Page 131 of Smoke, Mirrors, & Misdemeanours

The door opened soundlessly, and Ark stepped inside.

The room smelled faintly of sage oil and antiseptic. Curtains had been drawn to cut out the daylight, and the fireplace burned low, casting a restless amber across the polished wood floors and the edges of a velvet rug.

He remembered this room.

The last time he’d been here, he was barely out of his teens, standing by that same giant fireplace while his mother scolded him for storming out of a council session. His father hadn’t even looked up from the papers in his hand.

But now . . . the desk was clear, the ledgers returned to the shelves. And the man who had once stood at the helm of Meredith’s most powerful demon house lay half-shadowed beneath a blanket, his back curved slightly against the pillows, his breathing thin and uneven in the hush.

Ark barely recognized him.

How long had it been since he last saw his father? Three years? Four?

The silver in his hair had spread. His skin, once burnished gold, had gone pale. Even his frame—always proud, always tall in a child’s eyes—had shrunk somehow. The man in the bed wasn’t the Daemar he remembered. He looked diminished. Frail.

Ark swallowed hard.

He took a step forward, then another, until he stood at the edge of the bed.

His father didn’t stir.

The silence was crushing—the kind that had been building for years, grown from words unspoken, doors unopened, chances neither of them took.

Ark reached for the nearest bedpost and gripped it. A shaky, ragged sound escaped him, and he had to lower himself onto the bed’s edge as if his bones were made of glass. He didn’t dare move or breathe, just stared at his father’s hand resting atop the covers—the hand that had once signed decrees and dismissed him with a wave, now still and papery with illness.

The urge to reach out was a physical ache, but he curled his own hands into fists in his lap, terrified that his touch might be the thing that finally shattered the fragile man in the bed.

“I’m here now,” he said, barely above a whisper.

Ark found his mother waiting in the adjoining sitting room, back straight, hands clasped in her lap. The fire had been lit, morning light filtering through the draperies. A silver tea service steamed gently on the low table before her.

Across from her sat a short, stout man in a charcoal suit, who rose as Ark entered. Ark recognized him vaguely—a face from a medical journal he’d skimmed once or twice.

“My lord,” the man murmured.

“This is Sir Harland,” his mother supplied. “Your father’s physician for the past decade.”

“Please sit,” Ark said. “You must be tired if you’ve watched over him all night.”

“The Daemaris did most of the watching. I was merely here in case . . .” The physician trailed off.

Ark didn’t need him to finish. “What illness does my father have?”

Sir Harland sat. “The name we give it is ‘Arcane Wasting.’ In the Daemar’s case, he was born with it. A fundamental dissonance between his demonic core and his physical vessel. Even as a child, there were signs. Tremors. Spells backfiring. Long periods of fatigue no one could explain.” He paused. “They blamed overexertion from magical training. But the truth is simpler and crueler: the magic that makes him strong has been slowly consuming his body from the day he drew his first breath.”

Ark sat very still. His father had been fighting this his entire life. Every day, every breath, every public appearance—all of it had been effort.

“What is the cure?” he asked.

The doctor hesitated, glancing at his mother.

She answered, “There is no cure.”

Ark’s stomach turned. He went hot and cold at once, the room tilting at the edges. “Not even if he stops using magic?”

The look Sir Harland gave him was gentle. “My lord, you know as well as I do—it is impossible for a demon of your father’s calibre to live without magic. Even if it were possible, too much damage has already been done. His organs are failing.”

Ark felt his chest collapse inward. The walls of his ribs pressed against him. He couldn’t draw a full breath. This couldn’t be the end. It can’t be.