They opened at his touch, and as they swung forward, he caught a glimpse of the Solis sigil on their front. How much comfort, how much pride, that sigil had once given Valen. But now he felt cold just looking at it.

As if he didn’t belong.

He tried, once more, to call out to Nor.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Sister, please forgive me.”

His words carried up the hillside, past the valley full of bones, up to the doorway that connected his mind to Nor’s.

They echoed back to him, shut out and unheard by her.

With a sigh, he turned away and entered his castle. He walked aimlessly past cell after cell, peeking inside, ensuring that the minds held within were still loyal to Nor. That they didn’t fear Arachnid, didn’t harbor any doubts in their queen.

With each doorway, he normally felt lighter, like his footsteps were walking on air.

But tonight, Valen found himself slowing. Weakening with every step.

“Rest,” he told himself. “I just need to rest.”

He stumbled toward the castle wall, the cold obsidinite stones grazing against his arm. As he leaned against it for support, catching his breath, something caught his eye.

A crack in the stone floor.

It was small. A tiny fault line, that anyone else would have passed by without noticing, were they not the creator of this place.

Valen knelt, running his fingertips across the crack. Cold seeped out from it, causing him to shiver.

But he could fix this.

Close your eyes and will it to be so, Darai had once taught him, when Valen was learning how to build this very fortress. He’d fashioned row after row of cells, staining them black, filling them with minds, placing torches beside each and willing those flames to life, too.

He’d become a king here. A king who needed no crown to reign supreme.

But today, when he tried to will that crack back into nonexistence, it disappeared for only a moment—and another quickly appeared in its place.

“Strange,” Valen murmured to himself.

With great effort, he drew himself back to his feet. His chest ached with ragged breaths, and as he took step after step toward the exit, a trail of bloody droplets followed in his wake.

Drip.

A drop of blood from his nose, staining the stones.

Drip.

Another, beside a second crack in the floor as Valen neared the doors.

Drip.

He heaved those doors open again, grunting at their sudden weight, heavier than they had ever felt before.

Valen did not make it to the top of the hillside. His legs gave out beneath him, that weakness from the real world inexplicably manifesting here, in the landscape he had created with his power. He tried to stop the tears from coming, but it was already too late.

And so, alone in his mind, Valen curled up in his cloak beside the dead and sobbed.

CHAPTER 25

LIRA