Lord of the Night

Chapter 74: The Night

I stared down at a large room, finely adorned with expensive metals and ornate paintings. Crooked walls boxed in my periphery, and the ceiling scraped the top of my vision. Rubber-lined metal bars crisscrossed the gaping windows, revealing tiny triangles of the azure sky.

When I adjusted to the disorienting change, I realized that I knew this room: I had passed through it on the way to the dining room where I first met the Queen and King. I was in the palace. But when I tried to hold my hands up in front of my face, I saw nothing.

I wasn't really here.

Below me, a small boy sat at a wooden desk. Raven-black hair spilled over his forehead, swooping over amber eyes. His small fingers clutched a yellow crayon, though he soon dropped that crayon and picked up a green one, humming all the while.

Then I drifted in deeper and became the boy I was watching.

Now I could feel the cool breeze drifting in through the window and the damp moss beneath my bare feet, but my focus was on the sketchbook in front of me. My tiny pale hand darted across the paper, adding details—a line here, a loop there. Surveying the finished product, my chest swelled with pride.

"Mommy, look at what I drew!"

A reply drifted from the adjacent room. "I'm busy, sweetheart."

I focused on the doorway, which was dark. "But I drew really good this time, Mommy. You'll love it."

"I'm busy. Why don't you go find—"

"Listen to that," another voice interrupted, someone near my mommy but much different from her, much angrier. Dad. "Listen to how weak he is."

"Keep your voice down! He can hear you."

The doorway grew darker.

I refocused on the drawing. Mommy and Dad, holding hands, with a small child between them. All three had two pinpoint eyes, straight arms and legs, and smiles that touched both sides of their circular heads.

Once they see the picture, they'll smile at each other, and they'll smile at me, and then we'll all...

"I don't care." Dad's voice dripped venom. "Do you think coddling him will make him stronger? Do you think he can ever—"

"Duchess?" Mommy called out. "Where are you? Can you come get Isalio?"

"You always ask for her," Dad spat. "You always try to shelter him. You have to know that if he only sees the Duchess, he'll never be able to summon a beast stronger than the Rogabeast. He'll never be strong."

His words squished my heart, a harsh enough sensation that I almost dropped the crayon to press my palm over where it hurt. Drawing a breath, I gripped the crayon harder, as if the strength of my grip could steady the wobbly parts in my tummy.

Mommy broke the silence in a quiet, hesitant voice. "But maybe..."

I cocked my head toward the door, listening harder, chest alight with hope. Did Mommy still believe in me? If they just gave me time, I would show them what I was capable of. If they just gave me time...

"Maybe we'll have another child," she finished.

This time, I really did push my fist against my chest, but it didn't help the squishing sensation in my heart, and it didn't help the way the paper blurred in front of me—transformed by tears from a picture of perfect happiness to a distorted nightmare.

"We've been trying for eight years," Dad said. "We only agreed to marry because we thought we'd have a High Princess. We thought we could produce an heir who could change everything."