Chapter 29 #2
Gone is the measured patience of a teacher testing a student. Now he moves like what he is—disciplined and vicious enough to make every motion count, regardless of his age.
Magic lashes across the arena in silver-black arcs that tear up earth and leave the air tasting like iron and storm rot.
I dodge one and counter with a pulse of force that snaps against his shoulder.
He blocks the next strike I throw and catches me across the temple with a backhanded burst of energy that sends white sparks across my vision.
I stagger and recover.
He doesn’t let up, but neither do I.
This becomes the rhythm of us.
Strike. Counter. Slip. Break.
His control against my refusal to surrender.
My body aches in places I don’t have time to catalog. My lungs burn. My hands shake every time I call power to them, not from weakness but from how much energy is moving through me now.
Still, every time I try to reach for the center of him, to siphon what actually matters, I hit resistance. The network holding this place together and the chains around the innocents.
If I rip too hard, I won’t just hit him.
I’ll hurt all of them.
And that’s exactly how he intended it because he knows I’d never sacrifice the many just to take him down.
But that doesn’t mean I’m without ideas, and it’s time I take a page out of Malrik’s book.
Cade.
I don’t say his name out loud. I only let myself feel for him through the bond.
He’s there instantly, his presence crashing through me like heat after winter. Not with words at first. Just strength. Steady and anchored and absolutely certain.
You’re absolutely incredible, he says, his voice rough through the bond, but his pride bright. But take a moment. Make him come to you.
I close my eyes for one half-second that I probably don’t have to spare, letting that settle, but it’s only then that I understand just how far I need to take this.
The next time Malrik throws power at me, I don’t meet it head-on. I turn with it, letting it skim past instead of breaking it. He tries to bind my wrists again, but I redirect the strike into the ground and send the force sideways.
That uncovers exactly what I’ve been looking for.
A rune surfaces from the hard-packed dirt. It cracks from the impact of Malrik’s energy, and one of the witches gasps as her restraints flicker.
Malrik stills only briefly. When he smiles again, it’s thin now, brittle around the edges.
“Careful. If you start pulling threads, the whole thing might come apart.”
I return his smirk. “That’s the idea.”
I go for the ground.
He tries to stop me, but there’s only so much he can do when every other hit he sends my way is deflected to the earth, furthering my progress in breaking his connection to the others.
Each blast he throws, I twist. Each strike I send, I aim lower—into the network beneath us, into the glowing seams laced through the earth, into the pattern binding everyone else to his power.
One restraint snaps from a vampire first, and the audience stirs.
The controlled stillness on Malrik’s side of the arena begins to fracture as magic falters and bodies start to remember they belong to themselves.
He feels it immediately. The first real flaw in his control, and with it comes the first flash of fear he doesn’t manage to hide.
“You never understood,” he says, louder now, his calm fraying. “This world only listens to power.”
“No,” I shoot back, tearing another rune apart with a burst that leaves my hand numb. “That’s just the story you’ve been telling yourself. I’ve chosen to write a different one.”
The chained leaders start to rise. Not all at once, but enough that I know I’m doing the right things.
Brynn, the only one of them I know by name, drags in a harsh breath and lifts her head, giving me a single nod of confirmation. The vampire’s eyes are clear, crimson, and furious. The witch nearest the center wrenches one wrist free and starts tearing into the magic at her throat.
Choice returns to the arena in a hundred small ways.
And Malrik hates it.
He throws everything at me then. None of it is measured or even careful. He’s frantic, but that doesn’t make him any less dangerous.
After that show, it’s hard to keep up with his swift movements.
Two back-to-back blasts hit my chest so hard, they lift me clean off my feet and hurl me backward across the dirt.
Pain explodes through my ribs as I land.
For one sickening second, I can’t breathe or think.
The world narrows to the ringing in my ears and the taste of blood.
Malrik is on me before I’m fully up, one hand outstretched, power bearing down like the sky itself means to crush me.
“You could have stood with me,” he snarls, and there’s nothing calm in him now. “You could have had everything you wanted. All you had to do was understand.”
I brace both hands against the force, my arms shaking violently under the pressure. “I did.”
He falters.
“I understood that you’d rather break the world than live in one that didn’t worship you all because a group of people used you when they had no right.”
