“Yes, my Hunter,” the Dark Lady said. “You have done well.”
He knelt before her in the void. She shifted. Now his mother. His smiling mother. Crowning him with a coil of flame and shadow. He remembered what he’d done. Reading the runes of the shard. Speaking the runes. Words he shouldn’t have known.
Words even she hadn’t known.
Words that broke the world.
Words that built it anew.
He remembered the flame. The explosion.
He remembered burning all of London to the ground.
“I didn’t mean to—”
“You did. And you did so perfectly. You have done greater than I could have ever dreamed. My child. My son. I am so, so proud.”
He had wanted to spite her. But how could he spite her? His own mother?
She touched the side of his face. Wiped the tears that slid from his eyes. Kissed his forehead, his crown burning with cinders and sin.
“You will continue my work,” she promised. “And at the foot of your throne, even the reaper will kneel.”