Page 131 of The Darkening (The Darkening)

Seeing the Storm on the horizon, Dalcanin scours the city, destroying all evidence of the Queen. He rewrites her story; where her likenessonce stood in temples, now stands a king of wrath. He vows that she will be forgotten, that none will challenge his rule by trapping the Queen as he trapped the King.

Time speeds forward. The world becomes unbalanced, as the Storm grows, as the Great King fights back and learns to take control, tyrannizing the minds and souls of those who dared take his mark and keep him imprisoned. The Great Queen is forgotten.

Sorrow and fury, fury and sorrow.

The past slips away, and I’m drawn down, down.

Into a vision of the future.

The golden lines painted on Dalca’s fingers now stretch across his body. The ikonomancers have finished; the Regia’s mark is complete. Now comes the moment of coronation, where he calls the Great King and gives over his body, where the gold sinks into his skin forevermore.

Dalca—proud and fearful—disappears deep into his body, and the Great King rises forth.

Dalca fights the Storm, and it kills him.

He doesn’t look peaceful in death. He looks livid. I picture his glowering death mask, proclaiming to generations to come that here stood not a man but an inferno.

But there aren’t generations to come. The Storm takes all.

I reach out to touch his dead face. Is this what we deserve?

“Vesper?”

The dream fades as a familiar voice pulls me somewhere near awake.

My eyelids are heavy, and my voice is a rasp. “Pa?”

A quick inhale. “Oh, thank the King. Vesper, darling—are you hurt?”

I blink awake. It takes a moment for my vision to settle, to makeout the lattice of ikons carved into the stone ceiling. A hand touches my elbow as I sit up and find myself on a small cot in a windowless room.

Pa kneels beside me, gaunt and unshaven, worry etched into his forehead.

I swallow the lump in my throat, and it sinks down into my stomach. “I’m sorry, Pa. I should’ve listened to you.”

“Don’t cry, Vesper,” Pa says as he sits beside me, the cot dipping under his weight.

I knuckle away the tears that fall. “I’m not doing it on purpose.”

He lets out a low, slow sigh that hurts as much as if he’d slapped me.

I can’t tell where my anger ends and where my misery starts. I bite my lip to keep the trembling at bay. “I’m sorry that I’m a disappointment. I’ve tried, Pa. I’ve really tried—”

Pa sits very still, his hands clenching and unclenching on his knees. “Vesper—you’re not a disappointment. I’ve never—I... I wanted to protect you from the choices your ma and I made. I thought I’d done enough harm; I removed myself from the world. It scared me that you wouldn’t. I could see you following our footsteps... and that terrified me.” His voice is low, and his words are slow, as if he’s drawing them from a locked box deep inside. “It’s not something I know how to say. I wasn’t raised to say it out loud. But you know, right? You know that I love you.”

“No,” I whisper. “I don’t, Pa.”

His eyes are bright and serious before my tears blur his face away. “I do. I always have, even before I met you, when I felt you kick when you were still in your Ma’s belly. And when I held you for the first time... you grew quiet, as if you knew you were safe in my arms.” He looks down at his hands. “But... you outgrew them.”

“I haven’t.” I say stubbornly.

He huffs a laugh as if he doesn’t believe me.

I put my arm around him. He tenses, then slowly, he puts an arm around my shoulders. I’ve had better hugs from a stormtouched girl whose body was half turned to wood, but I’ll take what I get.

“I’m proud of you,” he whispers into my hair.

His words fill me with a strange and gentle warmth that brims over, filling my eyes with tears that I blink away.