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She’s almost to the door when I realize that I suddenly can’t agree to this. To any of it.

Need to beat her to those soldiers.

I call on my magic, and it rises within me as though I’d been using it all along. For years I rejected it, but even after all that time it hadn’t forsaken me.

I have no idea how to handle my power, but it doesn’t seem to matter. All I have to do is will myself to stop my mother, and my magic responds.

One moment, I’m a man, and in the next, skin, bone, and muscle bleed away. All that’s left of me is conscious thought. In an instant I’m one with the darkness.

I move across the room, and I don’t even have time to feel wonder or fright that I can do this—that I can become the night—before I reappear between my mother and the door out, my body forming into that of a man once more.

Her eyes widen as she takes me in.

“I’m sorry,” I say, my hand going to the doorknob. In the distance I can hear the clomp of soldiers’ boots growing louder, “but you didn’t raise a coward.”

Before she has a chance to react, I open the door and slip out.

Bar the door.

Once again my power rises to accommodate me, and the door slams closed, sealing shut behind me.

I almost laugh at how easy it is to use my magic. So much easier than containing it like I’ve always had to do.

“Desmond!” My mom’s muffled voice sounds panicked as she jiggles the doorknob. Her power batters against mine as she throws spells at the door, but even unpracticed as I am at magic, I can tell I’m stronger than her. Much stronger. That door isn’t going to budge anytime soon.

Now it’s my mother who will be forced to escape out the back of her room and me who will face down my father’s men.

Good.

They’re after me anyway.

254 years ago

Behind me,thedoor to my mother’s room rattles.

“Desmond!” she cries out again.

I ignore her, crossing our living room and heading for the front door. I can still hear the soldiers’ footfalls, and by the sounds of it, they haven’t yet reached our house.

I open our front door, and at the other end of the dark tunnel that leads to our house I see a squadron of soldiers heading down the dank passageway. It’s then and only then that I realize I don’t have a plan.

As soon as they see me, the uniformed men and women begin to run down the tunnel, towards our home, their hands dropping to their swords. This will be no civil visit. In that instant I truly understand that having the king’s blood running through me is a death sentence.

But it also makes me strong. Very strong.

I square my shoulders and widen my stance. My mother is not sacrificing herself today. Not on my behalf.

Stop them.

My magic snaps out of me, rippling across the cave and bending the light before it slams into the soldiers.

They’re blasted off their feet and then thrown onto their backs, every last one toppling over like felled trees. No one gets up.

The silence that follows is deafening.

Did I … kill them?

But as I watch, one of them moves his arm and another sighs out a breath.