Page 107 of The Crown of the Dark Prince
Hyrax leaned back, his smile faint, but satisfied. “You are as brilliant as I hoped.”
Rage bubbled beneath the surface, threatening to boil over. “You created me out of the bones of a monster?”
Hyrax waved a dismissive hand, as though my anger was trivial. “There are worse origins, my dear.”
“This is insane,” I muttered, pacing away as my fingers clawed through my hair. The walls seemed to close in, the horror of it all spinning out of control.
A hand landed on my shoulder, and my power lashed out instinctively. The force of my power sent Caldrius sprawling backward, crashing into the table before he recovered with startling ease. He raised his hands in mock surrender, his dark eyes steady on mine.
“You should have told me!” I shouted at him, my voice raw with betrayal as I pointed an accusatory finger at him. “All along you knew, didn’t you? You let me trust you while you lied to me!”
Caldrius stepped forward, his voice low and even. “You never would have believed me. You had to get here on your own.”
My hands shook with the force of my anger – the sting of his betrayal. “Itrusted you!”
Hyrax sighed, his tone dripping with impatience. “Thea, you’re being too hard on the boy. He was essential to your creation, after all.”
The air seemed to still; the room frozen in time as his words sank in. Slowly, I turned to Hyrax, dread pooling in my stomach. “What?”
Hyrax gestured toward Caldrius with a lazy flick of his hand. “His sketches were invaluable to shaping you.”
No.
Oh gods, no.
That’s why Caldrius had always looked at me with such familiarity, why his gaze lingered too long, tinged with something I didn’t want to name. He had told Hyrax what I should look like.
He told Hyrax to make me look like someone he had once known.
Someone he had once loved.
My stomach churned as I turned to Caldrius, the silence stretching between us like a chasm.
“I look like her, don’t I?” My voice trembled, my hands balled into fists at my sides.
I didn’t dare look away from him, begging him with my eyes to deny it, to insist it wasn’t the truth.
Caldrius’s lips tightened, his jaw clenching as his fists opened and closed. He didn’t answer.
“Do I look like your wife, Caldrius?” I screamed.
He avoided my gaze, clenching his fists so tightly the knuckles were white. “Visually, yes. You bear a resemblance, but I assure you the similarities end there.”
None of it was real. He wasn’t my friend. He never had been.
I was just a replacement for the woman he lost.
Magic surged within me, too angry on my behalf to stay silent, and a crack echoed through the room as the floorsplit apart.
All this time. I’ve been living with a stolen name. I’d been looking in a mirror and seeing a stolen face. Nothing -nothing-about my identity was my own.
“Thea-“ Caldrius stood, as if making to come towards me, and I snapped.
Power surged through me, wild and violent. The throne of bones shattered, plates clattered to the ground, and Caldrius was hurled against the far wall with a force that cracked the stone. The air rippled with heat and fury as the room trembled around me.
“Theadora!” Hyrax bellowed, standing abruptly.
“I’m not letting you out of the Underworld,” I hissed, my voice like steel. “I’m not letting either of you out. And when I find Pasnia, I’ll drag her back here myself, and all three of you can rot for eternity.”
