5
A scared little girl playing with fire
ZARA
My lungs burn with every breath, and the sharp edge of a branch slashes across my arm, leaving a streak of fire in its wake. I don’t stop and push harder as I race through the forest that’s become a snarl of shadows and gnarled roots. The trees close ranks behind me as my magic spills from me, cloaking me and concealing my path at the same time.
I can’t stop.
Kade’s voice echoes behind me, a mocking melody of numbers. He’s giving me a head start and it’s hardly generous. The warlock is a cunt and the count is slow and deliberate, an agony designed to taunt and intimidate me.
My foot catches on a tree root and I tumble to the ground, rocks biting into my palms. Pain flares through my knee, but it’s nothing. It hurts like a bitch, but it’s nothing compared towhat I’ve felt before. I’ve lived a life of agony, and even the witches in my coven treated me as if I was different. It made me stronger and it made me resilient enough to endure their rites of passage.
Their memory is a knife twisting through my core as the sounds of my sisters’ screams tear through me again, as it tore through what remained of our bond like shards of glass shattering. Their agony choked me as it starves my lungs of their breath now and I double over as I did then. As if I were the one being torn apart. Their fear was a living, writhing agony, and I couldn’t block it out. I couldn’t save them. I can’t block it out now.
The bursts of pain as I force my legs to move is nothing compared to that. Nothing ever will be again. The exhaustion I know is irrelevant and only one thing matters now.
Survival.
Revenge can come later.
I ignore the blood dripping down my leg and arms as the sting of torn flesh begins to bite. The forest is thick, its canopy blotting out most of the moonlight, but my magic flares it to light and I use it to hide the metallic drops I’m leaving behind me like a trail. I use it to guide me as the little sparks dance along my fingertips, trying to reach and quiet my pounding heart.
Even this magic is brittle. It’s unsure of me, and I don’t know it. I wonder if it thinks I don’t deserve it, if I’m not worthy of its chaos. Or maybe it’s teasing me, testing my resolve and waiting for the perfect moment to lash out.
Not now, I beg it. Not yet.
Fear coils in my stomach as I try again to control the power surging through me. It’s sharp and bitter and I haven’t made much progress in understanding what I unleashed the night I broke the sigil. The night my sisters died and I brokethe covenants, rewriting the order the warlocks have kept for centuries. But I have no right to be afraid, not when they knew true fear—fear of the knife, of the chains, of the fire, and the torture wrought on them. My terror is a pale shadow in comparison, and I refuse to let it control me.
I won’t let anything control me again.
I scramble across a stream, my steps faltering on the slippery stones for a second. The moonlight catches on my silver hair, illuminating the raw edges of magic tethered inside me. It’s stronger here, and its pulse thrums in my chest like a second heartbeat, but it’s not mine alone.
The air shifts, electric and heavy, and I feel his magic clashing against mine. His sorcery writhes against mine as it wrestles for control. It’s rigid and dark, unyielding and vile. It’s an offense to all I am, all I could be. It’s demanding the trees whisper his name and forcing their branches to bow to his presence.
And I will not bow.
“TEN.”
The roar comes from behind me, hitting like a thunderclap.
I whirl around, raising my hands, my magic coiling around me in sharp, jagged threads. I’d be stronger and more skillful if I’d had the time to learn how to use this power, but I’ve been running or sleeping, or conjuring cloaking spells, and it’s left me little time to practice.
I’ve been deprived of everything. I lost the chance to learn this magic coursing through me, the chance to understand the raw power beneath my skin and the bond it craves to form. The warlocks stole that from me, as they stole everything I ever cared about. They stole time; they stole knowledge, and they stole my sisters.
I will not let them take anything else. Not my magic, notmy choices, not my life.
My breath comes in sharp bursts as I race forward, my magic rising in me as my anger surges. The air shifts as I sprint, heavy with the weight of Kade’s magic as it hammers against mine like a battering ram, trying to break down my defenses. Trying to strip me of the power I’ve only just reclaimed. His magic claws at my skin, sharp and insidious, curling around my ankles and wrists like chains, and for one terrifying moment, the phantom sting of the warlock’s bindings bites again.
I push back, certain I don’t need precision. I need power. I need chaos and its carnage. I need all I was meant to be and magic crackles through me, lighting up the night in wild, untamed arcs.
“Impressive.”
His voice is a threat and he’s closing in on me. The warlock wants me to fear him; he wants to drag this out so he can savor every single excruciating moment I’ll give him. He wants to feed on my fear and harness it if he can. As he harnessed the last moments of my coven when he took everything he could from them.
I don’t answer and I bolt, tearing through the forest faster than I’ve ever run before. The branches scrape against my skin, each one a fresh sting, but I push through, lungs burning as my heart pounds a frantic rhythm. But his magic follows me, relentless and suffocating, a tide that crashes against my defenses again and again.
If I’d had time—if I’d been allowed to learn—I’d know how to stop this, how to wield the power that pulses inside me like a war drum. But I’ve been running, surviving. Cloaking myself in fragile spells just to hide long enough to breathe.
