“This is what you get for choosing Orean trash,” my father seethes. “I want you to remember this, Elore. Remember that this is what you get for betraying me.”
She goes stiff in my arms. The whole room seems to suck in a breath of air. And then, my father lifts his hand and snaps.
And Jak’s neck breaks.
There’s no time for my mother to scream. No time for me to blink. Jak’s neck cracks in an unnatural angle, and his wide, agonized eyes extinguish their light right before us.
When his upper body hits the floor, my mother’s body does too.
I’ve read the word keening before. I’ve heard of it plenty of times. But I have never actually heard someone let out a keening cry like my mother does.
It wrenches from her body with so much force that it sends chills down my spine. It’s so loud that I can’t even hear my pounding heartbeat.
The sound she makes is terrifying. Unrecognizable.
I’m in so much shock that I’m just standing there uselessly, wondering how the hell all of this happened so fast.
My father moves his power effortlessly, unbreaking a single portion of the floor’s fissure so he can walk across until he stands right in front of me. “This is why females cannot be trusted, Slade.”
My hands curl into fists, and I feel the spikes above my brows pierce through my skin. A single drop of blood slips past my eye. He looks at me coolly, unimpressed. “Lack of control. Now we know where you get it from,” he says with distaste.
Anger pours like a flood from my chest, and I feel the spikes in my back straining, ready to—
“Mother?”
I whip my head to the left and see the servants parting, and then my brother is standing there. He looks pale and scared, so young in his pajamas with a blanket clutched in one hand.
“Ryatt…” my mother cries.
He hesitates, eyes bouncing from the break down the middle of the house to my mother’s crumpled face. But then, his eyes land on Jak’s unmoving body.
“Father!” The word yanks out of his little voice, and he rushes forward, pushing past the servants that try to protect him. My heart leaps into my throat, but he skids to a stop in front of the crack when my mother manages to snag his shirt, stopping him before he can try to leap. He collapses into a fit of sobs against her shoulder.
And my father… I see his thoughts churn. See them clot and thicken.
“It cannot be.”
If my mother was angry before, she looks terrified now. Especially when my father takes a threatening step forward. “No,” she heaves out. “You will not touch him,” she says, gripping onto Ryatt even harder.
And I stand there in shock, looking from Jak to my little brother, disbelief grappling me.
And yet…fae have a hard time conceiving. It’s common knowledge. It’s why our long life is so important for our species. But my father was able to have not only one heir but two, and fairly close in age. He always put it down to the fact that my mother is Orean, but that’s not it.
Eleven years, my mother said. She’s been having this affair for eleven years. My brother is ten.
Ryatt isn’t my father’s heir.
My mother looks wild. Her black hair is disheveled, scraps of ceiling caught in its dusty strands, an angry scratch dragged down her cheek. When he broke Jak’s neck, he broke my mother’s heart, but she’s not going to let him hurt Ryatt too. I can see it in her red-rimmed eyes.
My father staggers, the back of his heel hitting the broken crack behind him as he realizes that Ryatt isn’t his.
My heartbeat feels like it wants to rupture through my veins and explode out my ears. Ryatt is still crying, clutching our mother’s nightdress, while she tries to drag him behind her.
“You dared to sire that bastard’s whelp?” The dark tone in my father’s voice seems to suck away the dawning light in the room.
My mother’s bottom lip trembles as she tries to block Ryatt. The other servants look like they want to intervene, but they’re too afraid to face my father, and they’re right to have that fear.
“I should’ve known I couldn’t trust an Orean.”
With another snap of his finger, the ground shakes again and there’s a violent snap, and I realize that my father has trapped us all in this room, a circle of cracks surrounding us, keeping us all in this entry.
By the time I steady my feet beneath me again, my father has walked up behind me, and I flinch when his hand slams down onto the back of my neck, squeezing slightly. “You gave me a powerful heir,” he says to my mother, that voice of his still booming, still edged with impossible rage. “So I have no further need of you or the false spare.”