Page 157 of The Amber Sunburst

His father smiles at him and shoots him a wink. “Hello, my little lion.”

He can barely hear Kallias behind him. “What do you see? Do you see something else?”

“It’s my dad,” Alexander says, disbelieving. Did Cain send him away too? Has he been here the whole time?

He steps forward, and his mother and brother materialize next to his father.

“Meu menino,” his mother says gently in her native tongue. She looks so much brighter than when he last saw her, so much happier. She and his father are hand in hand.

“Mamãe?”

“I have missed you, Alexander. Meu filho lindo.”

“Whatever you’re seeing, it isn’t real,” Kallias says at his back.

Alexander ignores him, even though he knows Kallias is right. What’s in front of him is impossible. But he wants to believe more than he wants to admit it, so he lets the doubts go and approaches his beautiful family, all together again.

“Cain, senti sua falta,” Alexander whispers, scared to shatter whatever peace they’ve reached.

“Eu também. You’ll always be my brother, no matter what.”

Kallias yanks both of his shoulders and Alexander thrashes until he lets go, refusing to turn around in case, when he looks back, his family is gone.

“Alexander, you know this can’t be real,” he hears from behind him.

Who’s back there again? He can’t quite remember. He can only remember his family and the joy they’ve shared. The joy they’ll keep sharing when he reaches them.

“Come here, my son. My lion,” his father says.

“I’m coming, Dad,” Alexander replies, and he does. That is, until someone fully takes hold of him and shoves him against the wall, putting his family nearly out of sight. The golden hair is familiar, but only from the corner of his eye. “What are you doing? That’s my dad! Let go of me.”

“It’s a siren. A booby trap. And you’re falling into it.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I know better than to believe it,” the boy says, gazing into the fog like looking costs him something. His voice is a string pulled too taut and, somehow, Alexander knows that it’s not what he’s supposed to sound like.

Then his father calls, “Alexander?” and he remembers that he doesn’t have time for this. He needs to go right now.

Alexander seethes. “Just because you can’t get what you want doesn’t mean you need to take it from me, Kallias,” he yells, attempting to push the boy—Kallias, he’d called him—away so he can get back to his parents.

After an unsuccessful few seconds of struggle—of Kallias getting in the way of him hugging his father for the first time in months—Alexander can’t take it anymore. He’s been trying not to hurt this boy, as Kallias is clearly trying not to hurt him, but he’s not going to let his family leave him behind again.

He balls his hand into a fist and launches a right hook that hits the boy in the cheekbone and throws him far enough away for Alexander to scramble back into the fog.

“Alexander, what the fu—No, wait! You have to listen to me!”

His parents hold out their hands to him, and he reaches to join them. Before he can, a voice shouts from somewhere in the fog.

“Your mother killed herself when you were seventeen,” it says, and, oh, yes, Alexander remembers that now. A razor and a fancy settee and a room drowned in morning light. But how could that be? She’s right there.

“She beat you when you taught yourself her native tongue. It was the language she used with her lover when everyone was around.”

His mother smiles at him, sickly sweet. He can’t recall ever seeing that expression on her face.

“Your father is dead. Not in battle, not by poison. Just the heart attack of a healthy man whose body betrayed him. He left you in a mess, pitting brother against brother in a struggle for the crown that should have been assigned at birth.”

His father’s eyes are placid and dull, no spark of intelligence running through them, none of the quickness Alexander could never keep up with.