Chapter Fifty
His movements are mechanical, like a robot, always two steps ahead of mine.
He glares at me with eyes that are not his own, reflecting a version of myself I do not recognise.
Each step he takes towards me, there is a battle against his own will, his muscles coil with a darker energy he cannot control.
I watch his conscience try to breathe rationality into his decisions, but this metamorphosis is unforgiving and does not give it the oxygen it needs to survive.
“Ryder, I know you’re in there.” I try to reason with him, backing away from his towering frame.
His face contorts as he fights to speak, to warn me, but the words are trapped behind a wall of forced obedience.
“Ryder, you’re stronger than this.”
He does not reply, but his anger speaks for him through pursed lips and gritted teeth, and his steps do not hesitate. His hands, which once held me with tenderness, are now clenched tightly into fists, drawn towards me by an invisible force.
I watched him try to fight the urge to rip my head off. He screamed and begged me to kill him, but I couldn’t do it… and now he has lost the fight.
I try to keep my distance, to create space between us.
But this room is slowly squeezing the life out of me; the walls are like a vice, closing in on me.
He lunges again, his knuckles white with tension, aiming punches at me with force and purpose.
I duck and dodge and plaster myself on the far side of the wall.
I don’t want to hurt him. The man who made me fall for him has become a weapon against me.
My heart shatters with every twitch of his tormented face, every punch intended to crush my skull.
I know he does not mean it, but it still hurts, nevertheless.
My heart thumps in my chest as his being shifts, his shadows seeping out of his skin like black smoke.
He glares at me with rage, and I do not recognise him anymore.
With every involuntary movement, he is getting stronger and gunning with more force, losing the fight within himself.
I gulp. I know the power he possesses, and now it’s twisted and aimed at me, a grim reality settles in my stomach. To survive, I have to fight back.
“Ryder, this isn’t you… You have to fight it.” The words escape my lips but seep through the cracks of his mind, never quite reaching him.
“WAKE UP!” I scream at him, hope clinging to the tip of my tongue.
“Please.” I sob in a desperate plea to the man trapped within, tears blurring my vision, but his presence is unwavering, each step a relentless stride closer to me.
I armour myself behind the iron chair bolted into the ground and plead with him again - “Ryder! WAKE UP!”
But my words are snuffed out by the shadows.
Ryder stands, his deep purple eyes piercing into mine as hordes of shadows take on tentacle-like forms, spewing from his back, and orbs of light rotate around his being, breaking up the shadows. The world slows, and a lump forms in my throat. Ryder’s gone, and he’s not coming back anytime soon.
‘Asha, you have to fight!’ Oriah’s voice combats the walls of my mind. ‘He is not a true Star. You have the ability to win this.’
“I won’t kill him!” I fight back at the voice in my mind. “I won’t let them win.”
‘Don’t make me regret choosing you!’
The iron chair flings out of its bolts and crashes against the wall.
The shadows lob balls of light at me like bullets.
They whiz through the air fast, ricocheting off the walls.
I try to duck and dodge and Influence them back at him, but one hits me.
I wince as the feeling of a hot iron hammer to the chest takes the wind out of me.
I cough and splutter, the smell of burning flesh and cotton from my clothes sickening my senses.
‘Fight back!’ Oriah now pleads to me with desperation. ‘He might have light and dark, but he won’t have access to a portal. Use that to your advantage.’
I nod hesitantly, registering her words, unbending my posture and holding my chest. I feel stronger now, but I am conscious of the blood I have already lost. I use my portal to throw myself behind him and jam my elbow into his collarbone, before portalling back towards the other side of the room.
He is taken aback by this, clutching at his shoulder briefly before narrowing his eyes at me again.
The attack definitely weakened him for a second.
I do the same again and again, portalling close and jabbing him in the stomach, jaw and ribcage.
And then, his pressure points. He flinches back with each hit, and my heart heavies.
He screams in frustration and summons his shadows again to shield his body.
Dammit, I cannot portal through the shadows.
