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Misery.

I went on living in misery for more than a thousand years.

Things happened. It wasn’t as though I sat in a room the entire time and twiddled my thumbs.

Queen Iliantha did help us build that prison. We built it solid as stone. We tested it on every supernatural creature who was willing. It became something of a game among the people.

Can you escape the magical prison? Try your damnedest!

And they did. It was how we perfected it. After long enough, after enough tweaking, it was virtually impenetrable. We had enough wards around every room, enough traps if someone did manage to break them, that it was even difficult for those of us who created it to get in and out of.

For a thousand years, give or take a few, I searched as I built. I searched everywhere I possibly could for my wife and children. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find them. I had no clue where my nephews had put them, and I wouldn’t stop until I found them.

We attempted to capture my nephewsthousandsof times, aided by a small Fae army and with the help of Heylel, Alastair, Dem, and all the other eternal who’d come with us from the old world.

Every mission was a failure. No matter how powerful we were, they were just as strong. It was like banging stone off stone.

I had an army; they had an army. We had great power; they had great power.

Funny enough, in each attack, each attempted capture, the strongest of us didn’t die. The irony was, even when they’d had the opportunity to kill us—me, Medica, Heylel, Alastair, Dem—they hadn’t.

Our soldiers? They killed. Their soldiers? We killed. But those who were fighting the battle with such ferocity? We didn’t kill one another. We didn’t kill them when we’d had the opportunity in battles because we needed intel.

We had no idea why they hadn’t killed us.

I’d wanted to give up more times than I could count in those thousand years. I wanted to beg Heylel to take my soul from my body so I could forget. I loved my wife and children more than I loved anything, and without them, I was the living personification of rage and heartache.

But I wouldn’t. No matter how badly I wanted to give up, I wouldn’t.

Throughout those years, I’d met with my brother no more than a handful of times. Given the state Matriax had come to, I couldn’t believe he’d done all this. He had no power now.

Or rather, he shouldn’t have had any power now. But he did. He had power the same way the maalaichte cnihme had power: ripping souls from people’s bodies.

He’d tried to justify it, saying that to take Matriax, he had no other choice. I didn’t agree.

But it had sparked an idea.

The souls we’d siphoned from Lux and put into crystals.

I hated myself for it. I was not proud of what I planned to do. But the boys wanted those souls, and I wanted my family.

* * *

“Ye’re bloody mad,” Dem snapped, shaking his head furiously. “Absolutely not.”

I stared out the window, watching a draken fly through the orange sky, listening to its caw. The warm air coasted in, but it didn’t do much to heat the chill down my spine.

“And don’t ye even think about it.” Dem grabbed my shoulder and yanked me around, wagging a finger. “I ken what ye’re thinking, and absolutely not. I’ll find out if ye do it, and I’ll make sure Véa does too.”

She’d be mad, but she’d understand once the dust settled.

I turned back to the window.

“They won’t bring them,” Heylel said. “You know they won’t, Nix. They’ll tell you what you want to hear, take the crystal, and disappear.”

“I’ll put the souls in a secondary location that I’ll only confirm once I have the souls of the par animarum in my hands,” I said, voice calm. That’d become my demeanor lately. I was virtually emotionless unless I was alone and weeping for my wife and children.

“I don’t think it’s an awfulidea,” Alastair said.