TWENTY-TWO #3
The words crash into me harder than the storm.
I love you.
Wind howls, clawing at my body.
I need you.
Fire burns, licking up my arms.
Come back to me.
The Elements rip through me, tearing me apart from the inside out.
But I cling to him.
The heat of his hands searing against my skin. The solid force of his presence, rooting me in reality. The sound of his breathing in my ears, cutting through the havoc. Pulling me back to him.
And his eyes—smoke-gray, burning, fierce. They lock onto mine with desperate certainty, willing me to stay.
Thane presses a fierce kiss to my lips, then pulls back, his eyes drawing me back to him.
He breathes in. I breathe with him. The bond breathes with both of us.
I pull the magics back—pull myself back.
And finally, it listens.
The wind calms. The water settles. The fire dims. The earth stops shaking. And suddenly, I am just me again. Trembling. Exhausted. But still standing.
Still whole.
The power still lingers in my veins, humming beneath my skin, pulsing in time with my erratic heartbeat. The storm inside me has settled—but it has not disappeared.
It waits. Coiled. Ready.
I stagger slightly, breath ragged, my fingers trembling, still tingling with residual energy. Thane’s grip keeps me upright.
“You’re in control now,” he says firmly, the same way he would command a soldier in battle.
I nod, swallowing hard.
I roll my shoulders back, straightening. This power isn’t meant to be feared. It isn’t meant to be held back. It is meant to be used. And I will use it.
“This is why I chose you, Virelya. Because you are stronger than you realize,” Calryx reminds me.
She feels everything I feel. Her presence wraps around me like a cloak on a bitter winter morning. I am not alone.
Then a dark presence gathers before me, thick and suffocating, the air itself warping around it as though the void has begun to open. And then—he steps forward.
Not from the swirling blackness, but as though he has always been standing there, waiting.
His face is pale as bone. Pale as snow. Flawless, unnatural, sculpted rather than born.
His silver eyes catch the light but do not hold it.
Luminous and cold, they miss nothing. White hair spills over his shoulders, untouched by time, woven chains of silver gleaming against the obsidian sheen of his armor.
He is refined. Lethal. A vision of power honed to its sharpest edge.
And his gaze is locked entirely on me.
“Impressive,” he murmurs, his voice slithering through the air, layered in overlapping tones as though multiple voices speak at once.
“You have power, but you don’t know what you are yet, do you?”
A shiver races down my spine, but I don’t let it show.
I lift my chin. “I know enough to end you.”
His mouth curves into a twisted smile. “We’ll see.”
Then he moves. The shadows explode outward, rushing toward me like tendrils of ink in water. The air thickens, pressing in from all sides, pulling at my limbs, dragging at my power.
They want to consume me.
They won’t.
I inhale deeply, pulling the Elements upward in unison.
Fire leaps to my hands, but it is not wild now—it is controlled.
Focused. Wind curls around me, bending fully to my will, feeding the flames until they burn hotter.
Water gathers in the air, drawn from the shattered fountains, freezing into razor-edged shards awaiting my command. Earth hums beneath my feet, my bedrock.
The Elements don’t fight me this time.
They align.
I’m no longer struggling for control. I’m channeling them as they were meant to be channeled.
The bonds I have with Calryx and Thane pull me into alignment. I fully submit to the combined strength.
Fire twists together with the wind, forming a spear of crackling Elemental energy. Water freezes around its edges, trapping lightning within. The earth beneath me shifts, rising through the fractured marble to stabilize my stance.
For the first time, I feel complete. Whole. Powerful.
“Get ready, Thane,” I call out, my voice stronger now.
Thane meets my gaze. He nods once. No hesitation. Only trust.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spot Valen, his staff a blur of motion, a weapon of fluid destruction. Every strike is calculated and controlled.
A shadow creature lunges. Valen twists, the staff whipping through the air, cracking against its skull with a sharp, resounding impact. Another rises. He spins low, sweeping its legs out from beneath it before driving the reinforced end of his staff into its chest, shattering it into nothingness.
His eyes meet mine, and for one brief moment, the chaos disappears. No battle. No screaming. Only my mentor’s belief in me.
He nods once.
I pull and pull and pull.
As I do, the air around me begins to still. I become the eye of the tornado, where everything feels as quiet and peaceful as approaching dawn.
The floor falls away beneath me as I rise several feet into the air. I throw my arms wide, the Elements merging and expanding within me.
I breathe in deep, feeling the raw power coalescing inside me.
And then I hurl the spear.