Chapter Sixty
T he moment Draven feels Lyra’s magic disappear, he knows something is wrong.
He spins, slashing his blade through one neck, and then another. Once the two Abdites fall, he sprints across the Arena, looking for Lyra in the last place he sensed her. But a burning wall of black flames stretches across the ground like a demarcation line, halting his sprint.
Like fucking hell that will stop him.
He calls for his shadow panthers, and they lick the flames away, swallowing them into their shadowy bellies. The magic enters Draven’s bloodstream like venom, scorching his veins.
But he doesn’t give it a second thought. He charges ahead, searching.
He spots her all the way across the Arena, encased in a sound barrier, the faint yellow edges giving it away. She is on her knees, sobbing, clutching her stomach like she might vomit.
It’s a sight that burns him far greater than the forbidden magic he’s absorbed into his skin.
He draws a bout of oxygen, preparing to break the barrier, when Lyra rises absently—as if her body moves on the commands of another mind. She strolls forward, shuffling toward the brute of battle.
He runs for her, desperate to reach her. To hold her—even if just for a moment—to make sure she’s okay.
But he stops when he glimpses the silver awakening beneath her skin, trailing the seams of her wielder’s mark stretching down her arm.
The silver glides along her mark, sparkling as it comes alive.
It reaches up and up, until it mingles with the whites of her eyes, shifting the beautiful amethyst hue of them into something silvery-white.
Then she erupts with a colorful burst of magic.
She pulls fire first. It swirls along her arm and rises up her shoulder, stopping at the crook of her neck, burning brilliantly in the night. Then she finds ice next, the glistening substance crystallizing along her other arm, forming a barrier as it mimics the route of the flames.
And when she brings her hands together, fire raging in one palm while ice sings in the other, she explodes in a remarkable display of power, twirling the contrasting elements into a helix as she sends them roaring across the battlefield, not discriminating as it claims life after life.
To Draven’s dismay, she attempts to pull at his dark magic next. And though he would offer any part of himself to Lyra willingly, he does not allow her to take from him, knowing it would destroy her if she tried to wield his magic too soon.
But that doesn’t prevent her from pulling at other magics as she trudges ahead to the center of the chaos.
And Draven can’t help but wonder—
What happened to make her explode with such rage-coated ferocity?
He turns to take a quick inventory of the battlefield.
Yet he stops short when he realizes everyone has stilled—if only temporarily—to watch Lyra, stunned to be witnessing what most believe to be an impossible display of power.
Even Finlay and Kiran watch slack-jawed and wide-eyed, stunned into an uncharacteristic stillness at what they see.
She pulls at light, water, wind—wielding them as carelessly as foolish men wield their words.
But she can’t keep going at her current rate.
If she does, she will burn out, eviscerating her body and magic alike.
Draven doesn’t have the slightest clue how deep her magical resources go—though he has his guesses—but he still knows, based on what he’s witnessing, she can’t last much longer like this.
“Let go, Lyra,” he whispers under his breath, his brows creasing. “You have to let go.”
She does no such thing .
Instead—in a feat that, under any other circumstance, would both impress and attract Draven—she conjures a hurricane of water and light, fusing the two together in a blinding wind, unleashing it upon the bloody battlefield.
But it isn’t until she fuses molten ash into her raging storm that the damage goes from horrific to cataclysmic.
She destroys everything in her wake, taking the lives of Abdites and students alike.
That’s when he realizes she’s losing herself, succumbing to the magic, letting it control her instead of the other way around.
Reaching deep into his resources, he conjures a shield as he and his panthers sprint for Lyra. Once within about thirty paces of her, however, he slows, gritting his teeth against the swell of magic radiating from her. It’s like attempting to touch the sun.
He pushes all his weight into his shield of darkness and pushes forward, taking step after painful step.
He only makes it about ten marks until he has to relinquish his hold on his shadow panthers.
He can’t keep them going and maintain his protection at the same time—he doesn’t have the strength.
His magic can’t withstand the force of Lyra’s.
As he nears her, his bones rattle and his skin pricks with heat from all the magic swirling around her— too much magic. It burns his skin and yells at him to turn away.
