Every breath was like sucking fire into his lungs.

“Ow,” Hugh said.

Nez stared at him.

Hugh grinned. “Do you feel better, sweetheart? Do you feel like you won yet?”

“My leash is short, but he muzzles you,” Nez ground out. “Do you get it yet? Do you know what he does to keep you in line? He cooks you like a piece of fried chicken. He fries your mind until there is nothing but a shell left. So I’m going to tell you now, because later on you won’t care. When I’m done and things quiet down, I’ll come back here, and I’ll kill every living soul in that castle. Every man, every woman, and every child. I’ll make your wife watch. She will be the last to go.”

The scumbag would do it. Hugh saw it in Nez’s eyes. “Good speech,” he said. “I’d clap, but I’m all tied up.”

Nez bared his teeth.

“I feel like we’ve had a real breakthrough here, Landon,” Hugh said. “This is the most honest conversation we’ve ever had.”

Nez reached for the pipe.

A careful knock interrupted him in mid-move. Nez turned to the doorway. Hugh craned his neck, but it was too far behind him.

“What?” Nez asked.

“I’m sorry, Legatus. There is fog.”

“What kind of fog?”

“An unnatural fog. It’s coming from the woods.”

Nez swore and strode out.

The room fell silent except for the crackling of the fire. He’d have to start over when Nez returned, and he’d been doing so well. Being killed now was his best option. Facing Roland would be the end of the road. He would do anything to keep from walking it.

Magic whispered through the room, familiar and warm.

Fuck me.

Hugh raised his head. Roland lowered the hood of his brown robe. His face was like no other. He had allowed himself to age to about fifty, to look more fatherly for Daniels, and it served him well. He looked like a prophet walking out of the long-forgotten magical cities of ancient Mesopotamia, a living remnant of a different time and different place, when wondrous things were possible and his name had been Nimrod, the Builder of Towers. A scholar, an inventor, a poet, a father god, wise with kind eyes that were all-knowing and slightly chiding. Hugh looked into his eyes and love washed over him. All Hugh ever needed, all he ever wanted or required, was that love. It sheltered and sustained him, it guided him, it took away all pain. It was like seeing the sunrise after a long, dark winter.

The void tore open behind Hugh, scraping at him with its teeth.

Roland crossed the room and looked over Hugh’s shoulder at the void. “Well, that’s not good.”

The sound of his voice, suffused with power and magic, was so familiar it hurt.

“Hello, Hugh,” Roland said.

He managed a single word. “Hello.”

They looked at each other.

“You survived,” Roland said.

“Why are you here?”

“I’m here because I need your help, Hugh.” Roland smiled.

“Daniels kicked your ass,” Hugh said. The blasphemy of the words should’ve broken him, but somehow it didn’t.

“We’ve suffered some setbacks,” Roland said. “Nothing that can’t be remedied.”

It hit him then. The battle was never about the castle. It was about him. Nez was ordered to go and get him out of Baile.

“You’ve proven yourself,” Roland said.

You fucking prick. “You watched me at Aberdine.”

“I did. It’s time to come back,” Roland said. “You’ve been gone for too long.”

“It’s too late for that,” Hugh said.

“Nonsense.” Roland glanced at the chains over his right arm. They fell apart and Hugh hung, suspended by one arm.

The immortal wizard reached out to him. “Take my hand, Hugh. Take my hand and everything will be forgiven. Everything will be as it was.”

The world shrunk to the limits of the room. If only he reached out and took Roland’s hand, all the problems would fall away. The void would vanish, taking away the guilt and the nightmares. Life would be simple again.

“Take my hand,” Roland said again. “You’re my son in everything but blood.”

The word pierced Hugh. He’d waited decades to hear it and here it was, freely given.

Roland had expected him to stay a wreck. As long as he was a drunkard trying to commit a slow suicide, Roland was content to leave him as he was. But once he had pulled himself together, he was useful again. He was a threat.

The realization rocked him. He looked into Roland’s eyes and he saw something else, besides wisdom and approval. It hid in the corners of Roland’s soul, a quiet wariness, watching him.

Roland was afraid of him.

Hugh grinned. “No.”

“Hugh,” Roland said, his voice chiding, catapulting Hugh back to when he was a skinny orphan. “Take my hand. You’ve earned it. It’s your destiny.”

“No.”

Roland stared at him.

“It’s not exactly a surprise,” Hugh said. The words rolled off his tongue, amazingly easy. “You’re a fucking asshole, you know that?”

“I took you off the street. I gave you shelter, education, and power. And this is how you repay me?”

“You forgot the part where you turned me into a happy idiot every time I tried to do something you didn’t like.”

“That’s what raising a child is,” Roland said. “Encouraging some aspects of their personality, suppressing the others.”

Hugh laughed quietly.

“I made you effective. I freed you from complications that were holding you back. Did I ever force you to do anything, Hugh? Or did you jump on every task I gave you?”

“Explain something to me. Why did you exile me? I did everything you asked.”

“I exiled you because you couldn’t see the bigger picture.” A note of irritation rose in Roland’s voice. “I’m beginning to think you still can’t.”

“That explains nothing.”

“Think about it and it will come to you.”

The pain in his ribs was unbearable now. Hugh pushed it aside. “Here is the bigger picture for you: there are two of us, Daniels and me. Neither of us wants anything to do with you. You’re not batting a thousand. You’re o for two. You need one of your children to fight the other, because Daniels kicked your ass once and she will do it again. Think about that.”

“There are three,” Roland said. “Almost three.”

“She hasn’t given birth yet.”

“No, but soon. Soon I will have a grandson.”

“And you can’t wait to get your hands on that child. Finally, a real son, the one with the right blood. Why the hell do you think anything will be different? Even if you get him from the moment he draws his first breath, he’ll still grow up hating you. Yet here you are, so desperate to get your hands on the new toy, that you send your Legion to capture me, teleport here despite the danger, and call me your son. Take a real good look. Look at me hanging here. If I were your son, what sort of father would that make you?”

“So the answer is no?” Roland asked.

“We could stay in here for the next hundred years and it would still be no. You’ll never get your hands on Kate’s kid. I’ll kill you first.”

Roland sighed. “You disappoint me, Hugh.”

“Get used to it.”

Roland stepped closer. Only a foot of space separated them.

“Without me, you’ll die and soon. Is that what you really want?”

“We all have to die eventually.”

“Alone, abandoned, stripped of your powers. This is the future you want?”

“No powers?”

“None of my blood.”

Hugh pulled on the last thread of magic remaining inside him, a tiny sliver that remained despite the power words and all the healing he had done. He drew the fingers of his free hand across his bloody ribs and sank that magic into the crimson liquid. Magic sparked, and the dark blood snapped into a sharp blood-red needle.

“Explain this to me,” Hugh said.