Lord of the Night

Chapter 81: Make Me Powerful

Though I barely knew what I was saying, words tumbled from my lips. "Isalio, stay with me, please. Isa, please stay—"

"I'm trying, Rem," he replied. "But I don't know if—" His face contorted into a snarl, and a different voice interrupted. "He's not here. But I'm here, and I'll listen to you, sweet Remgar. I'll listen to everything you say."

Icy dread shot through my veins. Suddenly the Duchess's plan felt like a stone flung against a mountain, and even my father's death was just a shallow tributary into the river of despair I saw ahead. If this were a true enemy, I would be scrambling for my mace, but this was Isalio himself, so my only defense was a pathetically desperate growl.

"You can't take him from me."

"Oh, but I can." The words came from Isalio, but his eyes and his voice were both terrifyingly different from the Isalio I knew. "I gave you a chance to join me, but you refused, and now..." He tsked. "Now it's too late. Now I'll take him from you, and then I'll take the rest of the world."

"You would have done it already, if you could." They were bold words—too bold, perhaps—but with each second that this not-Isalio didn't attack me, I grew more confident that I was right. "Isalio was your best weapon, but he's much harder to control than you thought he would be. He's still fighting you, even now."

Isalio's features contorted, and for a second, I saw true cognition in his gaze. "Rem, I'm not—it's too—I don't know if I can—" Then his eyes sharpened—deadened. "Still fighting, ha! I'm an ancient monster of destruction. You really think this mere mortal is any match for me?"

I shook my head. "He's not a match for you. He's a match for me. And you can't have him."

Then I grabbed his shoulders and tugged him toward me so his chest pressed up against mine. He was shivering, though his skin burned hot—hot enough that every point of contact felt like shoving my hand into boiling water. But I clutched him to me even tighter and focused on pulling lifeforce from the ground to send to him. And even though his entire being reeked of the Morgabeast, I could feel his own power reaching back.

Once again, our powers merged into a bright swirl of color.

For a moment, the tornado drowned out everything else. When my vision cleared, I was in a room in the Palace, though I wasn't quite sure how I knew that since this looked nothing like any palace room I had seen. Weak rays of sunshine peeked through the barred windows, illuminating spiderwebs and dusty, unused furniture. Crusted black fabric covered the paintings on the wall.

A black-haired teenage Demon boy crept toward a doorway, brown moss crunching beneath his feet. I knew the boy was Isalio even though he looked nothing like the graceful and lethal Lord of the Night; his hair was shorter and unevenly cut as though hacked away at a whim without a mirror, and his gangly limbs moved with the awkwardness of a growing boy who hadn't yet adjusted to his own height.

He stopped just outside the door and pressed his ear to the wood, listening to the voices on the other side.

Then I slipped deeper into the dreamworld, and I could smell the molding furniture and dead moss, could feel the rough wood of the door against my ear, and could hear the voices in the room beyond.

"You know I'm stronger than you," said the Queen—my mother.

My father scoffed. "I know your throne is a few inches higher than mine. I know you Snapped earlier than I did, and you've killed more Guardians than I have. I know you were once hailed as the most powerful Demon seen in decades. You had so much promise. But you've become soft."

She inhaled sharply, almost a sob. "I'm not soft."

"The General believed he could help our one asset to Snap, and you refused."