Chapter 33 The Right Moment to Strike
The right moment to strike
ZARA
The air doesn’t smell of smoke or sulfur, and the bitter smell of magic is replaced with a subtler, nicer scent.
Cedarwood mixes with the lingering heat of embers and it’s almost comforting; if I don’t think too hard about the warlock it belongs to.
The smell is like home, and the rosemary and copper remind me of everything that used to bring me comfort, and now it’s bringing confusion.
Kade sits across from me, his dark eyes fixed on mine, intense as ever. For once, he stays silent. He’s watching me, waiting for something. Maybe for me to change my mind. Maybe for me to run.
I’m sure I won’t do either.
I lean back against the headboard, drawing my knees to my chest. The ache in my muscles is sharp and fresh, like shards of glass embedded in every movement.
Magic ripples through me like a gentle breeze on a summer’s day, quieter but not gone.
It hums beneath my skin, dark and waiting, ready to release toil and trouble.
“You’re staring.” My voice is like gravel in my throat.
Kade’s lips curl into a curve that isn’t quite a smile. “I’m trying to figure out what’s going on in that head of yours.”
“Good luck with that,” I mutter, looking away.
I don’t need him seeing too much right now. Not the doubts. Not the fear. But he doesn’t let it go. He leans forward, resting his forearms on his knees. His gaze is weighted with everything he isn’t saying, and it’s everything I’m trying not to think about.
“Are you having second thoughts, kitten?” he asks.
I flinch as he uses his pet name, more from its softness than anything else.
My eyes fix on a crease in the bed linen, and I stare at it as if the world revolves around it.
I don’t know what to say or do or think, and all I know is that I’m here with Kade and I don’t think I want to leave. Not now. Not ever.
He sighs.
I sigh back.
“I chose you, Zara,” he says, his tone deceptively light. “You said you chose me, too. I thought we’d moved past this.”
The truth of it settles in my chest like a stone. He’s right. I chose him. I chose the man who destroyed my coven, who burned my life to the ground as casually as someone lighting a candle. Kade killed my sisters and he’d do it again, without remorse or hesitation, and I’ve stayed with him.
We have.
What we haven’t moved past is what happened with my coven. Or what Kade intends to do about the power dynamics between warlocks and witches now that I’m his.
“Why did you do it?”
Kade’s pause says more than his words ever could. “You know why, Zara. The sigil was broken and they were free, and I could not allow it. I made an example of them to keep the other covens in line and they knew what their punishment was before I arrived.”
He’s not trying to spin it into something cleaner or kinder.
Kade just lets the truth hang there, raw and heavy.
“They were going to trade you for their freedom,” he continues, “and it should bring you some comfort in knowing that I killed them before they could hurt you. It was not the reason I acted, and it would be a lie to pretend otherwise.”
His words should feel like a death knell, but instead, they settle into the cracks of my soul, filling the spaces I didn’t know existed.
He didn’t save me because he cared. It was a coincidence he saved me, because it served his power and the rigid, brutal rules of his world, and he isn’t lying about it now.
He's honest enough to tell me the truth.
Brave enough too.
And yet, my fingers curl into the blanket, clutching it as though it can ground me against the storm that’s rising inside.
“They were my family.” My words slip out like a confession.
“They stopped being family the moment they turned on you,” Kade counters, his voice steady, unyielding.
“I still loved them,” I whisper.
“Love is a luxury and few can afford it. Your coven forfeited it when they chose ambition over loyalty.” The bitterness of his truth is a sharp, cold slap, but he doesn’t stop.
“You’re trying to reconcile what you lost with what you’ve gained.
Life’s ledger doesn’t work that way, Zara.
There isn’t some balance between what you have and hold and what you lose.
Stop fighting us, Zara. You belong here. With me.”
My chest tightens as the world closes in on me. Kade’s right, and it’s maddening. It’s predictable too, and I should hate him for it. My coven would have handed me over to anyone who promised them more power, and Kade wasn’t their punishment. He was their salvation from a far worse fate.
“I don’t…”
“You belong where you choose to, kitten.”
Kade leans forward, his hand reaching for mine. His touch is firm, warm, and for the briefest moment, I think I might shatter under the gentleness in his grip.
“Not all of us get to make this choice, Zara. You do. Accept it, and don’t look back.”
I never expected Kade’s honesty to be the most terrifying thing about him.
His darkness is the kind they write stories about, the ones whispered over campfires and bound in forbidden books.
He’s every cautionary tale, every grim warning about how a warlock’s ambition will eclipse his humanity.
The lines he’s crossed aren’t blurred; they’re obliterated, smeared in blood and ash.
He’s the darkest shadow lingering in the darkest night.
The one who reminds them that the dark arts demand an even darker soul.
Yet I’m tied to the monster who’s scorched the world for power and would destroy it for me in a heartbeat—and those thoughts comfort me.
The weight of his sins sits alongside mine, made unequal only because he’s lived longer.
I’m no different from Kade, no less depraved, no less evil.
The bonfire inside me roars as fiercely, devouring wood and whispers alike, as though it hungers for more and cannot be sated.
I am the danger they warned him about, and neither of us can stay away.
“Why me?” I ask.
Kade smiles. “You’re as despicable as me, Zara.”
His words linger, curling through the air like smoke.
I want to deny them, to push back against the idea that I could ever mirror the darkness that radiates from him, but he’s irrefutably right.
There’s a reason my magic feels alive, a reason it feels predatory.
A reason I barely flinched as my coven burned, and it’s why I’m not running from the man who lit the match.
Kade’s darkness isn’t an aberration. It’s an inevitability.
Power comes at a cost, and he’s paid the price willingly, over and over.
