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Do the shadows whisper to him as they do me?

I feed the night a bit of magic.Can he hear you?I ask.

… cannot understand us …

… not the way you can …

So he didn’t learn it from my shadows.

“Tell me,” he continues, “I’m curious—did you know that you were destined to mate with one of those stupid swine?”

My grip on my sword tightens, and warm fury threads through me. I force it back. Galleghar wants me angry, he wants me sloppy. He wants me to burn bright like the sun with my fury.

But I am the farthest, iciest reaches of night. I am the impenetrable darkness. Cold, distant, aloof. This man will not be my undoing,Iwill behis.

“I almost didn’t believe it,” he continues. “Not my bloodline. But considering your upbringing,” he curls his upper lip, “I figure you got more of your mother’s traits than mine.”

That mother of mine saved me when he’d have me dead. Rather than hate me because I was his, she loved me because I was hers.

“I pray to the gods, you’re right,” I say. But I fear he’s not. When I look into the mirror, it’s him I see, not my mother.

Galleghar continues to move around the courtyard, stepping over the bones of some of his fallen guards.

“So all this time you hid yourself in my army,” he says. “How bitter you must’ve been. Fighting for me.”

Yes, for a time I was. But no longer.

“It got me an audience with you,” I say.

He laughs, the sound so hollow that it rings false. “So you kill me, and then what? You take over my realm? The people will never respect you, a dustback.”

Even after everything, this is still what he’s concerned with? His stolen kingdom?

Wait a moment.

I halt.

An idea so profound, so utterly life-shaking, hits me. In all this talking, there is something he let slip through.

Galleghar knows about my mate, and now he keeps mentioning my interest in his throne …

He has foreseen the future.

My shadows burgeon, closing in on us from all sides. “You spoke with a prophet and learned the truth,” I say, the realization slamming into me. “They saw your death. And they saw me cutting you down.”

My undoing.That’s what he’d said in the sky.

“Not today, my ill-begotten son.” Without warning, Galleghar flings his magic at me.

I clench my jaw as it glances off my armor and shoots into the sky. The next hit follows the first. I do away with it, dropping my sword and throwing a blast of my own magic back at him.

It’s raw power pitted against raw power. Our hits shake the earth, whipping about the delicate plants bordering the courtyard and dislodging the pale cobblestones from the ground. Even the stars seem to quake, their light brightening and dimming.

Galleghar spins away from me, lobbing another hit my way, and it’s everything I can do to deflect it. The two of us are locked into a deadly dance. I fling a cornucopia of hits at him while dodging his own. I begin to smile even as sweat drips down my face.

Finally, a worthy opponent. One I can unleash my full potential on. If I weren’t so eager to kill my father, I’d actually say I was enjoying myself.

I leap into the sky, throwing another blast of magic his way while I attempt to dodge one of his hits. But I underestimated the span of my wings. His power clips the edge of one, punching through the membranous skin.