Ven closed his eyes and clenched his fists. His body shuddered. The battle that raged inside him was as desperate as the battle he was waging for his life. For they were both the same.

“Human!” called Lysira. “Marcus! You can’t fight Grald. Go back inside your room! Lock yourself up safe!”

Now it was Marcus who hesitated. He didn’t want to be trapped in another horrible dream. One from which he might never escape.

“Melisande’s sons—both her sons—will avenge her,” said Marcus.

Gripping his courage in his empty sword hand, Marcus left Ven’s mind and flung himself headlong into Grald’s.

The dragon had hold of Ven’s ankle, the same place where, when Ven was a child, a bulldog had bitten into the scaled flesh. Draconas had saved Ven, then, but Draconas wasn’t here to save him now. Ven had to save himself. He stared at the scaled leg, the leg he had stared at with loathing every day of his life since the day he’d first realized that he was different.

He had a choice. He could die—worse than die—writhing helpless in the grip of the father who had made him what he was.

Or he could fight. And make him pay.

Ven looked up at Grald, at the leering face bending over him, at the wings starting to spread wide, filling the darkness. The old catechism that Bellona had made him recite on his birthday came back to him.

“What is your name?”

“Ven.”

“Your true name.”

“Vengeance.”

The magic roiled and bubbled and surged up from some pit deep inside him. The magic seethed and burned and twisted. Raw and unformed, mingled with pent-up rage, the magic spewed from Ven’s mouth. He vomited fire and spit acid. The fire seared Grald’s eyes, and the acid sprayed over the claws that held Ven’s leg. The dragon roared and reared back his head. Scales bubbled in the acid, his eyes burned. Grald snatched his claw away.

Ven rose to his feet. He reached out to the past and seized hold of the power. He took hold of every sneer, every averted glance, every pitying gaze. He seized his mother’s pain, Bellona’s twisted love, Evelina’s mockery. He grabbed his own fury and his siblings’ pride, and he bundled all of it into a crackling, blazing ball. He hurled that ball with all his strength at his father.

The magic struck the dragon full in the chest and sent him crashing back against a solid stone wall. The building shook, the ground trembled. Ven collapsed.

His strength flowed from him like blood from a pierced heart. He’d given it all, everything, nothing was left. He was weak and helpless as the squalling babe lying alongside his twin, lying in his mother’s blood, except that now he lay in the blood of his father.