I’m standing at the edge of my own abyss and I don’t doubt I’ll do the same.
We are all capable of evil, but only the brave embrace it and call it their own.
Only the courageous wield it, and only the fearless use it as their shield.
Power surges through my veins, glorious and terrible.
I’m sure I’ll pay for this, but not yet.
Not until it hurts the most. My magic stirs and it’s not the soft hum it was before, not the sharper tune it’s become now that it’s merged with Kade’s sorcery.
It’s insistent, bitter. The bonfire I felt within grows hotter and brighter until it threatens to consume me from the inside out.
I clutch the blanket, but its warmth offers no comfort.
Kade notices immediately, his dark eyes narrowing as his smile fades.
“Zara.” His voice is low and full of concern. “What is it?”
I can’t answer.
My breath catches as the fire beneath my skin flares, searing through me in waves. I shake as my vision swims and for one wild, uncontrolled moment, I hear whispers of death and despair, low and unintelligible, but full of malice.
“I don’t know,” I choke out.
His hands grip my shoulders, trying to ground me.
“Focus,” he commands, his magic rushing toward mine like an unstoppable wave. It’s cold and calculating, and it presses against the wild heart surging within me as it tries to hold it back.
But the fire doesn’t yield.
It burns brighter and it’s hungrier, as though it’s feeding off the magic Kade’s using to suppress it. The voracious tide of power swallows everything in its path and it washes up on the edges of my sanity, relentless and insatiable.
The High Mother said power was a test, and if I passed it then it was mine to command. She said I’d be consumed if I failed, and right now, I’m being burned alive.
Kade’s grip tightens as he tries to tether me to reality, but the magic surging within me isn’t something that can be contained. Not by him. Not by anyone. I gasp, the words tumbling out before I can stop them.
“You’re making it worse, Kade.”
His jaw clenches, but he doesn’t let go. “You think I can just stand back and watch you burn?”
The irony isn’t lost on me. Kade, the destroyer of worlds and covens, is trying to save me from annihilation.
This isn’t about him saving me, and I don’t know if I can save myself from the force of nature raging through me.
It’s pure and violent, neither good nor evil, a magic that simply is and it will become what I make of it.
And the problem is, I don’t know what I’m asking of it.
The whispers grow louder, words forming from the haze.
Consume.
Devour.
Become.
They coil around me and their spell pulls me deeper into the abyss, and I sink, letting my head drop beneath the surface.
My hands tremble as I push on Kade’s chest, my voice breaking. “Let me go.”
“I can’t,” he says, his voice rough and full of fear, “and I won’t.”
The magic lashes out, a wildfire spilling from me that tears through the room like a hurricane.
The air crackles with energy, and the scent of cedarwood and burning embers twists into ash and ruin as darkness descends.
Kade clings on, his hands refusing to let me go as his own magic rises to defend him.
The shadows he commands coil around him like serpents, hissing and snapping at the flames leaping from my skin.
And the whispers in my mind become a chorus.
Their chants echo like a warning or a promise.
“Zara,” Kade calls out, his voice sharp, cutting through the cacophony. “You have to take control.”
The magic inside me crescendos until its roar is deafening, the noises twisting and churning through the crevices of my soul.
My heart pounds in rhythm with their chant and my senses spiral out of control as the darkness threatens to consume everything.
Kade’s grip on me is firm, his voice an anchor that will not slip as the storm waves break on him, but even he can’t hold back this tide forever.
“Zara!” he shouts, his voice filled with rare notes of fear. “This power is yours. Own it, or it will own you.”
The fire inside me roars louder, fueled by his words, by my doubts, by the truth I’ve been trying to deny. My magic isn’t a separate entity. It’s not some wild, uncontrollable force.
It’s me.
It’s every fractured piece of me, every buried emotion, every shadow I’ve ever cast.
It’s my anger, my grief, my love, and my hate.
It’s mine.
I close my eyes and let the fire rage, let it race through me and consume everything in its path.
I burn in this crucible, letting the magic strip me bare until there’s nothing left but raw, relentless power.
The heat burns hotter and I scream in agony until the whispers grow softer and the voices recede into the background.
The room stills and the flames begin to bend, changing their shape as if I’m commanding them. The air is thick with ash and magic, and I struggle, pulling and pushing and writhing as I shape the fire burning through me, demanding it obey.
I open my eyes, seeing the flames casting golden light across the room, reflecting in Kade’s dark gaze. His expression is a blur of emotions, but there’s tension in the set of his jaw, in the way his hands curl into fists at his sides.
The fire bows to my will and its flames shrink away, folding inward until they vanish into the air.
The silence that follows is deafening and my body gives out, slumping as I collapse onto the bed.
Heat pulses through me like an aftershock and I pant as sweat drips from my pores and drenches the sheet beneath me.
Kade kneels beside me, his grip firm as he pulls me against him. “That was reckless, kitten.”
“You think I wanted that?”
He doesn’t answer, his eyes scanning the room. The walls are scorched black, the air thick with smoke and something else. Something’s wrong.
“What the fuck was that?” he mutters, more to himself than me.
I shake my head, still trembling. “I don’t know.”
My stomach twists as a cold and twisted breeze snakes through the room, carrying with it the faintest whisper of another presence. We aren’t alone and I watch the walls bleed shadows as faces form where the light doesn’t dare to reach.
A spark flickers at the edge of my vision, a warning and a promise of worse to come. The threat fades away and I open my mouth to speak, but the oppressive dark swallows my voice. The night closes in and the silence roars while the air holds its breath, waiting for whatever happens next.
Something is lurking in the dark.
It’s watching, and it’s waiting for the right moment to strike.