Chapter 14
14
LULU
Drawing in a deep breath, I looked around the empty space. The air was still cold, made more frigid by the lifelessness of the house I’d retreated to at the outskirts of the Narodnaya territory. I hadn’t been here in years, but after what had happened, it had seemed like the best place for me to try and get myself under control.
Death tasted like honey and wine on my tongue, and even now, I could feel the magic of the elemental I had battled days earlier as it heightened my own, swelling it to overfilling. It was heady and addictive, and I needed to get control of myself before I went hunting for more.
In the two days since I’d left home, I’d come to a lot of grim realizations.
My mother had clearly been suppressing my powers.
I’d left all of her gifts at home, and with each step I took away from Narodnaya, I felt those powers coming back. They crept in like shadows in the night, slithering and insidious as they surrounded me.
And with it had come memories of a life I wished I could forget.
The screams of the men in the cave. The way their souls tasted as my shadow beasts absorbed them. The thrill of wielding a power that seemed to have no limitations. The way Jack’s eyes had widened in fear.
I’d tasted his death, imminent and taunting. Even now, the echoes of his fear lingered in my blood, twisted in my gut.
My stomach growled, and I wasn’t entirely sure if it was because I hadn’t eaten in days now or because my hunger was for something else.
I tipped my head back against the wall where I sat on the floor, my back pressed against the cracked plaster of the abandoned shack. I focused on the bite in the air, the way the wind moved across the world, around me.
I just needed to ride this out like a junkie coming down from a fix.
And then I’d go cold turkey.
Again.
I’d done this before. Granted, I’d been a kid who had unknowingly tapped into her powers with zero sense of control, but I’d figured it out then, and I’d figure it out now.
Hopefully it wouldn’t take almost a year like last time.
A thread that was forever twined around my heart tightened to the point of pain. I gasped and rubbed my chest, feeling that familiar bond.
Feeling him .
Closing my eyes, I let a few tears leak out as I dropped my head against the wall with a thunk that made my skull ache. I would never stop wanting what I could never have. Even when I let my brain rationalize all the ways it went wrong, my heart was eternally bound to Dimitri Dashkov.
And the bitch was, I’d done it to myself.
Sure, I hadn’t known what I was doing in that cave almost ten years earlier, but it didn’t change the fact that I’d altered the course of both of our lives that night.
I hated myself almost every day since because of it. In one foolish, reckless moment, I’d crushed any chance either of us had for a happily ever after. Maybe it was what I deserved, but Dimitri… he didn’t.
“Fuck,” I whispered to the empty room. Drawing my knees up to my chest, I braced my elbows on them and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes to staunch the flow of tears.
This wasn’t helping anyone.
I needed to get my power back under control and ready to use to help people. Helping people was the only way to atone for… Well, not for myself, but maybe I could make a dent in the sins of everyone else like me who had caused so much death and destruction.
Natasha, Dimitri’s mother, who had all but become my mother in the last decade, frequently chastised me for taking on the actions of my ancestors as my own. She tried every way she knew how to get me to let go of the past and live for myself, but she didn’t understand what it was like living with the knowledge that one teensy, tiny slip could cost dozens of innocent people their lives.
A sharp pinch in my side made me gasp, and I could feel myself slipping. Feel the barriers I’d spent years cultivating and creating begin to crack and crumble.
I shoved myself up onto my feet and lurched out the front door of the shack. The sun was bright overhead, and the wind coming off the Ural mountains was fresh and brisk. Even in early summer, at this altitude and with the bitter winter we’d had, there was still a bite in the air.
One that I felt, dressed in a thin tank top, cut off jean shorts, and a pair of sneakers.
But I needed to feel that snap of cold as it crashed against my body, reminding me of where I was. It helped clear my head, but I still dropped to my hands and knees in the new grass. The shoots tickled my palms as I dug my fingers into the soil and reached for the other side of my power—the side that connected me to the earth.
That part of me, the part I’d inherited from my mother, wasn’t the problem.
No, my downfall was that my father had been one of the rare, nearly extinct, elementals who was able to control spirits. Or, in other words, anything that had a life force. In absorbing the life force of others, that power grew.
And once you started, it was like the strongest kind of addiction.
But it was destructive, and there was no stopping once you started. Once you tasted your first soul, that awoke a dark and dangerous power that knew no bounds. It never stopped craving more.
And I could feel my tenuous hold on my spirit magic starting to fray. It was slipping. I was slipping.
The last time that had happened, I’d killed a dozen men and bound Dimitri to me for the rest of our lives.
I closed my eyes and tapped into the earth, ignoring the buzzing spirit energy that fizzed like pop rocks in my blood. Earth energy was calm, nurturing. For lack of a better word, grounding .
I focused on the fresh blades of grass, each individual one had its own essence that connected to me. Through the rumblings of the ground, I sensed the rivers and lakes tucked amongst the mountain range. The cliffs that had been formed centuries earlier and had seen more life come and go in their time than I ever would.
Earth was forgiving and accepting. It allowed for mistakes and offered the chance of rebirth and renewal.
Gods, my soul craved renewal.
Without thinking, I pushed my power further, touching the edges of Narodnaya. I could sense the people there. When my spirit energy tried to overlap with my earth power, I slammed a steel wall down and cut the connection to the town and the people in it.
My eyes snapped open with a ragged gasp.
That had been close. I hadn’t even been considering people and then there they were. Their souls were bright, shiny beacons in the darkness of my own mind. It was nature to seek their light.
And it was my nature to want to swallow that light whole.
I stood up with a hiss, my hands balled into fists at my sides as the wind tossed my black hair around my face.
This wasn’t working.
I needed more.
I needed…
Fuck.
I needed him .
Before I could stop myself, the silent plea rang out in the bond between us, and I felt him react. Felt him immediately moving toward me from miles away.
Then again, because of what I’d done, he had no choice.
I’d bound Dimitri to myself when we were children, and that wasn’t something I could ever undo. He and I were linked together for the rest of our lives.
Until one of us died.