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I cast a doubtful look at the sweating, bleeding man, who didn’t look like he had control over his magic... or his bowels. Joachim’s lips peeled back in a snarl. Nasty to the last.
“He must have found a way to take over your powers, if Kallus’s enchantment is controlling the Scourge,” Tal said. “Can you get control over them again?”
“Yeah,” Branok said impatiently. “Stop the Scourge from overwhelming us. We’ll figure it out later.”
I tried to reach out to the Scourge. But they were wild with bloodlust, and I couldn’t get them to stop no matter how I struggled. Zehr was in my ear, trying to help me make them fall asleep.
My wild magic that had always come to my defense before seemed slippery too. I couldn’t even summon it to knock out the Scourge as they swarmed over the house, tearing off the roof.
“We’ll have to shadow travel,” Zehr said urgently. It would take Zehr and I time to get all of the Royals out of here.
Joachim gloated behind me. “Kallus fed you that story about your mother stuff… And you fell for it better than I even dreamed.”
I turned him in horror. Branok moved toward him, murder in his eyes. But Arren got there first. He punched Joachim across the face.
I cried out for them to stop. “We still need him alive.”
Damyn grabbed his sword and headed for the door as the Scourge broke it open. But Talisyn was already there, and I grabbed Damyn. “Please help Branok. Don’t leave him to do this alone. Not to his father.”
Damyn’s tension was written in every line of his tautly muscled body—he wanted to be in the fight—but after a second, he nodded. He turned back to help Branok.
Scourge broke through the window. I ran to kill them, and Branok joined me, the two of us cutting down the Scourge until we finally had a heartbeat and could use magic to seal the opening.
I turned back to where Damyn was struggling with Joachim. Damyn’s magic glowed around them both, heating the room until it felt like an oven.
A Scourge dropped through the window, its talons wrapped around a dragon knight. Branok swore and started toward them both.
I was sure my uncle had a hand in Joachim’s strength—and I was sure he wasn’t doing Joachim any favors. Joachim looked as if he was being ripped apart by the magic as the spells resisted Damyn’s power.
I ran to join Damyn. “Take my magic. We can’t hold out forever. Together you can break through even Kallus’s spells.”
Damyn cast a look toward me that was full of protective fire. He didn’t want me spending my magic in the midst of a battle.
“We have to get Lynx back,” I said, and whatever he saw in my face, Damyn relented.
“How?”
I grabbed Damyn’s powerful shoulder to pour my magic into him. His hands flared with new magic. The bubble around us grew hotter, painfully so. Joachim screamed, a terrified, deeper scream than ever before.
Magic burned under my skin, powerful and wild, the way it had before it exploded. But now I could focus it, feel it flowing into Damyn, into the spell.
Damyn let out a grunt of pain as the magic flowed through him, and my hand felt as if it were burning against his shoulder.
Damyn’s thoughts pressed against mine. His fears that seeing Joachim tortured would tear open old wounds and that I would hate him for what he had done flowed into my mind. And I couldn’t stop myself from answering in a stream of images. My fear of the Scourge I was supposed to control and of my own weakness when I couldn’t grasp them. My fury at Joachim. The part of me that feared he was right, that deep inside, I was locked away inside the tower cell and that I always would be.
Damyn let out a cry of pain. I looked down to realize his shirt had disintegrated between my palm and his shoulder; my hand was against his bare skin, and both were glowing.
My mark was written across his powerful shoulder. His pain ebbed, and I stared in shock and amazement as what I’d done.
Our thoughts were flowing freely between each other now, a wild rush of images we both would have hidden from each other if we could. Damyn’s memory of me as the pathetic child Joachim had described, slack-jawed and empty-eyed. His desperation to help me. His pride when he saw me in the temple, transformed into a dragon, mixed with a flash of pain that I didn’t recognize him.
And I feared too much of my own soul was bared to him. But the magic had us both in its grip now and it would not stop.
Damyn wrapped his arm round me, drawing me close against his chest. His lips dipped to my ear, and I could feel his need to protect me from everything I’d just seen, the pulse of his possession. It lit my body with the same fire that ran through his blood.
He let out a protective roar, then dipped his head against my shoulder. His teeth gripped me through the tunic, pressing down painfully, and my back arched as desire sparked through me.
The spell fractured with a crack that shook the room.
