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I caught hold of her with my possession, stalling her in her tracks before she could attempt to strike me. She bared her teeth, fighting me every step of the way.

I could name that look in her eyes easily enough. It was the one all my enemies aimed at me, though it was far sharper in her gaze than most. Hatred.

I pulled my shirt off, tossing it aside and her eyes dipped to my bare skin, travelling from scar to scar.

I willed her to place her hands on my chest and she growled as she moved forward to do so, her cool palms resting upon me.

I looked down at her mouth as she spewed curses, knowing I could easily halt her tongue, but it didn’t matter much whether she spoke or not.

She would give up her fears to me either way.

There wasn’t an ounce of terror in her now, no taste to gain, but that would soon change.

My cock began to harden and I frowned, looking down at it, unsure exactly what had evoked the reaction.

Everest started to swear at me again and I glanced up, unsure if she was aware of the current state of my cock or not.

Either way, it wasn’t as if I was going to put it to use.

North had taught me to recognise the signs of willing women long before I had matured enough to even desire them.

Whenever I grew hard and needed the ritual of fucking to banish it, there were more than enough Flamebringer women willing to part their thighs for me.

Sometimes it seemed I was chasing emotions in their flesh, but even coming felt like nothing but a vague relief.

North called it ecstasy, but I had never felt any such thing.

Which was why I preferred certain methods that made the process more worthwhile for me.

“Get on with it then,” Everest sniped. “Make this fire stop burning me from the inside out.”

I let my Order form awaken, the hot burn of my Fury rising in my skin and she gasped the moment I took hold of her nightmares.

They poured into my mind one after another, Everest running through a thorny woodland, her bare feet dusty, a bay for blood rising at her back.

Her half-brother Ransom was the source of many of her fears, but as I dug deeper, I sensed a keener fear of someone else, someone who terrified her to her core.

I willed my mind towards those deeper terrors, trying to draw them out of her while she resisted, her nails digging into my chest, but there was no escape. I required her most frightening memories.

I was starved of power and I needed all of it now. I wanted to have her horror claw its way through her into me as if I was feeling it myself. It was the only emotion I could experience through others, and I devoured every drop I could get.

But before I could find the source of that ultimate fear, a wild power tore from Everest into me. That unholy, dark magic she possessed. The Void.

There was no fighting it, the touch of it akin to the touch of death, beyond all control. It rushed deep into my chest and unlocked something inside me as it had time and again, unleashing a raging storm that shattered everything I knew about myself and left me reeling.

The tumultuous power turned my own Fury back on myself and just as before, Everest glimpsed my fears instead of hers.

I tried to stop her from seeing them like last time, but the strength of the Void was fiercer than before.

It seared through me, trying to eat through my power entirely while Everest gazed at my past, watching it all unfurl and forcing me to relive it too.

“Move swiftly, Kaiser, don’t stop. And keep hold of you brother’s hand,” Mother urged me on, and my fingers clamped tighter around Cato’s small palm.

She had been carrying him for over a mile, but we had barely put any distance between the invading Cascadians who were flooding our town forcing us to higher ground.

Now she turned to fight as two warriors in dark blue armour rushed onto the street behind us.

“Get out of Pyros!” Mother screamed, fire blooming from her palms in a twisting, violent storm.

I pulled Cato on as he let out a whimper, his four-year-old legs not able to keep up with my six-year-old ones. He was slowing me down, but I wouldn’t leave him. Not for anything.

“Keep going, Cato,” I pleaded as he looked over his shoulder at Mother.

Her short black hair fluttered in the wind and fire coiled around her arms, spinning toward the warriors and devouring them in the blaze.

They crumpled to the ground, blistered and groaning.

The smoke cleared beyond them and my father came into view, making my heart squeeze with relief.

His eyes fixed on Mother first, then us, a steely determination in his dark eyes. But his arm was bloody and a cut on his cheek was oozing red as he ran to meet Mother and grabbed her hand.

“Take them to Blackthorn Peak,” Father demanded. “I’ll hold them off for as long as I can. They’re freezing the city, turning the flood to ice.”

I saw the ice crawling across the houses around my parents, glistening white and spreading like a disease along the walls of our hometown.

The flood was rising, water already spilling over our boots, and it was so cold that it made Cato whimper.

Fear crawled into my skin and I stopped trying to get Cato to run as our parents rushed to meet us.

I grabbed hold of Father’s leg and hugged tight, sure he would protect me.

My hands fisted in Mother’s tunic and I pulled her closer as she scooped Cato into her arms again.

We’d be okay if we just stayed together.

“How are your magic reserves?” Father asked Mother tensely, under his breath like I might not hear it.

“Low. Yours?”

Father shook his head tightly then clapped me on my shoulder and lowered down to a crouch. “My brave Kai. You need to go with your mother and Cato. Get them to Blackthorn Peak. It will be safe there. The Matriarch’s army will be on the way. Can you do that for me?”

I nodded, feeling the blood drain from my face and a sense of dread weighing heavily in my chest.

Would The Matriarch really come? This town was made for farming, there were no warriors here. I didn’t understand why the Cascadians wanted to hurt us.

“Good boy.” Father kissed my cheek, then stood and embraced Mother and Cato while still gripping me tightly.

A chilling set of howls carried into the sky and I looked down the street where the water was still rising. Three hounds ran across the water’s surface, forged entirely of ice, sharp teeth bared at us as a large figure strode after them, his face veiled by the freezing fog rising around him.

