The impact sent him stumbling.
He exploded upward in a burst of lightning, throwing Thorne back to the cold floor.
But Thorne didn’t fall. He struck again, and again.
Pathetic.
This creature—this self-proclaimed god, this nightmare carved from my childhood—fell to the marble floor like a discardedpuppet. Naked, bloodied, crawling toward me with shaking limbs and eyes wide withneed.
“Elira,” he whimpered, reaching for me. “Elira…”
As if I would save him.
As if I hadn’talready decidedto watch him burn.
The forcefield around Maddie cracked, then shattered like glass.
The monk holding her roared and lunged—but Maddie was faster.
Her vines exploded from the ground in a snarl of rage, wrapping the zealot in thorns andslamminghim into the stone wall so hard the entire altar shook.
I scrambled to my feet, blood slick in my mouth and rage like fire in my throat.
“Enough.” I whispered.
My shadows answered like a flood.
They poured from my skin—howling, writhing, roaring around me in a building spiral of black.
Vael staggered, blood dripping from him in rivers, one hand raised to me like a lover pleading for mercy. “You…loveme,” he said, voice shaking. “I know you do. Iknow it—I’ll prove it.”
He screamed and hurled bolt after bolt of lightning at Thorne—wild, frantic, blistering hot with blue fire.
Thornemoved.
Not with panic, not with fear—but with the grace of a man born to the blade. His sword danced, a blur of silver meeting blue. One strike—clang—he deflected the first bolt. A pivot, a downward arc—crack—the second sizzled off his blade and split the floor.
His body was a weapon. His will, unbreakable.
He met each flash of lightning with sheer steel and sheer defiance—until the third bolt struck home.
Thorne flew back with a crack of thunder—but even as he hit the wall, his eyes stayed locked on mine.
Vael raised a bolt of lightning—aimed straight at Thorne’s heart.
No.
He would not take him
He would not take anything from me ever again.
My wild magic surged—an inferno inside my bones.
Ilet it go.
I screamed.
A sound torn from the deepest place inside me. Raw. Primal. Devastating.