The shadows enlarge his already large frame, they stick to him like armour, spidering in and out like they are alive.
A spider’s leg reaches through the air and swipes my feet from beneath me.
I land on the marble floor with a thud and shuffle my way closer to the wall.
His presence looms over me, his eyes staring into mine as his shadows reach for me.
I shuffle further back until I feel the cold wall press against my warm back.
In this moment, I conjure shadows of my own to shield me from his.
‘No two shadows are the same; they do not mix.’ I remember his words the night he saved my life, the night that changed everything.
His face tenses as our shadow armour repels one another.
He stands inches away from me, our shadows not letting us touch.
I find myself getting lost in his features the way I used to, his sharp jawline, his dark eyes and black silky hair, the slight dust of freckles on the bridge of his nose.
He is still him. He protected me from Alex and helped me save River.
I have to help him. I owe him that much.
“I’m not killing you. So, I guess you’re just going to have to kill me.” I surrender to him, clinging to the hope that he is still in there somewhere.
I feel Oriah’s resistance, but I block her out and think back to the day he helped me find River. ‘For the wielders to gain control again, they had to enter their shadows and tame the beast from within.’
I lower my shadows, inviting him to lie on top of me.
“Ryder, you can beat this. To gain control, you have to tame the beast from within.”
My words shriek out with the hope that he’ll finally hear me, that the real him inside is fighting with me, not against me.
But as my shadows drop, his quickly take over, my back still pressed up against the wall.
His hands reach out and clasp tightly around my neck.
My breath hitches as his hands squeeze tighter.
But all I can think about is the familiar warmth of his touch.
I gasp for air, but his hand is crushing my windpipe, his eyes lost in a serum-induced madness.
My vision blurs slightly at the edges as I begin to lose consciousness.
If he is the last thing I ever see, I will die happy.
“I forgive you, Ryder Stormwood.” My words are barely a whisper, clinging to my last breath, hoping that somewhere within him, he will get the message.
That he won’t mourn my death. That the real him isn’t trapped behind this monster, watching me die by his hands.
Hands that aren’t really his. Enslaved to his own mind.
My lungs cry out for air, for a release, but his grip is relentless.
My face is turning blue, and my hands begin to scramble, clutching at the ground as if the marble will claw the life back into me.
My fingers begin to tingle, vibrations like bass underneath my skin, one palm burning and the other submerged in its own darkness.
There is a pull like a magnet calling them to collide, a force I cannot reason with.
My hands grow limp and surrender to the magnetic pull, crashing together, merging the light and dark.
A surge of raw power courses through my veins, erupting in a crescendo that threatens to tear me apart.
A unification that would make even the Gods shudder.
The air around me crackles, bending and twisting as Ryder’s hands are thrown off me with force.
In a blinding flash, a shock wave erupts, a silent scream shattering the sound barrier.
A sonic boom rips through the room, a wave of pure energy obliterating everything in its path.
Shards of glass fly in a frenzy as the window concealing Ryder’s father shatters, slicing everyone in its wake and tearing open fragments of my skin, but I don’t have time to register the pain.
I watch every muscle in Ryder’s body react to the sonic boom as he is catapulted through the broken window and onto the control panels in the room.
The door that has held me prisoner swings open, releasing me.
Cracks emerge in the walls as bits of ceiling crumble above us, my knees weaken as I stand with an empty feeling in my chest, barely able to carry my weight up.
It’s as if all the power within me exploded and left nothing behind.
The silence that follows the boom is overwhelming, the ringing in my ears the only noise sharp enough to slice through the quiet.
My shoes crunch over the broken glass as I wade through the debris of destruction I have created and through the windowless hole in the wall.
The sound of Darryn’s staggered breathing is muffled by the blood spewing out of his mouth, drowning him from the inside out.
His eyes are paintings of sorrow and pain as I get closer to him.
A metal pole impales him like a dagger, where I imagine his heart would be if only he had one.
“You don’t know what you’ve done.” Darryn’s voice is breathy and weak, but there is a certain amount of fear in his eyes.