Page 75 of The Sundered Blade

But as Vaniell looked into the eyes of the man now torturing his friends—armed with full knowledge of who he was and what he had done—it was as if his heart finally understood.

Melger was gone. The man whose approval he sought was long dead, and there was nothing behind that face now but evil—an evil that would do its utmost to gain power and control until it destroyed everything good, not only in Abreia, but in the Empire as well.

Karreya, too, had struggled with the knowledge of what this man had done, and what might be required to stop him. Had hesitated to take the life of someone who had once been her only family.

But this man was not Vaniell’s family. He was an enemy who must be stopped.

Even if Karreya came to hate him for his actions. Even if it meant she felt she had no choice but to leave him. If someone must bear the guilt for this man’s blood, perhaps it was fitting that it be Vaniell—the wastrel prince, finally living up to his responsibility for the people of Garimore.

With a measured stride, he moved towards the dais, blocking out the sounds of battle, focused entirely on the man before him.

As he reached the steps, he scooped up Leisa’s dagger and then raced up the stairs until he stood face to face with his adversary.

Melger. Modrevin. Mirror mage. The face of his longing to belong and the face of his nightmares. None of them were real.

“Stop this,” he said quietly. “Your ambitions are at an end. It’s over, and your dreams will never come to fruition. All of this killing, all of your efforts to gain power, have come to nothing. Everyone sees you for who you truly are, and they will never bow to you again.”

“Even if I were to stop,” Modrevin sneered, “what do you expect will become ofyou? They all know you for who you are and what you’ve done. You left your own mother to die, and even now your friends suffer because of your pride. Do you really believe they’ll let you live? Forgive you for the unspeakable magics you’ve performed at my command?”

To his own surprise, Vaniell found that he did not even have to think about his answer. “Yes,” he said simply. “They will.”

Modrevin scoffed, but Vaniell was not finished.

“In my time away from you, I’ve finally learned to see myself clearly—both the boy who longed for approval, and the man who yearned to redeem himself. I’ve taken a long hard look at all my broken pieces and accepted that they are a part of me. And… It turns out that those who truly love me have also accepted those broken pieces, just as Mother did. They accept me for who I am, not for what I can do for them. Where I have wronged them, I apologize, and they do the same. We help each other up and we keep trying to do better. Which means…”

He gripped the dagger in suddenly nerveless fingers.

“It meanstheyare my family. Not you. No matter what you say, no matter what you do, I will never allow you to control me again, so I will ask you one last time. Stop this. Stop hurting others merely because you can.”

“Or what?” Modrevin taunted. “You’ll stop me? All you ever did was whimper for my approval, and then run away when you didn’t get it. You couldn’t save your mother, and you can’t save them. All you have is useless magic and a coward’s heart and I…”

From behind him, Vaniell heard Leisa gasp in pain, followed by a hoarse cry from Kyrion, and he shut his eyes on the familiar face before him. Swallowed every bit of self doubt, every memory of longing and failure and disillusionment, every desperate wish for someone to save him from the hell this man had created…

Then he opened his eyes, looked on the face of his enemy, and stabbed.

Forward and up, crying out in sick revulsion as he felt the dagger slide between layers of cloth, pierce between Modrevin’s ribs with a horrible wet, ripping sound, and then stop, buried to the hilt in the imposter king’s heart.

The world around him seemed to slow. Modrevin’s jaw dropped soundlessly as he stared down at the dagger, then up at Vaniell’s face, as if unwilling to believe that his useless puppet of a son had stabbed him. Vaniell’s hand remained frozen on the weapon’s hilt. His breath caught in his lungs, and no sound penetrated the fog of disbelief that clouded his mind.

But as Modrevin fell backwards, sliding off the dagger and slumping to the floor with blood gushing across the front of his robes, time seemed to catch up with him once more.

There was blood on Vaniell’s hands. Blood on his clothing. And he could barely breathe between the sick knowledge that he’d been responsible for a man’s death, and the intense wave of relief that the terror of this man’s reign was finally over.

Falling to his knees beside the body, he retched and wept and wondered whether he was losing his mind, until he felt a strong hand clasp his arm.

“Come.” It was Kyrion. His fingers trembled, but his grip was steady and sure.

“Leave him, Vaniell.” Those soft words were Leisa’s. Both of them had survived, and relief freed Vaniell’s voice from the chains that held it back.

“How can I just leave him here?” Despite his efforts, years of ugly memories churned beneath the surface, with the constant presence of this man’s face. His voice. Again and again, Vaniell relived the vision of his mother’s death, with this man holding the knife. “There’s a part of me that still insists I’ve just killed my father. It is what everyone else will believe. His blood on my hands makes me a blight and a horror to everyone beyond these walls, and yet… I still want to kill him again.”

Tears ran down his face as a sudden surge of rage caught him by surprise, nearly choking him with its strength. “Even if it makes me a monster, I want him to suffer more. I want to make him feel everything he made me feel, everything he made my mother feel. But now he’s just dead, and I never got to ask him… Never made him change back. Karreya will never get to see her father’s face again. It’s justover, but a part of me is also afraid that it will never be over. Not for her, and not for me.”

Kyrion’s grip pulled him inexorably to his feet and turned him around until he was forced to meet the night elf’s gray eyes. “I know,” Kyrion said, and of all the people in the world, he might be the only one who truly did. The only one who could understand the maelstrom of emotions that felt like it might well tear Vaniell apart.

It was a moment that had somehow begun over eleven years ago, when Vaniell had made his worst mistake. Said yes when he should have said no. Acted out of fear instead of courage, and given the imposter the weapon he needed to terrorize the entire Abreian continent.

And now, in this moment when Kyrion might have most cause to hate his former adversary, he looked on him not with the hatred he deserved, but with compassion.

---