by the boulder now beside her.
He fell to his knees. Crawled closer.
“Cassia.”
The emptiness. The utter lack of energeia. He could feel no soul inside her. It was gone, and he had been too late.
He took her hand in his, her cold fingers fragile and lifeless. He bowed his head to the back of her wrist. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
He rocked, elbows digging into the earth. Every muscle in him seized. Every part of him hurt.
Let’s go home, she whispered in his mind. She was introducing him to Elias. To Ilena. This is my new brother, she’d said.
Behind him, he heard movement. People running, shouting to each other.
Ash’s voice. “Madoc!”
The girl was so reckless in her rage, she destroyed my favorite servant.
Petros’s words were lies. Cassia had no burns on her clothing or skin. She’d been crushed by rock, by this boulder beside her.
But maybe she wouldn’t have been if Ash had never come.
The gates at the front of the villa opened. More movement, and the sudden roar of voices waiting outside.
The gates closed.
He couldn’t let go of Cassia’s hand.
He would find out what had happened to his sister, and those responsible would suffer.
Madoc didn’t know how much time had passed, but soon he became aware of a man standing beside him. The familiar disappointment and irritation scraped at Madoc’s skin.
“When you were a child, you used to feed a stray dog in the street, do you remember?” Petros asked.
A scrounging gray mutt with a half-torn ear. Madoc remembered.
“You were so determined to make it a pet. Every day you brought it scraps from the kitchen, and every day, it came a little closer, until one day it was close enough for you to touch. What happened then?”
Madoc gritted his teeth, the faint scars on his forearm tingling.
“It bit you,” Petros said. “The guards had to crush it with stones to loosen its jaw.” He inhaled slowly. Exhaled on a sigh. “You are still that same boy, trying to coax the loyalty out of a wild animal, and shocked when it betrays you.”
In Madoc’s mind, he rose. His hands closed around Petros’s throat. He squeezed until the life was gone, and the void belonged to his father.
But Madoc didn’t rise. He didn’t let go of Cassia’s hand.
“A father’s duty is to teach his son the hard lessons of life, even if that means taking away the things he loves.” Petros patted Madoc’s shoulder, not noticing how Madoc flinched away. “Get some rest. At dawn, you need to put the Kulan girl down.”