This is bad, I thought, trembling beneath a hum of electricity that ran across my skin. “Burning,” I managed to whisper, my knees wobbling violently. “Going to?—”
A scream ripped from my throat, cutting off my words, as pain unlike anything I’d ever felt slashed a hole right through my chest. Zeph released me with a hiss, allowing me to fall to the ground in a ripple of cerulean flames that scorched the forest floor.
“Fuck!”
“What the fuck is that?”
Their voices mingled, making it impossible to tell them apart. I couldn’t hear beyond the roar of power lapping at my essence and overtaking my soul.
Tears slid from my eyes.
Everything ached.
My heart sped up.
Too much.
It’s too much.
I didn’t know how to balance it all, to find my equilibrium. It reminded me of my first time accessing the source of my earth power, that necessary need to placate both sides between my soul and the core of my element.
Only, I couldn’t find that center.
It kept moving out of my reach and showering me in electricity, humming dangerously through the air, warning me of the wrongness of my presence.
“Help me,” I begged, not sure if I spoke the words out loud or muttered them in my mind. “Too hot. Dying.”
An agonized cry reached my ears, the sound excruciating, one I belatedly realized was my own. Everything glimmered in shades of blue around me, a rippling effect of my overheated aura.
Focus, I told myself.Rein it in.
Only, I didn’t know how because I was too full of energized substance to accept any more.
I ripped at the choker around my neck, needing my earth, hoping to hide in the source to find my stability once more.
There,I thought, my element immediately responding despite the device encircling my neck. Whether I’d somehow deactivated it or overrode it, I wasn’t sure, but my beautiful gifts responded and grounded me with the familiarity of soil and earth.
I rooted myself to the ground, reveling in my birthright and locking onto my royal line to find sanctuary in my home element.
Every inhale filled me with floral aromas, and every exhale calmed the fire, until finally I surfaced enough to survey my surroundings in a burnt courtyard shrouded in sunlight.
Blue embers danced in the air, drawing my focus to the damage around me.
I opened my mouth, but no sound escaped me, only another whimper of pain as the flames began to build once more inside me.
Oh, no...
My stomach heaved, a cramp building in my lower abdomen and churning with unrepressed power.
“We need to ground her!” someone shouted. It sounded like Kols, but that couldn’t be right.
“And how the fuck do we do that?”Hmm, Shade,my mind supplied, his presence providing a temporary balm to my rioting soul.Mate.
“I have an idea.” That still reminded me of Kols, some part of me recognizing his aura nearby. Or perhaps in me. After all, he was my earth mate now. Sort of. Maybe.
What have I done?
Everything went quiet once more beneath another pulsing wave of excruciating pain that crushed me to my very soul. I curled into a ball on the ground, seeking the utopia only created by true balance.
