Page 158 of The Amber Sunburst

“And Cain? He put you on a ship and sent you to die at sea. He loved your power more than he loved you.”

Cain’s shoulders are relaxed, all the tension he’s been carrying since they were children completely unfurled.

This is not his family.

The realization doesn’t hit him like a sudden wave. It feels more like he’s remembering something that’s always been true.

“Where are you going, meu menino?” his mother asks, stretching out her arm farther when Alexander takes a step back.

“Little lion, we miss you. Don’t leave us behind,” his father pleads.

“Come on, Alexander. Let’s be brothers again,” Cain says.

Alexander stumbles a few more feet backwards, his family hurling increasingly frantic and cruel things after him.

“You are nothing without us, boy!”

“You think you can survive on your own? You need me.”

“Little lion, please.”

He turns his back on them despite how unnervingly desperate he still is to succumb to the illusion.

“I never loved you, lion,” he hears behind him.

I’ll always love you, Dad.

Alexander runs, letting the voices blend into the fog. He sprints for seconds or days or years, only stopping when he bumps into someone and they both tumble to the ground.

The fog whooshes out of the pathways and Kallias sighs in relief, dropping his face into his hands. “I thought they got you. I thought… Oh, Forms, Alexander, don’t do that again.”

Kallias. He half recognized him in the fog. But not enough, it seems, to stop from hurting him.

“I hit you” is the only thing Alexander can say. A bruise is blooming where his punch landed.

Kallias tilts his head. “Yeah. But you barely even remembered me. I know you didn’t mean to.”

“But I still did it,” Alexander shouts. He shoves his fake family into the back of his mind, and now he’s just angry—at Kallias and himself. “You should be pissed at me. You should hit me back.”

Kallias scowls. “I don’t want to.”

How many hits has Kallias taken without fighting back? Why doesn’t he feel like he deserves to?

“How come you didn’t get hypnotized by the stupid thing?”

Kallias bites his lip. “I stopped believing in ‘dreams coming true’ a long time ago.”

“What did you see?” he asks.

Kallias’ eyes linger on where the fog used to be. “Something I shouldn’t have.”

Alexander wants to ask, but they don’t have the time. This is something to unpack on the boat when they’re finally off this God-forsaken island.

“Let’s go,” Alexander says on a sigh, affixing a mirror to the wall and motioning for Kallias to check its angle. “We’re almost there, right?”

“Almost there.”

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