18
The inevitability of her
KADE
Pain lances through my side as I force myself upright, the weight of the destruction around us settling like a suffocating shroud. Nothing is recognizable. Nothing survived. Blackened earth and splintered trees stretch as far as I can see and the putrid smell of magic gone badly wrong clings to the air.
This is worse than when our magic collided.
Zara lies a few feet away, her chest heaving as the last embers of whatever hell she unleashed fade from her hands. Her eyes are glassy, unfocused and there’s blood smeared everywhere. It’s on her hands and face, it’s streaking through her hair and its crimson coats her clothes. She wears the scarlet like some grotesque mark of victory and the witch is too distracted by her blood-stained fingers to notice my ragged breathing.
She hasn’t noticed my hand pressed against my ribs as ittries to stem the flow of blood from my chest. My magic isn’t touching it, and whatever she did can’t be undone by warlock magic. At least not mine.
I don’t want her to see me like this.
Weakened. Wounded. Vulnerable.
I don’t have a choice if I want to survive
“Zara,” I rasp, my voice as dry as the burned wood around me.
The witch doesn’t respond. She just lies there, panting, like she’s trying to understand what the fuck just happened. Maybe she needs a moment to compose herself, but I’m not sure I have the time to indulge in such excesses.
“Your magic…” I swallow and her eyes roll up to meet mine. “I’m wounded.”
She crawls along the ground and I assume she’s too tired to stand. The blood weave wouldn’t let her leave me like this, and as much as it appalls me, it’s trying to do me a fucking favor right now. It’s forcing her to help me and I should be grateful but I’m repulsed by the witch doing all she can to save me.
Fuck, I’m going to owe her.
Worse, I’m going to have to trust her.
“How bad?” she mumbles, barely coherent.
“Bad enough that you’ve got no fucking choice,” I reply as I let my knees bend and sink to her level.
Her lip curls. “You’re insufferable, even half-dead.”
“And you’re…” My breath catches as a fresh wave of agony rips through me. My fingers dig into my side but the wound is too deep and my magic isn’t doing nearly enough to heal me.
Zara’s in front of me before I can blink, her hands already reaching for the wound. I try to pull away, but she grabs myarm and forces me to still. Her tiny fingers pry at mine, and for a moment I wonder if it would be so wrong to slip my palm over her pale and trembling hand.
“You’d better not die,” she snaps. “This damn ebon chain will make my life even worse than it is now if you stop breathing.”
I smirk through the pain, though it costs me. “Touching, Zara. Truly.”
Her glare is as sharp as her magic, which flares to life in her hands as she presses them against my side. The heat of it makes me flinch, searing into my flesh and making the already agonizing wound scream louder.
“Hold still,” she barks, and for once, I obey the despicable creature I think I could be starting to admire.
The world narrows to the sensation of her magic. It’s raw, primal, like a wildfire trying to swallow me whole. There’s no finesse to it, no careful weaving of intent. Just power, brutal and unrelenting, as if the witch herself doesn’t care if she heals me or tears me apart in the process.
I close my eyes and the force of nature itself pours through me, its roots breaking the earth that binds me together apart. They’re unstoppable, relentless and sturdier than stone and as ancient as time itself. It seeps into places I didn’t know were broken, mending fissures I’d grown used to carrying. It moves like water over rock, wearing away at the edges of my pain, relentless in its pursuit of what it believes is balance.
Her magic isn’t subtle.
It’s the wind that strips leaves from trees, the flood that carves rivers into stone, the storm that tears apart the sky. It surges through me, relentless as an avalanche, unstoppable as time. I grit my teeth as it presses into my wound, a thousand tiny vines burrowing into my flesh and weaving themselvestogether, knotting and twisting until the pain becomes something else entirely.
When Zara’s magic finally recedes, it leaves behind the ghost of its touch—cool dew settling on scorched earth, the scent of petrichor clinging to my skin. The wound is gone, but her magic lingers, an untamed force that refuses to be ignored.
