Contents
Chapter 24: The Eldest Heir
Overview
Augustus, consumed by the House of Ares’s madness and the pull of his marriage bond to Alexis, suffers a violent episode. He smashes a mirror, after which his searing headache vanishes. Testing himself, he senses his mental power has irrevocably shifted. He leaves, aware he is no longer the same.
Summary
Late that night, Augustus reels in a bathroom as blood drips from his lashes and an agonizing headache mounts, driven by the House of Ares’s madness and his marriage bond to Alexis. He barely recognizes himself in the mirror—scar vivid, eyes hollow—as pressure builds like a dagger pushing through his skull.
Overwhelmed by the relentless pain and the bond’s heat in his chest, Augustus snaps. He punches the mirror, sending shards flying and fracturing his reflection into a hundred ruined versions. In the instant after the glass explodes, the pain abruptly disappears, as if it never existed.
Breathing hard amid the broken glass, Augustus tests his mind and feels an unsettling difference: his mental abilities have been fundamentally altered. With the headache gone but an ominous certainty lingering, he leaves the bathroom convinced that the man who entered is not the man who walked out.
Who Appears
- AugustusHeir of Ares; overwhelmed by madness and the marriage bond, shatters a mirror; pain ends; senses power irrevocably changed.
- AlexisOff-page focus of Augustus’s fixation; the marriage bond to her intensifies his episode and drives his actions.