Chapter 41 #2
The words hung in the air like a challenge, and I braced myself for her retaliation. For whatever vicious comeback she’d unleash, for the way her power would lash out in response to being called irrelevant.
Instead, Xyliria’s gaze slid away from me entirely.
To Fenric.
A slow, vicious smile curled across her lips.
“Fenric,” she purred, letting his name roll off her tongue like she was savouring poison. “Such a lovely reunion, don’t you think?”
I felt the temperature drop, not from his magic, but from something far more primal.
Xyliria’s smile was a blade. “I do hope you haven’t been too... lonely here, Fenric. I know how... particular your tastes can be.”
The words slithered across the table like poison. Innocent on the surface, but loaded with implications that made my blood turn to ice.
Linc—gods, I could see the tremor that ran through him out of the corner of my eye.
But it was Fenric who terrified me most.
Because he wasn’t moving. Wasn’t breathing. Wasn’t reacting at all.
“After all,” Xyliria continued, her voice dripping false sweetness, “it’s been so long since you’ve had... proper company. The kind that understands your needs.”
She knew.
Somehow, this vicious bitch knew about them.
“It must be difficult,” Xyliria’s laugh was ice. “Especially when one’s appetites run toward—”
Black flames surged across the table, roaring toward the Nyxarians. A living tempest of my fury.
The moment shattered into chaos.
Xyliria’s magic snapped upward, crimson clouds colliding against my fire in a burst of heat and shadow. The flames sputtered against it, licking at the edges before being consumed.
Fuck.
The air split.
That’s the only way to describe it. Like reality itself was cleaving down the middle, peeling apart to accommodate the violent eruption of magic that exploded from every body in the room.
My black fire roared outward in response to Xyliria’s crimson clouds, the flames screaming for blood, for flesh, for anything that had threatened Fenric and Linc. They poured from my skin like I was bleeding, dark and hungry and utterly feral.
Varyth’s mist surged up from the floor in a wall of silver-white fury, condensing around us in a shield that hummed with killing intent. It twisted and coiled, alive with predatory consciousness, reaching for the Nyxarians like it wanted to drown them.
Ashterion’s shadows erupted. They punched through the floor, tore from the walls, ripped the very light from the air. Living darkness that moved with terrible purpose, wrapping around the table, around his people, around him.
But something was wrong.
His shadows weren’t attacking. They were protecting.
The crimson clouds from Xyliria’s magic slammed against my fire with a sound like breaking bones. Impact shuddered through the chamber, cracking stone, splintering the obsidian table down its centre.
Fenric’s power erupted in response. Jagged spikes of black crystal punching up through the floor, ripping through stone like it was flesh. They launched toward the Nyxarians, each spike drinking in the light until they were nothing but absence given form.
Elowyn’s hands came up, and violet energy exploded outward—raw power that collided with Fenric’s obsidian in a shower of sparks and screaming magic. The purple light wrapped around the spears, crushing them to dust, and Fenric snarled as he sent another wave.
Darian’s vines tore from the walls themselves. Living, writhing things thick as my torso, covered in thorns that gleamed like moonsilver. They whipped toward Elowyn with predatory speed, wrapping around her violet shields, trying to tear through.
The air behind me shifted, temperature dropping so fast my breath misted. Shaelith’s ice erupted in spears, beautiful and lethal, aimed directly at Merrick. They screamed through the air, each one capable of punching through armour, through bone, through anything that got in their way.
Merrick’s lightning answered. Bolts of white-blue electricity that turned the chamber into a strobe of violence, shattering Shaelith’s ice mid-flight. Steam exploded where fire met frost, filling the space with blinding mist.
Linc’s ocean magic rose like a living thing, a wall of water that shouldn’t exist in a landlocked chamber but did anyway, roaring toward Merrick with the force of a tidal wave. It moved with consciousness, with purpose, reaching for the Stormborn with hungry intent.
The lightning met the water and the entire fucking room lit up.
The impact threw me backward. Or would have, if Varyth’s mist hadn’t wrapped around me. It cushioned the blow, pulled me close against his chest as the world dissolved into pure chaos around us.
Cindrissian’s wind howled. A hurricane compressed into four walls, ripping at clothing and hair and anything not bolted down. It slammed into Merrick’s lightning, scattering it, redirecting it, turning the Stormborn’s own power against him.
My black fire was everywhere. Pouring from my skin in waves I couldn’t contain, didn’t want to contain. It crashed against Xyliria’s crimson clouds, and where they met, the air seemed to scream. The two magics twisted, each trying to devour the other.
Varyth’s mist exploded outward with enough force to crack the remaining walls. Silver-white and deadly, moving like it had teeth. It slammed into Ashterion’s shadows with the sound of two storms colliding, and I felt the impact reverberate through my bones.
But Ashterion’s shadows—
They weren’t attacking back. Even as Varyth’s mist tore at them, even as my fire licked at their edges, they only defended.
And in the middle of it all, through the fire and ice and lightning and shadow, through the howling wind and crushing water and shattering crystal—Xyliria laughed.
The sound carved through everything. Sharp and delighted and so fucking wrong.
Her crimson clouds condensed, pulled inward, and then exploded outward in a wave that made my fire look like a candle. They slammed into everyone, didn’t discriminate, didn’t care. The pure, devastating force sent bodies flying.
Darian’s vines withered where they touched. Fenric’s obsidian shattered. Even Varyth’s mist recoiled, hissing like something burned.
The chamber was coming apart. Stone crumbling, magic eating through walls, the very air tearing itself to shreds.
Varyth’s hand locked around my wrist.
His mist surged up around us, thick and impenetrable, and I felt reality start to fold.
Through the chaos, through the impossible tangle of magic and violence, I saw Ashterion.
He was still sitting. Perfectly, impossibly calm at what remained of the shattered table.
But his eyes—
Those winter-night eyes were fixed on me with an expression I’d never expected.
Terror.
Pure, undiluted terror that made him look almost—
Human.
And then the world folded completely, and he was gone.