Lena tugged at my arm, her voice tight. “Elias, we need to move.”
But my legs wouldn’t obey.
The fire inside me twisted, latching onto my father’s words like a hunger I didn’t recognize. The soldiers remained on their knees, silent, waiting. My mother—no, the thing wearing her face—stood beside him, head tilted, her presence seeping into my bones like a sickness.
Dorian’s grip on my wrist tightened, his golden eyes dark with warning. “You know what this is,” he said. “You know what he’s doing.”
Of course, I knew. My father was a master of manipulation, always had been. But that didn’t change the way my blood burned. It didn’t change the way the fire inside me shuddered, like it knew something I didn’t.
Like it recognized the truth in his words.
My father took another step forward, sl
