[Evelyn's POV]
I go to see my father because the wound won't close until I face the man who carved it. The answer to why Cassandra died sits in a cell beneath the compound, stripped of weapons and dignity.
"Are you certain this is wise? Your control is fragile, and your grief is raw."
"I'm not certain of anything, Aspis, but I need to do this. I need to look at him and understand."
"What?"
"How a man destroys his own family and calls it prophecy."
The guards at the secure quarters straighten when they see me approach. They know who I am — the silver hair, the dragon mark, Draven's consort sigil on my armor.
"Lady Evelyn, we weren't informed you would be visiting the prisoner."
"I'm informing you now. Open that damned door and give me ten minutes alone with him."
They hesitate, so I let the moonlight flicker around my fingers. It works.
The cell is clean but sparse — a stone bench, a water basin, and a chamber pot. Sitting on the bench, hands folded in his lap, is the man who terrorized my childhood.
Aldric looks old, and I wasn't prepared for that.
In my memory, he's always towering — the cold blue eyes, the silver hair swept back from a face carved from contempt. My father’s voice could freeze blood with a single word.
The man before me is diminished. His hair is tangled, and his beard is unkempt. His eyes, when they rise to meet mine, hold none of the rage I expected.
He looks at me, taking in the silver hair that matches his own. He notices the dragon mark and the consort sigil: the woman he tried to destroy, standing over him in the house he tried to conquer.
Then his gaze drops to my hands, where moonlight still flickers, where the power that killed his daughter lives beneath my skin.
He says nothing for a long time, and I give him this opportunity, not hurrying up to ask questions.
"She's dead." He says finally, and his voice is flat. Not a question — a statement of fact, spoken like a man reading casualty reports.
"Yes, Father, Cassandra is dead."
"It was you! You killed her with that light I'm seeing around your fingers."
"I didn't want to do that, I tried to save her. I spent the entire fight trying to disarm her, trying to make her understand that the prophecy didn't demand her death."
"But she's dead anyway."
"She lunged at my heart with a blade she'd been training to use since childhood. You spent years teaching her that killing me was her destiny, and that’s the result. She's dead because the power in my blood reacted to protect me when my own will wouldn't."
Aldric's face doesn't change, but something behind it shifts: a structure built on certainty beginning to crumble inward.
"The prophecy said—"
"I know what it said! The stronger sister would break the cycle, Father, not break the weaker. Cycle! The pattern of violence and cruelty that you perpetuated for generations."
I step closer, and my father — the man who once seemed tall enough to block out the sun — shrinks on his bench.
"You misread it, Father. Deliberately or not, I don't know, but you twisted those words into permission to destroy one daughter and weaponize the other."
"I did what the witch told me was necessary. The prophecy demanded—"
"Nothing! It was you who demanded. You wanted one of us dead so you wouldn't have to choose. You wanted the witch's words to justify the hatred you already felt. So you raised Cassandra as a blade pointed at my heart and you raised me as—"
My voice breaks. "As if I was nothing… You raised me as a curse, as something to be endured until the prophecy resolved itself."
"You don't understand the pressures of succession. The weight of a prophecy hanging over a house for generations—"
"I understand it perfectly. You had two daughters, and you chose to make one a weapon and one a target. You could have raised us as sisters, Father, could have let us find our own way to break whatever demanded, but instead you made sure we would destroy each other."
The moonlight around my hands flares brighter.
"The destruction of the house that the prophecy warned about? It wasn't me, Father, it was you. It’s all about your cruelty, certainty, and your conviction that violence was the only answer."
Aldric's mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
"Cassandra died reaching for my hand. Did you know that? In her last moments, she stopped being the weapon you made and became a sister. A girl who wanted to be loved and never was. She told me she was glad the stronger sister was someone who tried to save her."
I'm crying now, tears cutting tracks through the dust on my face.
"She was glad, Father, that I tried to be merciful even when everything you taught her said I would kill her without hesitation."
"I didn't know—" His voice cracks. "I didn't know it would end like this."
"You knew exactly how it would end. You built every piece of it. The only thing you didn't anticipate was that I would refuse to play the role you assigned me."
I watch something happen to my father's face. Not grief exactly — he may not be capable of that, not for the daughter he threw away.
But it’s a collapse, a structure of certainty crumbling inward, leaving nothing but rubble where a man used to stand.
His eyes meet mine, and in them I see recognition. My face — his silver hair, his jaw, his firstborn daughter: the child he called a curse from the moment she drew breath.
He sees what he did. He sees it clearly, perhaps for the first time, and the weight of it is more than he can bear.
Aldric opens his mouth again but still keeps silent. His eyes drop to the floor.
I wait for the satisfaction I've been owed since childhood. I expect vindication from standing over my tormentor and watching him break.
I wait for the feeling of justice that should flood through me after everything he did, everything he took, everything he destroyed.
It doesn't come.
There is only sadness now: vast, exhausted, useless for a family that tore itself apart because one man couldn't tell the difference between a prophecy and a permission slip.
I am sad for a sister who never had a chance to be anything but what Father made her, and for a childhood that was stolen and can never be returned.
I leave.
The guards don't speak as I pass. My legs give out three steps past the cell door.
I slide down the wall and sit on the cold stone, knees drawn to my chest, breathing in ragged gasps. The moonlight around my hands flickers wildly, responding to emotions I can't name.
"Evelyn."
Aspis's voice in my mind again, distant but present. She's still grounded by her wing injury, but the bond stretches between us like a lifeline.
"I'm here. I just need a moment to breathe."
"Take all the moments you need. I am not going anywhere."
I breathe, in and out. The stone is cold against my back. Somewhere in the compound, life continues — warriors healing, prisoners confined, a house rebuilding from the ashes of war.
"Evelyn, have a question for you, when you are ready to hear it."
"Ask."
Through the bond, Aspis sends something new — not warmth or warning, but a genuine inquiry, patient and profound:
"What do you want to become?"