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Leave him. Get your brother. Forge your path.
“I will heal you,” she promised, trying not to listen to the voice. “I can heal you.”
She directed her magic toward his stomach, then cried out in stupefaction when the wisps grew thicker and blocked every inch of energy from reaching him. She tried again and again until the wisps pushed her back, then clenched her jaw and shouldered her way stubbornly toward him. Desperation seized her as Maddox was unresponsive over the commotion, his skin turning even paler and his breathing faint now. When she finally broke through and reached him, something inside her stopped beating at the feel of his still pulse and heart.
“Mad. Come back. Please come back.”
She punched the magic again, but nothing stuck to him. The wisps didn’t even bother pulling her back anymore, resigned to his fate. When the cold seeped from his body to hers, she stopped reaching for her magic and lay down beside him, pressing a palm over his wound.
“Please, Mad. Please.”
There was silence. There was pain, trumping the rest until it felt like it would consume her. She had done this. She had made a power play without thinking of the consequences, then had let herself be consumed by her negative emotions until they polluted her magic. Sapphire was right. Now all she had was darkness, and the man she loved was gone.
“I love you.”
She loved him. She saw everything clearly now, from the way he told her sisters out of concern to every moment he spent with her just because he wanted to be with her. It had not been about sex alone, not even about friendship. It had been a connection they couldn’t see from the start, but now she realized she would have fought for him, and he would have done the same.
“I’m sorry. I love you. I love you so much.”
Hands reached out, wrapping around her waist. She looked down at Maddox, whose blue-black eyes were weak with pain but bored into her with so much intensity. His words were just as faint, hanging by a thread of life.
“Fight it,” he whispered. “Use the good in you. I know it’s there. I know…I know you are there.”
Ignore him. Kill him. He is a burden, and you are meant for greater things. Forge your path.
Her energy trembled, torn. The wisps pressed against it, cold steeliness holding it down. It held her down, too, until she couldn’t move, not even to hug him back.
Forge your path. You can do it. Show them what they are missing. Make them regret everything they have said and done.
Maddox disappeared, and the insults hurled at her were replayed in slow motion. The fury returned, a life force that wanted to drown everything out as it had before…like it had all the time.
Forge your path. Open that hole and show them no mercy.
Her hands fisted and her head hung. She closed her eyes but couldn’t will the malicious words and the emotion away.
Forge your path.
Her hand opened. So did her eyes.
Forge your—
She grabbed her fury and threw it as she had in the past. But this time, she threw it inside her and punched the black wisps fluttering around in her system. The wisps jerked back, taken aback. The loosening of her energy was enough for her to reach into it, diving as deep as she could until she found it: that faint spark that felt pure and was buried into non-existence in the most hushed corner of her soul. Ruby cried out as she squeezed it back to life and hauled it up until it crashed into her bloodstream. She punched again—and this time, it hit the wisps harder as magic sang and flowed out of her like a rainstorm.
It destroyed the black wisps in her body inch by inch, her fury the instrument that drove it to keep going. Then it spilled out and caught the black wisps surrounding her, starting from her feet and extending to the ones curled at her magical barrier.
The attack went on and on, taking its toll on her body and mind until she couldn’t keep her composure. But the arms wrapped around her held firm even when she collapsed, and the physical connection had her magic pouring out toward him, too. Without even seeing it, she knew she was healing his wounds. She pushed more, shoving everything she had into the darkness and him until she heard it: the last scream of the dying, shriveling dark energy inside her.
The fury flipped off like a switch, gone. Her shoulders slumped and her mind went blank, unable to believe that it was gone. But it was. She could detect the energy that attacked it returning to her body but not pushing her to do anything. This was hers—not the ship’s, not borrowed, and not related to the dark magic. This washermagic, the one she had lost and found again.
“Ruby?”
“Hmm?”
Ruby glanced at his stomach automatically, in awe at the circular scar and lack of a hole. But his fingers nudged her face up until she was looking at him.
“I love you, too.”
Ruby lost her strength, but for a different—and much better—reason. Then it jumpstarted as he went on.
