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Lux’s throat constricted, lump forming.

Fucking stars, he couldn’t imagine what his brother was going through if Rafael was right. There was nothing in the universe that Nix loved more than those children and their mother. Perhaps he could go on without one or the other, but with both gone…

Rafael heaved in a gasp, shooting up from his seated position. “The souls. All the souls from Matriaza and Morduaine. They—”

“They’re safe,” Lux said. “Nix stashed them somewhere immediately afterward.”

Hand lifting to his chest, Rafael exhaled deeply. “You’re sure?”

“Yes, I’m certain. I saw him lapse away with them.”

Still holding his chest, Rafael nodded slowly, lowering himself to the pallet of linen. “Fucking stars, imagine the catastrophe we’d be in if they’d gotten them.”

Now that Lux thought about it, the little shits had probably tried to do just that. They set off that fire to burn Véa and the children’s bodies, but surely they went back to search for those crystals. They were impervious to flames, so they would’ve survived the fire.

Lux wondered if that had been the purpose. Had this all been about the souls from the beginning? Souls were power, after all, the highest form of it.

Maybe they had been planning to overthrow Lux for a long time, and his failure provided the perfect opportunity to do so.

It wouldn’t have been easy to siphon all that power from Lux if he was unwilling. But against his sons? His weakness—the love he had for his children—would’ve made it all but impossible to fight back. Even in the chaos of today, he’d thrown those boys on their asses, but he hadn’t gone after their souls even once, because he hadn’t wanted to kill them.

Would he have to?

“I don’t know, Pa,” Rafael murmured. “I don’t know if they can be caged. It seems like they’ll escape any prison we put them in.”

“Please stop reading my mind.”

“Well, it’s loud. Shut it up, and I won’t hear it.”

If it was that easy, Lux would’ve done it already.

“I don’t know what to do,” Rafael said after a moment. “We don’t have an army anymore. They’ve either been brainwashed to fight for them, or they were with them all along.”

Lux felt the same way.

Which brought him to an awful conclusion.

“No,” Rafael said.

“No what?”

“No, you can’t do that.” He propped himself on an elbow to meet his father’s gaze. “It’d be easier, but then what? They hate you and do the same thing all over again in a few hundred years?”

Lux narrowed his eyes. “Stop invading my thoughts.”

Rafael stared at him for a long moment, gradually furrowing his brows. That face looked just like El. It was the same expression he gave Lux when he knew Lux was up to no good.

Which was why, one day, Rafael would be a great king.

“I agree that this will have to be bloody. There won’t be a way to regain power without it. Lots of it. But you cannot annihilate this world and start over. You cannot kill everyone here like you did on Matriaza and Morduaine.”

Lux rolled his eyes. “It was just a thought—”

“A thought you considered for a moment too long,” Rafael snapped. “Yes, we have to find a way to killmanyguards. Yes, lots of people will die. But youwill notkill everyone and start from nothing. You will not ruin this world like you ruined the ones that came before.”

It truly had been just a thought. Lux didn’twantto do it. “What would you suggest then?”

“Fight fire with fire. They want to rule by the laws of old Matriaza? We’ll have to take down their dominion the same way.” Rafael’s face didn’t harden; it softened. “I don’t want to live in a world where public executions are the norm, and the rulers have absolute power. But that’s what we will have to do. When Véa and Nix took power over Matriaza, they were just as cruel to their opposition as their opposition had been to the people.But never to the people. Andthatis how we win.”