Valen stood in his older sister’s crumbling tower, peering up at a sky that refused to open wide and reveal that blazing orb of light he’d missed so deeply during his months in Lunamere.

“I know it’s not as you’d hoped it would be,” Nor said, stepping up beside Valen to rest her palm against the glass window that protected them from the acid rains. “I’ve heard stories about the sun on Arcardius. They say it shines so bright, it’s blinding.”

Valen shrugged. “It hardly matters now. Arcardius isn’t my home any longer.”

His real home was a place that existed beyond where he could see, far in the depths of outer space. In another galaxy entirely. Exonia.

Valen often wondered if anything from his past had ever truly been real. He saw his sister Kalee in his mind’s eye. Not a full sister, as he’d always thought, but a half sister, like Nor. He could still see Kalee’s smile, still hear the fading remnants of her laugh. Those memories were the ones he’d hung on to while he rotted inside his cell in Lunamere, completely unaware that his imprisonment was all part of Nor’s plan to help him discover his true self.

Kalee’s laugh, when he tried to conjure it up now, fell flat. The sound was off, like a melody sung out of tune.

He saw his mother, Merella—the only mother he’d ever known. He remembered the way she’d always been so gentle with him, so kind. Perhaps it had been out of pity, for she had always known that Valen wasn’t truly her flesh and blood.

Most frequently of all, he saw his father. The ruthless General of Arcardius.

A man who’d killed Valen’s real mother—murdered her in cold blood, when she was meant to be set free, delivered safely back to Xen Ptera with Valen. But on that Arcardian warship, during the final moments of the Cataclysm when his father and mother, Klaren, had hovered above Xen Ptera, Valen supposed that Cyprian had never planned to let Klaren live to see her two children united.

Somehow, he’d discovered a way to fight Klaren’s compulsion. And because of that, he’d broken her, refusing to allow her to raise Valen and Nor together, as a family.

Perhaps that had been his father’s mission all along. For he surely knew that if Klaren’s two children ever found each other, they’d become powerful beyond measure. Ruthless, perhaps even more than Cyprian had ever been.