Lorik grabbed my free hand and pulled me toward him. I turned to Lorik as I kept the other one towards the air shield I had just created.
“Listen to me, Thea,” Lorik said, his voice challenging and urgent. “You don’t have air or ice magical traces. You can replicate magic.”
My eyes widened as I remembered my lessons with Headmaster Marvek. A magical trace believed long lost to history, one that had remained dormant for centuries.
“I suspected it beyond the Veil,” Lorik continued. “When you used electric charge to get out of my grip.”
I swallowed. I remembered I had gotten out of his grip, but I thought I had used fire to burn him.
“I didn’t think much of it then. But today, I felt your pain through our bond. You were breaking and then I felt your body regenerate and heal again and again. You took Marla Yung’s healing magical trace and used it as your own.”
I didn’t respond. I focused on holding the air shield as the wildweaver hurled magma at us, but the air was so dense that no heat or matter could penetrate it.
It was unheard of, and yet it made sense. I glanced down at the holes in my uniform. Acid rain had damaged it, yet my skin below was untouched.
The dome I had wielded in the meadow hadn’t been fire, it had been air. I had replicated Marla’s magic. The Siren had known. The island had known. That was my test all along, to test if I was an echo.
Then, all the pieces came together. We didn’t need a healer. “I can heal you as I healed myself,” my voice edged with hope.
“No, I’ll hold them as much as I can while you get yourself safe. I told Shakari and Rowan to bring reinforcements. They should be here soon.”
Beyond my air shield, the crimson dragon was now throwing its magma in our direction, applying more weight and pressure on my dome, but I didn’t flinch. I lifted my hand further in the air to strengthen the air around us as I looked back at Lorik.
“And here I was thinking you wouldn’t let me go,” I said, repeating with a smirk what he had promised me in the hall of mirrors. “Keep your damm promise, you stubborn Moonveil.”
I didn’t know how this magic worked, but I was going to try to heal him. I kept my left hand towards the air shield and hovered my right hand above his shattered leg.
Magic came from channeling emotion, so I drew a deep breath and anchored myself in everything raging inside me, my fear of losing, my yearning for this Moonveil, and the brutal urgency to save the life of the male who’d saved mine more times than I could count.
The male I’d fallen for despite his faction. The male I would lose my sanity for.
For a long heartbeat, nothing happened. Then, muscle and bone began to knit. Cracked bone was sealing, straightening, and setting as muscle fibers braided themselves back into place, rebuilding a shattered leg. The burned crater that once stood there closed and regenerated rapidly.
I had done it.
Blood still stained his skin and soaked his uniform, but he was safe. Our gazes caught and held, suspended in the space between breaths, neither of us knowing what to say and yet onecertainty slid through me, loosening every clenched muscle in my body: Lorik was going to make it.
“Can you move it?” I finally asked.
Lorik didn’t respond; he just stood up, lifting me with the hand that had healed him.
“It will hurt and burn for a while, but we have an asshole to kill,” he said with a smile that reached his eyes. “Thank you.”
I pushed the air shield towards the outside, commanding it as I would with fire, and it responded with a burst of air that pushed the solidified magma in all directions. The debris threw the wildweaver towards his dragon behind him.
“You messed with the wrong princess,” I screamed at Trivian as I drew fire into his chest, followed by Lorik, who aimed at him with his shadow.
The dragon, in protection of his master, created a wall of magma in front of Trivian that solidified in an instant, but our fire and shadow pierced it through.
We were strong, channeling rage and anger into our magic, making it stronger and deadlier. The wildweaver could only die from both fire and shadow magic.
Our faction's magic collided with the wildweaver’s body as he screamed in pain and agony. His screams were music to my ears after all he had put us through for centuries, at entering my island, at almost killing Lorik and injuring my friends. The parasite deserved worse than death itself.
Trivian’s face shriveled and cracked as he collapsed to his knees. It was as if our magic had dried him from the inside out. No screams came from him. His lungs crushed inward, leaving no air, no sound. His green eyes bulged in a body alreadyconsumed. I let myself savor the victory as he fell flat onto the magma-strewn debris below.
The dragon behind him roared as he stepped in our direction. Each step made the magma crush below his feet. The earth vibrated at the reaction of his massive body and relentless speed.
“Why isn’t it free?” I screamed in despair.
