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But he would if he had to.

“Please don’t do that,” he said gently, as if I held the power here. “I don’t wish to hurt you.” He brought out a white-striped dispenser from his blazer.

Nightmilk.

My stomach jolted, my specter lashing out at him.

I hissed as the tendril smacked back into me. Because, as I’d expected, Stian had erected a solid, rippling wall of power around himself in defense. His specter felt like Erik’s, I’d finally realized earlier: cooler to the touch than most others I’d encountered.

And just as vicious.

“You’ve been through enough these last few hours,” he said, apologetic. “Your body is still weak. Don’t make me fight you.”

My vision throbbed with my frantic pulse. Throughout this conversation, we’d pretended to be on equal ground. Not anymore.

I was powerful, yes, and more skilled than I’d ever been. But Stian had trained me himself. He’d examined the contours of my specter; he knew my greatest weaknesses and had taught me how to hone my greatest strengths.

I’d known from the moment I’d entered this room that I couldn’t win in a fight against him, specter-on-specter; trying to would only weaken me while he remained strong.

But as my gaze darted behind him to the dayglass—now wavering in transparency but not yet flushed with color—I believed I wouldn’t have to fight him.

I just needed a few more moments.

“I’m not making you do anything,” I said, breathing rapidly now. “He is. He has chained me and tormented me, he has tortured and killed for pleasure, and you still call him a boy? At least do us all the dignity of holding him accountable for the suffering he’s caused. You don’t have to do this. Not for him.”

I let myself feel the cruel injustice behind each word. Because as I’d already experienced, my emotion could be an advantage if channeled correctly.

So all the rage that had lived in me for so long, that had shaped me into someone vicious, I now fed into the core of my power. Shaping it.

“Make no mistake,” Stian said slowly, his expression tensing. “Erik is not just my son. He is my king. And I will serve my king above all others.”

He thumbed the cap off the dispenser.

“Wait.” The desperate word burst out of me, and the mass of my specter threatened to follow. But I breathed through the impulse to thrust it out toward this man.

Once, my self-control had been my shackle. Today, I needed to make it my ally.

So, as Stian looked at me over the rims of his spectacles, I slowly released a single hair of power—the thinnest tendril I’d ever summoned. Thinner even than those I’d been secretly threading through the tulle meshwork late at night.

And as the wisp shimmered before me, stirring like a strand of spider silk with my every breath, I remembered Stian’s words. The eurium strike debilitates the Wielder who issues the blow as well as the Wielder who receives it. Now he would be expecting an attack.

And if I only had one shot at this maneuver, I had to make it count.

“It will be better this way,” Stian said with the tenderness of a father. Beyond the whooshing in my ears, there was only the quiet of the empty halls outside. By the time anyone realized we were missing, it would be too late. “No discomfort,” he continued. “No distress.”

He stepped closer, and his spectacles reflected the light beyond the dayglass windows, now just a shade away from gaining full color.

“No chains,” I blurted, making him pause. The entire weight of my power was pressing against the underside of my skin now, throbbing with a force that hitched my breath. Yet I didn’t need to falsify the crack in my voice as I said, “Promise me that I won’t wake up in chains.”

His gaze softened, and he dipped his chin. “You have my word.”

Then he held out his hand. Giving me the illusion of choice.

And just as the power built inside me with an ear-ringing pressure . . . the sun rose.

The color was vibrant and all-consuming, the rainbow light spilling out into the air.

I tipped my head up toward the vaulted ceiling and released a long, shuddering breath. I had almost thought I’d imagined it before, amid the agony of Arun’s torture. But above me, shimmering within a brighter, dazzling blue, was the faintest ripple of indigo.