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Logan grabs my arm.

And then, the creature strikes.

25

JADE

Lightning tears out of my hands toward the creature, the force of it shoving me backward into Logan’s chest so hard that the boat rocks and my feet slide on the wet wood. Electricity drains from my core in a flood, and the emptying sensation is so violent that my vision tunnels, my lungs seize, and every nerve in my body fires at once.

Logan’s fire joins my electricity, wrapping around it, his wind pushing the combined blast forward. The relief of his magic alongside mine is so intense that my fingers find his arm behind me and grip hard.

But there’s a drain in my palms, a sucking sensation, as if the creature’s body is a vacuum and my lightning is being swallowed whole. The flow of magic from my chest to my hands accelerates against my will, faster and harder, and the thing is drinking my storm energy with a hunger so strong that my electricity is leaving my body faster than I’m pushing it out.

“Stop!” Logan’s hands close around my wrists and force my palms down.

My electricity cuts off. The absence of the flow makes my chest cave inward, and the next thing I know, I’m on my knees in the boat.

I look up, and my stomach drops out of my body.

The creature has doubled in size. Its head alone is wider than our boat now. Its scales are blazing with my stolen lightning, and its eyes are brighter than before, locked on me as its body continues to swell.

It raises its head and slams its full weight into me before I can even think to move.

The impact hits the top of my skull first, then drives down through my spine, and my legs fold under me. My ribs crack—one, two, three—a rapid succession of snaps I feel more than hear, and the pain arrives, white and total. My lungs won’t fill. My scream comes out as air, because screaming needs breath, and the creature’s weight has flattened it out of me.

The world narrows to a gray tunnel, and somewhere inside it, Logan roars my name with more fury in it than I’ve ever heard from him. Heat erupts against my crushed chest, his arms somehow beneath me, around me, and then⁠—

Black fire howls with a sound that makes the air scream, and the vortex seizes us. My organs rearrange themselves inside what remains of my chest. My heartbeat echoes in a void that exists everywhere and nowhere at once, the taste of ash floods my mouth, and the pulling sensation is so violent I’m certain my body is going to tear apart before it reaches whatever moment Logan is dragging us toward.

I blink, and my hands are gripping the sides of an intact boat. The mist is thick around us, the lake flat and gray. My ribs are whole, and my lungs are full of air, but I can’t stop shaking, because the phantom pain is everywhere. My nerves are firing the crack-crack-crack of bones folding inward. My lungs are seizing against a weight that isn’t there anymore. Electricity races across my arms and through my fingers, scorching the wood, and I can’t make it stop.

Cool hands press against my cheeks, and Logan drops his forehead against mine. The contact sends my electricity flooding into his face in a surge that makes him take that sharp breath inward, and the sound of it pulls me forward, because that breath is real and belongs to this timeline—not to the one where a monster-head smashed me to a pulp.

“Glass sphere,” he says against my mouth, close enough that I can feel the shape of the words on my lips. “Build it. Now.”

It’s his training voice, the one from the Scorched Circles that bypasses my brain and goes straight to muscle memory. So, I close my eyes and picture the sphere in my chest, smooth and clear. As it forms, the electricity racing along my arms slows, and my breathing drops from frantic to ragged.

“Good.” Logan’s thumbs trace my cheekbones, and the intimacy of being held while the memory of death is ringing through my body makes my chest ache in a way that has nothing to do with phantom broken ribs. “Keep holding it. We have a few minutes before the drakon surfaces.”

“A few minutes before it kills us.”

“A few minutes before we try a different approach.” His nose brushes mine, and my electricity jumps between our skin, warm and grounding. “Lightning feeds it. So this time, you hold your electricity back. All of it. I’ll use fire and air.”

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“Then I bring us back, and we try again.” His thumbs keep moving on my cheekbones, slow and steady, and my breathing matches his rhythm.

“Okay.” My fingers tighten on his wrists, because touching him is real, and I need real more than ever.

His mouth shifts against the space near mine, close enough that I could close the gap with a fraction of a movement. And for one second, the creature, the mist, and the Storm Sword disappear, and there’s only the warmth of Logan’s breath and the cool press of his skin.

Then the water vibrates beneath us.

My whole body goes rigid. The glass sphere flickers, and lightning crackles up my forearms before I wrestle it under control.

“It’s coming,” I whisper against his mouth.

His hands drop from my face, and he picks up the oars.