I open my eyes, meeting hers. Zara’s face is pale, her breaths shallow, and her trembling hands fall away from me. But her magic is still there, rooted deep within me, a reminder that what she’s given can never be undone.
“There,” she mutters, wiping her bloody palms on her thighs. “Now you can be a bastard a little longer.”
“Charming bedside manner, Zara.”
She smirks but doesn’t rise to the bait. Zara collapses onto her back, her head tilted toward the sky that’s streaked with ash that I only see because of my magic. Her breaths are shallow, each one hitching as she fights to hold herself together, and her heartbeat is so faint that I can barely hear it.
But I hear the world break around us. There’s carnage and beauty in the destruction, a force utterly foreign to everything I know. I hear the cracks of branches stretching skyward and the whisper of leaves caressed by a summer breeze. This hasn’t been done with the precision of warlock magic. This is chaos, and this force answers only to itself, blooming and withering in the same breath as its roots press deeper and it renews itself, starting all over again.
There’s life and death, agony and relief, and the solid ground turns molten as the forest and this inferno intertwine. The aftermath of Zara’s magic breaks around us, seeking all its greedy dark desires, and the world bends to its will, offering itself up as if it were a sacrificial lamb.
A fragile silence sits between us, as it lies between heaven and the earth below it. The angels watch in awe, weeping tearsfor a girl who looks as pure as the first flurries of snow but is as corrupted as the pits of hell, and their song is a rhapsody sung with only the good notes. Only the right ones. All for a girl who’s brought destruction to their master’s creation and doesn’t deserve the sympathy.
I don’t thank her.
She doesn’t ask for it.
Zara’s eyelids become too heavy for her and she drifts into a fitful sleep, her body curled against the blackened ground like she belongs to the chaos she’s created. Her hair looks white against the scorched earth, somehow even paler than her skin. Even purer too, and the faintest shimmer of moonlight gives her an ethereal glow that steals my breath and makes my heart beat stronger as it fights to prove its worth.
I can’t take my eyes off her.
I can’t bear to keep staring at her.
The minutes bleed into hours and I lose myself in a dream that may as well be a nightmare. Her presence lingers in my thoughts, a haunting melody I don’t think I’ll ever silence. Zara, lying amidst the ruin she wrought, looks more like a fallen star than a girl—a fragment of heaven cast down to smolder on scorched earth. The contrast is too much to reconcile and I cannot fathom how someone can look so angelic while being capable of such destruction.
Pain wrenches in my chest, and it isn’t physical. There’s a deeper hurt and I’m not ready to hear its truth. I’m certainly not prepared to witness it nor surrender to its folly.
This quiet cannot last.
She can’t endure the world I inhabit. It’s too harsh for her and she won’t conform to its rules and protocols. Zara barely tolerates me and I’m certain she won’t survive its restraint and formality, or its order and politics. The girl has no head for intrigue and she’ll be far too vulnerable to the infighting andbackstabbing as warlocks vie for power and she’s a weakness I cannot afford. She didn’t ask for this and I don’t want it, and the only way to save her is to leave her to her own devices.
It isn’t running away.
It isn’t even abandoning her.
Both would be spineless and I may be many despicable things, but a coward isn’t one of them. The weave will understand that I’m protecting her and I step backward, convinced I’m doing this for her good and not mine.
I can’t do this with her.
I can’t stay with her.
An iron vice wraps around my chest and I step away again. My breath stutters, the air refusing to fill my lungs as magic seethes in warning. The blood weave explodes through me like a firestorm, racing along every nerve, scorching everything it touches. My body jerks, muscles locking as if I’m a marionette being dragged along by invisible strings. Each step I take away from Zara is met with an onslaught of fury from the weave—a torrent of magic that feels alive, sentient, and utterly enraged by my defiance.
The agony is unlike anything I’ve felt before.
It isn’t a clean pain. It’s jagged and brutal, burrowing into me like a thousand claws. The magic doesn’t just burn; it ravages. It tears into my chest, coils around my ribs, and claws at my spine, each pulse a violent reprimand. The world narrows to the sheer, unbearable force of it, a cacophony of fire and blood that drowns out even my own ragged breaths.
I sprint away and fight against the blood weave, summoning every ounce of magic to push it back. I reach for the blocks that build the world around us, the tiny atoms and the scaffolding, demanding they rearrange matter in my design. I insist on order, and I enforce discipline. I command the elements and yet my legs falter beneath me and my magicfails me, buckling in the same way as my knees.
The ground beneath me trembles, cracked earth splintering like glass as the weave demands my compliance. I slam a fist into the ground, channeling every ounce of my rage into holding my position. My magic surges again, raw and volatile, but the weave answers with unrelenting force. The backlash slams into me like a hammer, and I cry out, the sound swallowed by the roar of blood pounding in my ears.
“You think you can break me?” I snarl, my voice a harsh rasp. My vision blurs, the edges of the world flickering with dark tendrils of pain, but I refuse to give in.
The weave answers with fire. Not literal flames, but something worse—heat that flares inside me, white-hot and searing. It burns through my chest, spreading outward like molten lava. My heart stutters, each beat a jarring, uneven thud as the magic constricts around it, squeezing until I can’t breathe.
I claw at my chest, gasping for air, but the weave’s grip doesn’t relent. It digs deeper, slicing through my resolve with every brutal pulse. My magic screams in protest, but it’s not enough. The weave is a force of nature, an unyielding storm that cannot be reasoned with or resisted.
“I won’t do this!” I choke out, though the words are hollow.