He never was one for listening.
Reaching her is like entering the eye of a storm.
She has funneled herself in a cocoon of wind laced with fire, ice, flora, and water—the core elements.
Light flashes in and out, like bolts of sizzling energy breaking behind a cloudy sky.
Yet she remains oddly still at the center, her hair flapping wildly as her eyes glow silvery-white and silver trails glimmer along her skin.
And despite what’s happening, Draven still can’t help but to admire her.
She is magnificent—destruction unleashed.
She is the terrifying beauty of purple lightning streaking across a midnight sky.
The haunting echoes of a howling wind as it whips between mountains, bending rock to its will.
She is the ferocious waves of a raging sea, the force of a magnetic moon, the fiery path of a falling star.
She is the girl to wake Draven up—with her defiant eyes, resilient will, and strong heart.
He knows she would describe her heart as cold and broken, but he always saw it differently.
Lyra’s expressive gaze didn’t just give her emotions away, but it revealed the composition of her soul—if a person believes in such a thing.
Her eyes betrayed the tenderness stitched into the seams of her heart.
The care she has for others. The passion she has for life, whether she’s fully realized it yet or not.
The world rejected her, turned its back on her, and still she laughed. Still she fought.
Still she won.
But the girl who holds his heart is lost in her magic— consumed by it, killing herself and everyone around her. Draven hears the resulting screams oscillating in the wind, agony coating their voices as her magic tears through red and black blood alike.
He curses under his breath, realizing the decision he has to make.
He cannot save them all. Not while stopping her.
So he must choose.
Feeling pinned against difficult decisions, Draven ultimately does what he must. Because at the end of the day, he’s never claimed to be a hero nor someone who does good.
Draven shuts his eyes and searches for the lakt? he’s most familiar with.
His brothers come to him the most easily, and he shelters them in a dome of his darkness the second he locates them.
It takes him a moment longer to sense Lyra’s fiery friend, Marcella, but he does the same for her when he finds her—her magic weak and barely hanging on.
He finds Gray Nightenjoy next, his magic surprisingly well-stocked.
He doesn’t let himself dwell on the fact that he can’t locate Griff anywhere, not sensing even a drop of his lakt?.
Draven then senses all the healers he can locate, knowing Lyra will need mending once he snaps her from this daze—because he will get through to her. No matter the cost.
Once he’s sheltered everyone he can, extending his magic to its farthest reaches, he approaches Lyra, the heat emitting from her making it feel like he’s walking into a furnace.
“Lyra.” He grips her shoulders, and the touch burns his palms. Still, Draven searches her glowing eyes for any signs of her, but… She seems lost. His precious girl seems so, so far away, detached from reality, floating in a dream of consuming power instead.
He isn’t sure how to reach her. How to get through to her.
So Draven does the only thing he can think of. He wraps his arms around her, holds her, and reminds her she isn’t alone. That he is here, and he is with her. And all he can do is hope the touch is enough to bring her back to him.
Despite his efforts, a gut-wrenching scream rips from his throat as the magic chews at his skin, tearing through his flesh in an instant. It feels like being stabbed and burned simultaneously. Still, he does not let go of her. If nothing else, he tightens his grip on her.
“Lyra,” Draven tries again, biting back the agony in his voice. “You have to let go of your magic. I understand how consuming it can be, but it’s killing you. Please… please , let go.”
He glances at her cracking face—the skin peeling from bone as it burns—and blinks when he realizes there is a constant flow of silver-tinted tears streaming down her glowing eyes.
It hits him, then.
She isn’t letting go because she doesn’t want to. Whatever she witnessed, it snapped her will to exist.
And all Draven can think is—
If she can no longer breathe, then he will act as her lungs and give her all the oxygen his body has.
If her heart will not beat, then he will give her his.
If her body insists on remaining cold, then he will hold her until he has transferred all the heat within his bones.
And if whatever wound causing this refuses to heal, then Draven will slice his skin and bleed alongside her for as long as she needs.
No matter what, he will not give up on her—even if it kills him.