The familiar instinct to separate myself from my body, the pain, the horrific reality knocks at my brain, insisting it’s time. Time to detach from what’s happening.
If I do it, I know it will be for the last time.
But I can't this time. Something is keeping me here, in my body, in the pain. Not something,someone.
Kai.
His face contorts with anguish, eyes wide and trembling. We are both held captive in the moment.
Pain is always something I’ve suffered alone, but not now. My pain is his and I can’t leave him with my pain while I step out of my body and go somewhere else.
I don’t want to leave him alone like that.
So I ground myself in my body, forcing myself to endure the pain and horror of my life pumping out of my throat just so I can look in Kai’s eyes, and let him know I’m with him. I’ll be with him until the last.
My body should be cooling, weakening.
Instead, an internal heat kicks up at my core like a generator being turned on. It thrums and throbs through my veins even as I hemorrhage and I swear I can feel the path of my blood entering the King’s mouth, swirling down his throat and hitting his stomach.
I’m dying. I know it. Fatigue and pain crash over me as if I’ve run a hundred miles, but that internal power flows through me even as my heart slows.
The King releases me and I drop to the floor like a sack of potatoes, my head spiking with pain and fuzziness. Kai’s face turns blurry. I’m losing him. It’s a knife through my heart. I don’t want to leave him. I want to be with him.
I don’t want to go like this.
I’m not ready.
King Charming gasps as he stumbles back a few steps, and I can vaguely make him out.
The magic cookie I ate, along with my righteous vengeance unleashes a cataclysmic force within me. The sheer magnitude of this power terrifies me, but I don’t fight it.
The rage I’ve tamped down. The pain, the injustice. It flows through my blood, even the blood outside my body. It heats over my bare shoulders, collarbone, and dress. I can feel the King's blood boiling within him, connected to mine in an intense shared heat.
He spent his life controlling others, and I can’t stand it. The bruises and breaks in Kai’s body. Those familiars who survived his wrath and those who didn’t.
“Wh-what?” The King sputters and looks at his own hands. They are covered in my blood and like that mess on his mouth, they are smoking with heat. Just like my blood is now doing in his body.
“No—” he chokes off.
I can end this. I have the power. My rage. Fueled by my last bit of my life, I try to stare the King in the eyes though I can barely make him out.
His veins light up as if lava runs through them. He sizzles and screams as steam and sparks sizzle through and off his skin, floating into the air around him.
He doesn’t stop screaming even as his hands blacken to ash, as his jaw disintegrates in a burning mass before falling off hisface altogether. The fire blazes hotter as I burn him with my blood magic.
In the midst of the scorching chaos, I sense a thin silver tether connecting him to all of my friends. Tethers as delicate as fishing line yet strong as steel. With a slicing power of my own, I cut the connection he has to them.
The pain and agony are almost sweet as I exert my power over his body until he completely crumbles into a smoking pile of ash.
All my strength leaves me in one sharp exhale and I collapse, gasping for air that never seems to come.
I always feared I’d die at the fangs of a vampire. But now Kai and the others will be safe from King Charming’s thrall.
Chapter 51
Biting Ever After
CHARMING
