Cold terror solidifies in my gut.
I know my father. I have been training with him for seven years. I have seen exactly how ruthless he can be. I have seen him break houses and streets. Mountains and trees. Tendons and bones.
But I will not let him break my mother and brother.
He may be as loud as thunder, but I’m as quick as lightning.
Faster than a blink, my spikes have burst from my skin and rot explodes from my veins.
I whirl on my feet and shove him back with all my strength. He cracks into the wall where some of the servants scramble, another group of them surrounding my mother and brother, trying to pull them away.
Good.
Because now that I’ve openly attacked my father, I’ve drawn a line in the sand. I either have to kill him…or watch everyone I love be killed.
I’ve let him lord over us for fifteen years. Let his cruelty dictate our lives. I have watched my mother sink further inside of herself, watched Ryatt’s wary eyes lose their glint every time my father treated him just as badly as he treated me.
But I haven’t put up with his training and his cruelty for nothing. I did it because I think I knew that one day, we would be here. On two sides of the line. I knew it was going to be him or us.
And I choose us.
So when my rot explodes out of me, it’s seven years’ worth of pent-up retribution.
The tile floor cracks, the earth between us crumbling with decay. Lines of poison leach from my skin and spread through the floor, slithering toward him like serpents ready to attack.
My father is straightening up, cruel eyes locked on me, acting as if that hit into the wall didn’t faze him in the least. “You think you can fight me?” he hollers. “I made you!”
He shoves his hands forward and sends out a burst of power toward me. I feel it, like the moving air of a thrown punch. On pure instinct, I throw my own magic at it, and the very air seems to detonate in on itself.
My father and I both go flying back from the force, my head cracking against the broken tile as rot continues to seep from my pores. I hear crashes and screams, but that’s all secondary. My sole focus is on him. I don’t know how I was able to block his magic like that, or how exactly I wielded my own in that way, but now that I know I can, hopeful determination bolsters my bones.
“You are done breaking,” I tell him, my chest heaving, lines writhing up and down my skin. From the corner of my eye, I can see some of the servants cowering, not just from my father, but from me. And I know what I must look like—this fae packed with spikes and rot, and I feel like I am every inch a wicked fae, from scaled cheeks to flashing canines.
But I don’t care. I will be a monster if it means I can destroy one.
He snaps his finger, but instead of trying to break me, my father breaks the floor right from under me. I hear my mother scream my name as I start to fall, but I jump up as the ground crumbles, barely managing to catch myself and roll. I don’t even get fully on my feet before I send rot streaming toward him, rotting the ground in putrid corruption as it coils around his legs. I see him grit his teeth, and I know I’m molding his muscles, breaking down his blood, decaying his bones.
And I realize with startling clarity that I can kill him. Right here, right now, I can rot him on his feet. But for some stupid reason, one I hate myself for, I hesitate.
That hesitation is all he needs, making my rot falter and pull back. With ruthless speed, he snaps his fingers, and even though I ready myself to block, his magic doesn’t come for me.
Behind me, I hear my mother scream.
I whirl around, seeing her nearly fainting backwards, arm broken in the same exact spot Jak’s arm was. Ryatt is crying, the sound of the two of them pounding my ears.
I feel a prickle in the back of my neck, only barely managing to spin around before a fist is suddenly thrown into my face. I go sprawling, the skin of my palms slicing open when I land on the broken tile. I roll over, finding my father looming over me. All over my arms, my spikes pulse erratically. I push myself to my feet, refusing to show fear, refusing to back down, no matter how much my mother calls my name.
“You are such a disappointment, Slade,” he tsks.
“Believe me,” I pant. “The feeling’s mutual.”
Something flashes in his eyes, and I know. I know that this is it.
This is it.
I call up everything in me. Every scrap of magic I possess. I recall every moment where he pushed me, degraded me, hurt me. I think of every single time my mother’s back went stiff, when her eyes filled, when Ryatt cowered. I let all that anger flood my mind and let it fuel me.