Chapter 5 #4
I center myself with the target, my feet sinking into the wet sand as lightning continues to strike from both directions. It’s meant to be a distraction, to throw off my aim, but I focus harder, blocking out everything else as I line up my shot.
Lightning rips so violently from my fingers that I stumble backwards, barely keeping my feet beneath me.
Not only do I hit the target, but the whole thing explodes in a plume of crackling sparks, the explosion rumbling like thunder through the space.
When I turn, Pax is frozen on top of his dune, staring in the direction of the ruined target. And Callan…he’s frozen too, but he’s staring straight at me.
Did that not count? Surely, it counted…right?
There’s a hollow thud, then a groan, and a doorway appears below where the target used to be. I can see daylight through the archway. Sweet, blissful daylight. But my freedom is going to have to wait.
I’m not done.
Lightning cracks, not from them, from me, spearing across the desert to the dune Pax is standing on.
He raises a hand to block it, catching the strike before it hits his skin, but I’ve already sent a second one that he doesn’t see coming.
He falls to the sand, immediately throwing a bolt my way.
I grab it just in time, forcing it through my awaiting palm before I hurl myself behind a nearby dune.
My chest is heaving, my pulse so frantic that I’m afraid my heart will give out. Lightning zaps it over and over, shocking the ravaged organ, but the extra blood it’s pumping has nowhere to go. There’s no room for anything else in my veins.
I stick my head around the other side, noticing Callan has moved off his dune and is crouching beside it, eyes bright and deadly as he scans the space around me.
Our stares lock, anger in his eyes and a challenge in mine.
Lightning leaves my fingertips at the same time it bursts from his.
White sparks cleave the dim sky, both bolts clashing in the air between us.
I grit against the weight of it, sensing movement to my left.
I turn in time to catch Pax’s strike with my other hand, successfully becoming the conduit between them.
It’s exactly what I wanted, but gods, it’s agony.
Callan is shouting now, and my insides are churning, my shoulders aching, a godsdamn thunderstorm ripping through my body as I try to absorb it all. Both of their strikes funnel into my veins, straight from their hands.
I take all of it, every last drop, and when the light winks out, I’m the brightest fucking thing in the desert.
I am a bolt of lightning.
What I can’t contain inside me strikes the sand, tossing up mounds of wet clumps in the air. Pax ducks, scrambling back to his dune, but I send a bolt straight for his legs, sweeping them out from under him.
The ground rumbles as I move across it, lightning skittering up and down my limbs, tangling through my sopping wet hair, and splintering out through the sand around me as I make a break for the exit.
Pax is still fighting with the bolt I tied around his legs, but I’m not worried about him. I’m worried about—
There’s a flash of movement in my peripheral, and I whip my head to the right.
Oh, shit.
Callan has rounded the nearest dune and is barreling towards me. I’ve never seen someone run so fast in my life.
Without any goal in mind, I take off in a full sprint, racing towards the exit. Having stolen all of their magic feels like enough of a victory to me.
My legs burn as I push them faster through the sand, lightning flying from the heels of my feet, but the look I brave over my shoulder costs me.
My next step falters, and I’m inches from the exit when I’m tackled to the ground, all the air knocked from my lungs as I collide with wet sand. Callan makes quick work of pinning my upper arms under his knees while I fight with everything I have to get free.
Lightning dances over my damp skin, sizzling as it meets the fabric of his clothes, but Callan doesn’t relent. He doesn’t back down in the slightest.
Yanking his mask down, Callan screams through the downpour, “LET IT GO!” There’s thunder in his eyes, dark hair clinging to his forehead, the onslaught of the rain making the ends of it curl. “RIGHT. NOW.”
I was wrong.
He isn’t mad. He’s livid.
My trapped fingers buzz, threatening to explode at any moment. I’d love to let it go. It’s quite literally burning me alive. But at this angle, I’d hit him straight in the face. And I like his stupid face.
“LUCINA!”
“LET GO OF MY HANDS, ASSHOLE, AND I WILL!” I hurl back at him, my voice strained as the electricity tightens around my vocal cords.
In one quick movement, Callan grabs my wrists and pins them over my head so my palms face the sky above us.
“LET. IT. GO,” he grits out, digging his knees into the sand on either side of me.
I smile then—as if my insides aren’t melting as we speak. But in my own twisted way, this kind of feels like winning. “All of it?” I ask, sparks splintering through my chest.
“All of it,” Callan growls, and I rip the world apart.