“No one appreciated my attempts to save them all, so I decided to damn them instead, by giving you to him. Knowing maybe his pride would get in the way of you living. I judged poorly, and when I tried to fix my mistakes, save the world from you two children, you fought back and you won, and now the world is dying and it’s all your fault.”

5

THE MADMAN’S CONFESSION

LYDIAN CONTINUED HIS laughter, breath hitching and catching every so often until it would send him into deep coughing fits. He would recover from them and then continue laughing as his poison-green eyes kept themselves steadily on my face, watching my expression.

I breathed in the air, somehow both cold and warm, in this space in the field between worlds. It wasn’t his words that shocked me, not really; it was the scenes behind my eyes that played almost like dreams as he spoke. They flashed so fast, I almost couldn’t keep up, but they always ended up at the same place. Soren on the throne, me beside him, dark brown hair speckled with white, and the world tree cracking, breaking and falling, and the cosmos spiraling downward into black nothingness.

No, it wasn’t so much this madman’s confession that caused the nausea in my stomach. It wasn’t that he in some primitive way was, not right, never right, never on the side of good, “right” wasn’t the proper word for it, but correct in the ramblings about the world being destroyed, and Soren and I being the ones to bring it to its destruction. No, it was the way I could see it play out in my own head over and over again, the wheels of fate turning and turning and never stopping, no matter what got in its way.

The fate that this world would die.

That Soren and I would cause it in our attempt to save it.

That in some sick way, Lydian was doing what his twisted, ravaged mind thought was right. Not solely because he was a mad dog that needed to be put down—though that had always been a part of it—but that in some way, he had tried to save the world and that way happened to include terrible, horrible things.

Then the nausea went away when I decided it didn’t matter. That I couldn’t dwell on it because I knew, knew, it would break me if I did. I would not let him break me.

My eyes hardened in resolve and I straightened from the hunched form I’d found myself curling into without thinking. Lydian stopped his laughter, catching his breath, turning his head to the side quizzically, in a move that reminded me uncomfortably of his nephew.

So, he could understand too, the look in my eyes.

“Soren and I end the world, huh?” I said, voice steady.

He gave a quick, sharp nod.