The world grew quiet as he gazed at me. Quiet until a tiny flash of gold caught the light. A golden scale just above my small, fresh heart.

If I had thought it was difficult to pierce Anna’s and Clem’s hearts to break a dream, then it was impossible to imagine driving a dagger into my infant form.

I stood and trembled at the edges of the dream—my father’s dream.

I stared at him, how he held me, how he smiled at me.

The wonder faded when my real father stepped forward. He approached his phantom, and when he held out his hands, dream Ambrose surrendered me into his arms.

I also moved forward.

My father paid me no heed, gazing down at the baby in his arms. With polished confidence, he withdrew his dagger. Both light and darkness danced on the blade as he lifted it, and my breath hung in my throat when a scream split the air.

My mother rushed to him, horrified. I didn’t know if it was actually my mother or her phantom. The realms bled together, and I was lost between what was real and what was imagined.

My father didn’t spare my mother a glance. He drove his dagger into the baby’s chest, swift and deep, and the baby let out a wail as the dream broke at last. The infant turned into smoke, slipping through my father’s arms. And the strange world that had been layering around us melted away.

I closed my eyes until the colors had passed, until the only sound I could hear was my breath, whistling through my teeth.

The hall was silent, and I opened my eyes to behold my father.

He stared at me. He still held the dagger in his hand, and I wanted to ask if he had harbored any doubt before he had plunged that blade into my heart. If it had been difficult for him, even if he had kept his senses straight.

I was both relieved and angry. I was grateful the nightmare had broken, and yet I wanted to shout at him, How could you?

But his eyes were jaded and cold. A stranger’s gaze. And the longer I studied him . . . I realized he was not my father. It was Emrys, wearing my father’s clothes and aging spell, pretending to be him.

Do not trust your eyes alone, Imonie had warned me.

I swallowed the knot in my throat and looked at the dais, where my father stood beside the throne, stripped of his glamour and dressed as Emrys. My father in those blue robes. His cheeks shone with tears.

The truth was slow to overtake me. But I felt its sting, and I acknowledged that my father was not who I believed him to be.

He knew the taste of blood.

“Daughter.”

I glanced back at Emrys, shocked he was speaking to me, continuing with this charade.