“I still loved them,” I whisper.
“Love is a luxury and few can afford it. Your coven forfeited it when they chose ambition over loyalty.” The bitterness of his truth is a sharp, cold slap, but he doesn’t stop. “You’re trying to reconcile what you lost with what you’ve gained. Life’s ledger doesn’t work that way, Zara. There isn’t some balance between what you have and hold and what you lose. Stop fighting us, Zara. You belong here. With me.”
My chest tightens as the world closes in on me. Kade’s right, and it’s maddening. It’s predictable too, and I should hate him for it. My coven would have handed me over to anyone who promised them more power, and Kade wasn’t their punishment. He was their salvation from a far worse fate.
“I don’t…”
“You belong where you choose to, kitten.”
Kade leans forward, his hand reaching for mine. His touch is firm, warm, and for the briefest moment, I think I might shatter under the gentleness in his grip.
“Not all of us get to make this choice, Zara. You do. Accept it, and don’t look back.”
I never expected Kade’s honesty to be the most terrifying thing about him. His darkness is the kind they write stories about, the ones whispered over campfires and bound in forbidden books. He’s every cautionary tale, every grim warning about how a warlock’s ambition will eclipse his humanity. The lines he’s crossed aren’t blurred; they’re obliterated, smeared in blood and ash. He’s the darkest shadow lingering in the darkest night. The one who reminds them that the dark arts demand an even darker soul.
Yet I’m tied to the monster who’s scorched the world for power and would destroy it for me in a heartbeat—and those thoughts comfort me. The weight of his sins sits alongside mine, made unequal only because he’s lived longer. I’m no different from Kade, no less depraved, no less evil. The bonfire inside me roars as fiercely, devouring wood and whispers alike, as though it hungers for more and cannot be sated. I am the danger they warned him about, and neither of us can stay away.
“Why me?” I ask.
Kade smiles. “You’re as despicable as me, Zara.”
His words linger, curling through the air like smoke. Iwant to deny them, to push back against the idea that I could ever mirror the darkness that radiates from him, but he’s irrefutably right. There’s a reason my magic feels alive, a reason it feels predatory. A reason I barely flinched as my coven burned, and it’s why I’m not running from the man who lit the match.
Kade’s darkness isn’t an aberration. It’s an inevitability.
Power comes at a cost, and he’s paid the price willingly, over and over. I’m standing at the edge of my own abyss and I don’t doubt I’ll do the same. We are all capable of evil, but only the brave embrace it and call it their own. Only the courageous wield it, and only the fearless use it as their shield.
Power surges through my veins, glorious and terrible. I’m sure I’ll pay for this, but not yet. Not until it hurts the most. My magic stirs and it’s not the soft hum it was before, not the sharper tune it’s become now that it’s merged with Kade’s sorcery. It’s insistent, bitter. The bonfire I felt within grows hotter and brighter until it threatens to consume me from the inside out.
I clutch the blanket, but its warmth offers no comfort.
Kade notices immediately, his dark eyes narrowing as his smile fades.
“Zara.” His voice is low and full of concern. “What is it?”
I can’t answer.
My breath catches as the fire beneath my skin flares, searing through me in waves. I shake as my vision swims and for one wild, uncontrolled moment, I hear whispers of death and despair, low and unintelligible, but full of malice.
“I don’t know,” I choke out.
His hands grip my shoulders, trying to ground me.
“Focus,” he commands, his magic rushing toward mine like an unstoppable wave. It’s cold and calculating, and itpresses against the wild heart surging within me as it tries to hold it back.
But the fire doesn’t yield.
It burns brighter and it’s hungrier, as though it’s feeding off the magic Kade’s using to suppress it. The voracious tide of power swallows everything in its path and it washes up on the edges of my sanity, relentless and insatiable.
The High Mother said power was a test, and if I passed it then it was mine to command. She said I’d be consumed if I failed, and right now, I’m being burned alive.
Kade’s grip tightens as he tries to tether me to reality, but the magic surging within me isn’t something that can be contained. Not by him. Not by anyone. I gasp, the words tumbling out before I can stop them.
“You’re making it worse, Kade.”
His jaw clenches, but he doesn’t let go. “You think I can just stand back and watch you burn?”
The irony isn’t lost on me. Kade, the destroyer of worlds and covens, is trying to save me from annihilation. This isn’t about him saving me, and I don’t know if I can save myself from the force of nature raging through me. It’s pure and violent, neither good nor evil, a magic that simply is and it will become what I make of it.
