Through the ringing in my ears, I hear Holden scream —not in pain, but infury.
Forcing my head up, blinking through the spots swimming across my vision, I can see that the prism’s surface is a web of fractures now, with light bleeding through each crack like something alive trying to escape. The ward is down. The cornerstone is vulnerable.
And Holden knows it.
He abandons all pretense of tactics. Xander’s next strike glances off his hastily thrown light shield as he pivots toward the prism, both hands outstretched.
His face twists with desperate rage. “NO!”
Power continues to surge through the salt circuit, but it’s gone haywire now. It’s utterly chaotic. The lines that once flowed with precise geometric rhythm are flooding with light that sparks and flashes erratically, building toward a breaking point.
Holden doesn’t seem to care about the danger.
He’s pulling —dragging— energy through the exposed prism like a man dying of thirst, forcing the ritual toward completion before we can stop him. Green-white light pours intohis chest, his eyes, his open mouth. His back arches. His robes billow in a wind that exists only for him.
Too much. He’s taking too much too fast.
The realization comes to me through the fog clouding my thoughts. The prism can’t handle this.Hecan’t handle this. But he’s beyond reason now, beyond strategy, driven by nothing but the desperate need to finish what he started.
My entire body fights me like I’ve been hit by a garbage truck, but I force myself to focus.
The charm throbs against my palm, its growing warmth indicating that it’s reaching critical mass. The pattern is burned into my memory.
One last pulse left. . .
I search in my mind for my link to Rhiannon. It feels like pushing through wet concrete, every thought fighting the static filling my skull. But I find her.
RHIANNON—NOW!
She receives my message. Her muscles coil, and she launches into the air, blade arcing toward the prism.
My fingers grip the charm as it erupts.
White fire races up my arm, through my shoulder, into my chest. Every nerve ending screams. The crystal blazes so bright I can’t see my own hand holding it, can’t see anything but pure, blinding white swallowing the world whole.
My vision tunnels to a pinpoint of light.
The roaring in my ears swallows everything else.
And I’m gone.
Chapter 43 — Rhiannon
Holden stands at the center of his crumbling ritual, power pouring into him in torrents that make his skin glow from within. His eyes have gone completely white, his pupils swallowed by stolen magic. He’s beyond reach now. Nothing but a vessel trying to contain an ocean.
My head whips toward Ethan the instant he falls.
Every instinct screams at me to abandon the plan and get to him. My wolf throws herself against my ribcage, clawing to reach our mate, to protect what’s ours.
But I’m the Commander first.
I reach through the bond instead, pushing past the static and chaos flooding the connection. For one terrible moment, I feel nothing. Hear nothing.
But then. . .there.
Faint. Battered. But present.
His heartbeat pulses against my awareness, weak but steady. His breath comes shallow and ragged, but it comes.
