His father avoided the question and asked instead, “Are you saying your brother has been kidnapped?” The Locke patriarch marched across the room as he asked the question, but his feet didn’t cooperate, carrying him in a wobbly diagonal instead of a straight line.

“Gods. You are drunk,” Cassius snapped. “And getting more pathetic by the day.”

The king’s face reddened, and he puffed up his chest. “You will not speak to me that way. I am your father. Your king. I made you.”

Cassius knew those last words had nothing to do with parentage and everything to do with brutality. His father had made him cold and hard and hungry for victory and violence in equal measure. His lip curled in disdain, knowing one day that urge would turn on its maker. Cassius did not regret being ruthless. It was necessary in this world. But if he was to be a monster, he would be his own, not his father’s.

“And what a failure you are in those roles now,” Cassius said. “King of a city that no longer exists and father of a son you did not even know was in danger.”

With a growl, his father lunged, and it took surprisingly little effort for Cassius to spin his momentum around until his back crashed into the nearest wall. Dust and ash floated down around them, and a loose, half-burned plank of wood toppled from the ceiling to join the debris scattered about the floor.

“I should leave you here,” Cassius growled. “How long do you think you would last against the Stormlord without me? How long before he would have you? Do you think he would kill you slowly? Keep you around to torture and play with? I hear he’s viciously mad. Maybe you will get lucky and he’ll take your head in one clean cut, and mount it on the battlements to make a display of you like he has done to so many of our soldiers. I’m done being your pawn, old man. I should have gone my own way the day you got our home destroyed.”

His father swallowed, lifting his chin to meet his gaze head-on. His eyes were watery—from the drink, no doubt, not from emotion. Cassius knew his father had few of those.

“You are wrong if you think he will stop at me,” the king spat. “The things you have yet to learn about this world could fill an ocean.”

“Then perhaps it is time for me to venture out and see if I can swim. Good luck keeping your head above water without me.”

Cassius stormed from the throne room, out into the hallway of the dome beyond, fury stirring in his blood. Soldiers and servants alike were working on cleanup, and he wove between them, determined to put as much distance between himself and his father as possible.

Cassius was not, by nature, someone who second-guessed things. He made a decision, and he charged forward. But in recent weeks, he found his mind forging the same paths again and again—asking the same questions.