Chapter L. Domenic
L
DOMENIC
WINTER
Like two stars colliding, the end began.
Magic exploded across the grove, and wherever the ice devoured, there was fire to melt it, then water to douse it.
Back and forth, their battle waged. The trees leaned in close as if to watch, even as the leaves were wrenched from their canopies, as the weight of icicles snapped their branches from their boughs and flames scorched their bark until they warped and crumbled into cinders.
Uncontained, their duel could make a wasteland of the world.
Domenic had always known his power to be great. Yet to feel it and to witness it were two separate things entirely. With a single moment of distraction, he could carve a gorge across the continent. He could shatter the very sky.
I will shield Gallamere, he promised.
Her death will be painless, he promised.
I will save everyone, he promised.
Yet as the storm beyond the eye worsened, as spell after spell was thrown, still neither he nor Ellery had come close to achieving a killing blow. It was too much to manage all three.
Anguished, Domenic let the sanctuary he’d cast over the city fade. He apologized to Ellery in his heart. For all his vast, devastating power, he was still making promises he was doomed to break.
He could keep one.