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"Avie," Dev breathed, reaching to take it from me.
I wrenched my hand away. "I started this by killing him, Dev." I met his eyes and stared even as the ground exploded behind us. "I don't care what this does to me—"
"I do," he growled.
"I have to do this."
"Not alone," he argued, digging his fingers into my chin, refusing to look away from me. My stomach knotted. Panic hit me from Joseph's soul, from X's. My soul might have been a shattered mess, buttheywere holding me together.
"Not alone," I agreed, and swallowed the lump in my throat.
I should have expected the grass to explode from under us, should have been ready for it, but I screamed my throat hoarse when it blasted us apart.
I hurtled across the fairground, colours and lights running together in my vision until I slammed into the side of the helter skelter with a low groan.
"First grape trees," I moaned, pain mounting with the fire roaring inside me, "and nowgrass?It's official. I hate nature."
"Swear me in!" Dev bellowed from somewhere across the fairground. I could no longer see him. "Taj!"
"Coming!" Taj yelled back.
I pulled myself up until my back was propped against the wooden board behind me, rubbing the side of my head where a lump would form within minutes. Taj had a point. How did Inothave brain damage?
Swear me in…Swear him into what? This wasn't the time to be joining the boy scouts, but who was I to judge?
I cursed deep in my throat when I pushed myself off the ground, grabbing the railing of the helter skelter behind myself when my legs erupted with fire—literally. Flames razed through muscle and bone, and flickered down my leather trousers on the outside.
Holy shit, I was the Human Torch.
My hand melted the railing I leant against, and I tore my fingers away from the molten metal, splaying my legs for balance. It was alook.Verycalf that’s just been born.Everyone would be doing this pose by next year; I was setting a trend right now.
I squeezed my fingers around the tiny crown in my palm—unmelted because of course—and took a very graceful step.2If anyone was watching me walk painfully from the helter skelter through the fair in search of my mates, they might have thought I was a human evolutionary poster come to life. With every step, I got a little stronger, walked a little straighter.
A pit exploded two metres away, blasting apart an abandoned ring toss game, and I screamed as bits of wood shot through the air like vicious, sharpened stakes.
"Not a vampire!" I screeched. "Don't stake me!"
I crouched low, throwing out my arms—and lifted my head at the sound of shattering wood only inches away. Uhhh … what was this? Where did this dome of fire come from?
I laughed nervously, reaching out to brush my fingers over it—and hissing at the blistering temperature.
If this was my magic, why was it burning me, dammit?
Because it's not yours,Dev replied, as if I'd asked him. His low, rumbly voice was like a blanket of shadows thrown over my raging soul, and I sucked in a relieved breath.It belongs to the infernal relics; it always has.
"Well, fuck," I muttered, and stared at the shards of wood that had jammed into my dome of fire. They would have pierced me,killedme, if the magic hadn't responded instinctively. "Thanks, relics," I whispered.
"Drop the shield, Aveline," a broken voice rasped.
I lifted my head, expecting one of my mates. A jagged gasp bruised my raw throat as I stared at the ruin where the ring toss booth had been. Where Eidolon now stood, with his scaly hand holding Arkan to him. A clear, unbearable threat.
"Ark…" I breathed, stumbling to my feet, shaking so hard the pain rattled inside me, making me hiss.
His pale blue eyes burned into me, ordering me to keep to the plan, but the plan had gone out the window the second I saw Eidolon holding him. My heart slammed against my bruised ribs, my fractured soul slipping, falling further apart until pain jammed through the cracks.
I felt each of my mates flinch, butseeingArkan recoil in front of me twisted my heart.
"Hey, fun fact," I breathed, taking a step closer and waving a hand at the bubble of fire to disperse it. It didn't work. Typical. "When you hold one of the infernal relics and all its power goes into you, it literally snaps your soul in two. I'd avoid it if I were you," I told Eidolon.
