That she was…
"Focus," Vale ordered.
The Binding mark on her chest pulsed, and she stared into his eyes, unable to look away.
"You will stop this now. I demand it." The King’s voice was quiet, laced with simmering embers.
As the mark that kept her will bound to his thrummed, Luella winced.
This time, she was unable to obey.
The magic imbued into the tattoo inked right over her heart was no match for her power—forherwill. She superseded him in this aspect.
Why did she want to smile?
But she didn’t, she only clung to him harder, desperate to be moored amid the raging storm. The wind was only growing in intensity, the rain falling faster, harder. It stung her skin.
Vale held her closer against him, keeping her safe as best as he was able, as he demanded she call it back:
"Luella, rein in your power, and cease your storm." Vale’s strong hands, warm like fire, wrapped around her, careful ofher back. She was limp in his hold, save for her unyielding grip against his shirt. Her fingers ached from the force with which she held onto him. "Or we will all die here tonight." His rings cut into her ribs as he held her with equal possession. She shook against him, the air too loud for her to think, to doanything, except focus on the storm and him—him and the storm. "Do not let this be your end, darling. You were made to burn, not be snuffed out by wind and water."
Her lips brushed his chest as she spoke, voice tremulous, "I can’t stop it. It won’t listen to me."
He stilled, a brief pause in a world of chaos. "I am ordering you, call it back."
She felt as the Binding mark throbbed, growing more intense, but something strange happened: it did not build into a deeper ache to force acquiescence from her. It pulsed just once. A gentle understanding, cowed by her might, then stopped altogether, forced to become small in the face of her fury.
Vale did not relent. He spoke again. And again, voice growing more furious, just as the wind whipping through the watery depths of the throne room, carrying the tides of the ocean, grew more violent.
"Stop." The scales slowly overtaking Vale’s flesh burned as the rigid silkiness rubbed against her. "I demand you.Stop."
Hurting, aching.
He had promised. One more show, and she would be able to rest. Could she not still be granted such serenity?
The well inside her pulsed, seeping outward too fast for her to keep track of. Simultaneously, the wind roared, the stone walls groaned dangerously, and the five males around her tensed, their fear flowing down the invisible threads binding them.
Vale huffed out smoke, reaching down to grip her cheeks with bruising force as he pulled her face from where she hadtucked it against his chest, seeking out the comforting blindness of unknowing.
As he tilted her face up to his, her neck twinged with pain, sending shooting bolts down her spine and out to her fragile, shivering wings.
This close, she could count the individual flecks of darker emerald in his eyes, see the way his pupils shifted slightly, growing more elongated the longer he stared at her.
"Stop," Vale ordered.
Not angry, not violent; sad and tired and done withthis—ready to be done with it all—Luella simply said:
"No."
"No?" Smoke wafted from Vale’s nostrils in dark grey plumes. "What do you mean,no?"
If the orchestra had still been playing, the musicians would have come to a screeching halt at the quiet fury laced between his words.
The hand on her face grew painful. She winced. The pain was nothing compared to the growing mass of agony at her back. She felt blood slip down her spine. Could Bastian taste the scent of her in the air? Or was the salty storm obscuring the iron tang of her lifeforce?
It was taking everything in her not to give in to the surging pain inside her.
Even so, she had started this. She would finish it.
