Rage burns through me and I won’t give in. I won’t surrender. I will not yield or break. I’ve lived my life in the shadows of his kind and I’d rather die here than take another borrowed breath. My magic pushes again, fueled by anger and desperation, but Kade counters it effortlessly, his power twisting around mine like a noose.
A pulse, deep and resonant, tears through me.
It’s not my magic. It sure as fuck isn’t his. It’s something else entirely. Something new and whatever it is, it won’t be contained or controlled. The air grows impossibly thick, heavy and lacking any oxygen at all. Light seeps from my soul, spreading through my core and seeping from my skin, faint at first, but growing brighter with each heartbeat.
It burns, a searing heat consuming me from the inside out.
Kade falters, his grip loosening as he stares, wide-eyed, at the light spilling from me.
“What are you doing?” he yells.
The roar of power drowns his words out exploding from me. The world erupts in a blinding flash and the light is pure and unforgiving. It doesn’t just illuminate—it devastates. The ground convulses, the air crackling with raw energy. Trees tearfrom their roots, their trunks splintering into fragments. Kade is thrown back, his scream lost in the cacophony as the force tears through him.
And me.
I’m at the center of it, consumed by the light and the unbearable heat. I’m being ripped apart, every nerve ending set ablaze. My screams are visceral and unending, the sound of my agony swallowed by the maelstrom. The light doesn’t stop. I don’t know if it ever will. It surges, wave after wave, until there’s nothing left but the blinding white and the sound of my own ragged breathing.
I cry and writhe, breaking apart and being remade, enduring a torment I’ve never imagined and can’t understand. My body collapses to the ground, trembling and broken. My vision swims, my body wracked with pain. I’m still alive, I think, but I’m not sure how I endured what happened or what I am now I’ve survived it.
My nails dig into the earth and I crawl away, my legs giving way every time I try to stand. My magic is spent, my body barely holding together. The ancient power that surged through me is gone, leaving only a hollow ache in its wake. I’m not the same as I was moments ago, and the ground beneath me trembles as if it knows I’ve become a monster.