His face changes with a chaotic shake of his head. “You don’t know what they did.” His eyes turn to charcoal. “You’re just like them.”
Those last four words are my death sentence.
I know by his tone and the darkness growing in his eyes. But I didn’t come here to quit, to let those I love most in the world watch me fade away.
Except the pressure against my hands spikes without warning.
It isn’t a steady push anymore. It’s chaos.
Malrik’s power surges forward in jagged waves, no longer controlled or precise. It tears at the space between us, ripping through the air with a violent, unstable force that crackles and hisses like something alive and dying at the same time.
My body tremors as pain shoots through my shoulders, and the weight of it drives me back a step, then another. The ground beneath my boots fractures, heels digging in as I try to hold the line, but it’s like bracing against a collapsing wall.
He doesn’t care anymore. I see it now.
This isn’t strategy. This isn’t control.
This is desperation.
“You don’t get to stand there and judge me,” he snarls, his voice breaking as the power around him flares brighter, sharper, devouring everything it touches. “You don’t get to walk away like you’re better.”
“I’m not—” The words tear from my throat, but I can barely hear them over the roar building between us.
He steps closer, and the force doubles.
My knees hit the ground hard enough to jar my spine, the impact stealing what little breath I have left. The energy slams down on me, pressing into my chest, my ribs, and my lungs, until every inhale feels like dragging air through shattered glass.
I can feel it now. The instability. The way his power isn’t just pushing outward—it’s collapsing inward, feeding on itself, burning too hot and fast.
He’s already decided that if he can’t win, no one will.
He’s trying to end it.
Both of us.
“Look at you,” he says, and there’s something almost wild in his expression now, something cracked and unraveling. “Still trying to hold back. Still pretending you’re different from me.”
Another surge hits.
My vision blurs at the edges, white creeping in as the pressure tightens around my throat, my chest, and my skull. I can feel the bond with Cade flicker—not broken, but strained, like it’s being stretched too thin under the weight of what Malrik is forcing into me.
This is wrong. It’s too much.
For Malrik and for me.
A sharp, terrifying thought cuts through the haze.
What if I was wrong?
Is he really willing to burn himself from the inside out just to take me down?
My hands tremble as I push back against the force, but it doesn’t give. It doesn’t bend.
For the first time since stepping into this arena, I don’t feel hope in the choice I’ve made.
I feel small.
The pressure increases again, a crushing, suffocating weight that forces my head down, my arms shaking violently as they begin to give out beneath me.
I can’t breathe. I can’t—
A crack splits through the air.
Not from me.
From him.
Malrik’s power spikes again, flaring so bright it washes the arena in harsh, blinding light. It lashes outward in wild arcs, striking the ground, the chains, and the air itself, destabilizing everything it touches.
He doesn’t care. He’s pouring everything into this.
Everything.
His body trembles with effort, shoulders tightening, and jaw clenched as he forces more power toward me than he was ever meant to hold at once.
“Do you feel it?” he demands, his voice raw now, stripped of all that he’s held dear. “This is what it takes. This is what power is. Not restraint. Not choice. This.”
Another surge slams into me.
Something in my chest gives—a sharp, tearing sensation that sends a burst of pain through my ribs and down my spine. My hands slip, my grip on my own power faltering for just a fraction of a second, and it’s enough.
The force crashes down fully, driving me flat against the earth. Darkness flickers at the edges of my vision. Distantly, I hear someone shouting—Cade, maybe—but it’s muffled, like I’m already too far away to reach.
This is how it ends.
Not with control or choice or even in victory.
Just crushed beneath something I couldn’t fight off.
My chest spasms as I try to breathe, but nothing comes. The weight is too much. The pressure, too complete.
And Malrik’s still pushing. Even as his own power starts to turn on him.
I see it now. The fissures in his control.
The way the magic lashes back against his own body, burning his arms and chest, his control slipping with every second he refuses to let go.
He’s killing himself, and he doesn’t seem to care, because as long as I die with him…
That’s enough.
A strange, hollow calm settles over me when the realization sinks in.
He’s willing to destroy everything. It’s the only advantage he has over me.
And for the first time, I understand just how close I am to losing.
Still, I refuse to give up, and it seems neither will my mate.