“Go,” Father said in desperation, pushing us on and turning to face the oncoming warrior from the land of water. “I’ll find you again. In this life or the next.”

Mother encouraged me on and we ran, a sob breaking from her throat as Cato called out to Father, reaching for him with open fingers.

“Don’t look back,” Mother commanded me as Father let out a cry.

But I did. I couldn’t stop myself from looking, and there Father lay in a watery pool of blood while the warrior leaned over him, burying his sword deep in his chest. The three ice-forged hounds raced after us and terror crashed through me as I yelled out for Father.

Mother guided us down an alley then another, but we met a wall that was too high to climb. A dead end. There were no doors, only rooftops we couldn’t get to.

Mother placed Cato down, hands trembling as she pushed him close to me. “Stay together and hide. Don’t come out. Not for anything,” she said urgently, pointing to a wooden cart at the back of the alley. “I’ll love you ‘til the stars fall.”

She pushed us away and Cato released a noise of desperation, hands reaching for her while I pulled him on. There was a fog of fear in my head. Everything was so cold, my breath visible in front of my eyes. But I had to protect Cato.

I pulled my brother behind the cart and we tucked ourselves in tight between it and the wall, holding each other and trying to keep quiet.

“Mama,” Cato sobbed and I pressed a hand to his mouth as the sound of snarls carried from the alleyway.

Between the slats in the cart, I could just see Mother as the beasts closed in on her, her fire spilling from her hands in a tornado.

But it guttered out after a few seconds and then they were upon her, icy teeth tearing into her skin, ripping and ripping, pulling and pulling until her screams stopped and I couldn’t see her through my tears.

The heavy sound of boots pounded up the street and I could only get a glimpse of the immense warrior’s armour as he petted the head of one of his ice hounds.

Cato whimpered and I crushed my hand to his mouth even harder, terror making both of us shake so hard it vibrated through my bones.

“Where are they, boys?” the gruff voice asked and the sound of the hounds padding through the alley set the hairs lifting on the back of my neck.

Aries, please save us.

A white dog’s face shoved between the cart and the wall, claws tearing, jaw snapping and locking down on Cato’s arm. I cried out, holding onto him but the hound tore him away from me, his little screams piercing the air.

“Cato!”

I scrambled after him, panicked and reaching for his hand, but the hounds were upon him and he was torn away from me. He fell painfully quiet, the silence of his screams so loud that it hurt.

I backed up, knocking into the cart with panic clogging my throat.

Cato.

My hand landed on a metal spade leaning against the cart.

I took it, barely able to lift it but I tried as tears coated my cheeks, determined to kill the beasts who had taken my family from me.

The warrior was walking away, heading back to the rising water, but he called a final command to his dogs.

“Kill him.”

They came at me in a blur of white, the impact of their ice-made bodies knocking me to the ground. I tried to swing the spade and teeth locked around it that would have crushed my skull, ripping it from my grip and hurling it away.

All at once, the three beasts drove their teeth into me, biting, pulling, the pain too much. I cried out for my mother, my father, for Cato, but my family didn’t answer my calls. They were gone, and I was soon to be gone too.

A sharp whistle sounded and the dogs released me, thundering away down the street after the warrior who had cast them into existence. The noise of battle broke out beyond the alleyway, a tide of Flamebringers rushing in to try and stop the Cascadians from destroying our town for good.

I tried to get up, but the pain made me scream and my hands slipped in my own blood. I lay on my back, shaking, turning cold. So, so cold. A sob left me, breaking my chest in two. It hurt, more than the bites. Death hurt. It hurt, it hurt.

My gaze trailed after the man who had done this, and as he turned his head, I knew I was about to see his face-

I regained a moment of clarity among the sea of my despair and I broke the connection between Everest and I, staggering away from her, her Void power still keeping my emotions wide awake.

My breaths were coming raggedly, my hands were shaking. I was that boy again as I kept backing away from her until my spine hit a wall and I sank down it, burying my head in my hands.

Fuck, it hurt. The pain of their loss. The terror of that day felt as present as if I was truly reliving it.

I was trapped in the mind of a six-year-old boy once more, broken so unimaginably that there was no remaking me.

A soft hand touched my arm and I looked up to find Everest crouching before me, her eyes sparking with fear as if she could still feel the after-effects of my memory.

She, this Raincarver, a Cascadian who was part of that flood in ways, the magic in her veins the very same that had destroyed my family. And I had destroyed hers in kind.

“Cresla todan vervans an esh jen’s antulios,” she whispered and I nodded, sharing a dark look with her, knowing the translation.

We are all monsters in each other’s nightmares.

“What does my power do to you?” she breathed, her hand still upon me, though maybe she hadn’t realised it.

“It unleashes my demons, silka la vin.”

She moved back, her eyes hardening as she took her dagger from her hip. She was going to kill me. Her promise fulfilled, but that roiling Void power was receding by the second. And the loss of it brought on a wave of maddening emotion that made no sense to me.

My hand shot out to grab her wrist, tight and unyielding. “Wait, let me keep their company a moment longer.”

“Perhaps all you will have for company is your demons when I send you into death.”

She struck at me, but her hand came to an abrupt halt, the dagger’s tip a mere inch from my throat. She jolted backwards, gasping as the Nightfire took root in her once again.

“Wait,” I rasped, my final plea as her Void receded fully, returning me to the soulless being I had long been trapped inside.

She staggered away then made for the window, leaving me to my prison. But I had at last found a key.