Chapter 41
Logan
Spellcasters poured onto the stage as I fought to get to Paisley. These assholes had this well planned, knowing I’d destroy
any witch or warlock who stood between me and my mate.
There were multiple spellcasters waiting in the wings to take me down. Marcus, Connor, and Sergei approached me from the right,
leaving Danielle and another guy I didn’t know circling from the left.
“You might be the most powerful,” Marcus said, his energy arcing between his hands in small bolts of lightning, “but we have
the numbers. She’s not worth dying for, bro. No pussy is worth dying for.”
This arrogant asshole was the one who was going to die today. I’d been wanting to take him down ever since he put his hands
on my girl. Mine. My. Fucking. Girl.
The other spellcasters had Paisley, which meant I couldn’t drag out this fight; I’d waited what felt like a lifetime to claim
my mate, and no one was taking her from me today.
Smashing through the first row of spellcasters, I pushed more and more power with each blast, while also strengthening my shielding. I let free a crack of lightning focused on Marcus.
Two warlocks had to die today no matter what else happened: Marcus and Monroe.
No mercy.
My magical attack scattered the other spellcasters, but they used air to shoot themselves to their feet almost instantly.
Marcus didn’t get up, and I ripped through him with a blast of fire, muttering a short spell to ensure that it would burn
for at least the next twenty minutes with no chance of quenching.
I left the spellcaster screaming on the floor—there was no time to confirm he was dead, but even if he wasn’t, he would suffer
greatly.
Darkness split my vision as Paisley’s power spilled from her. The monsters had filled the assembly hall, students screamed
and started racing through the aisles to try to escape. Using Earth energy, I ruptured the ground and sucked all remaining
spellcasters into the abyss before they could offer a counterattack. The stage was restructured above them in another whispered
spell, and even though they’d free themselves in a few minutes, I had enough time to get to Paisley.
More spellcasters entered the assembly hall, late-arriving backup. I recognized many from the wars in Europe. Apparently,
the meeting with the council had gone so well that they were now working for them.
Racing across the stage, witches and warlocks got in my way. To their own pain.
A burst of power knocked everyone back, and I glanced over the assembly hall to see even more monsters spilling into the room.
Fuck. This day was going from bad to death.
Students screamed, but my focus was internal on the ragged nature of Paisley’s magic.
She was there, but no more than a wisp, like the time she almost faded in my arms. The air practically glittered with magic as professors and students tried to fight the creatures, but they weren’t powerful enough to do much more than hold them back before dying.
We needed Paisley. I needed her. My existence was tied irrevocably to the beautiful reaper. I was nothing without her, and my singular focus was getting between
her and this fucking council.
Spellcasters circled me, another new group, and as I readied myself to blast them, Elder Florence shouted, “Kill her!”
I remembered nothing else as my magic detonated, slamming everyone in near vicinity to the ground. If I’d been at full strength,
that would have crushed their skulls, but today, all I could manage was a nasty concussion.
Calling on air to wrap around me, in both shielding and transport, I lifted myself over the crowd, while using earth to fracture
the stage again and send more of them below. Utilizing multiple elements at the same time was one of my strengths, and even
with waning energy, I was faster and more skilled than most here.
I’d had to be to survive Rafael and be strong enough for my girl.
Paisley deserved the strongest partner, and I would not let her down.
I caught sight of her from across the stage as Monroe dragged her limp body, slamming her head against the edge of a chair.
Sending lightning toward their backs, I tried to shield her through our bond, but I was running on fucking dregs of power.
Air faltered beneath me, but I pushed on, determined to place myself between the council and Paisley.
If one of us had to die here today, it sure as Hel wasn’t going to be her.
A powerful fire elemental stepped up behind her as I closed in. My winds swept others out of the way, but I hit a wall when
I got near him. The council was shielding the fire elemental with everything they had.
Through our bonded link, Paisley was so weak I could barely feel her. Where her icy magic usually resided, there was a blue
flame. It clouded my mind as I landed just in time to fall between the fire elemental and Paisley.
Right as he released a blade of burning metal. My weak blast of water diffused the fire as intended, but the edge remained
sharp and true as it crashed into Paisley.
I was too late.
The blade sliced through her neck, and I grabbed her in time to see the light fade in her perfect face. A thunderous roar
filled the room, and it wasn’t until every window shattered, filling the hall with glass, that I realized it came from me.
No. No, please goddess. Fucking NO!
Not Precious. The fucking reason I got up every morning and survived the torturous years with my unhinged father. Not the
one piece of good in this fucked-up life.
As I held her to my chest, covered in her blood and my tears, an unnatural calm descended over me. This was followed by the
eeriest silence as my power sent such a shockwave through the room that even the monsters were calm—the remnants of the bond
which hadn’t quite died in my chest yet allowed me to stand with her body against mine.
I already knew I’d be following her into the next existence—there was nothing here for me now—but before I went, everyone
here was going to pay.
I would take the entire magical world with me.
Purgatory monsters had nothing on a spellcaster without his bonded mate.
As I tilted my head back, my rage rose until conscious thought was gone and I was a living, breathing force of wrath. The
cries from students grew louder as I drew on the energy of the world, of the universe, in a way we were forbidden as spellcasters.
To end it all.
Paisley
It was dark in my place of death. A drifting of the tides of time, moving from my birth and subsequent life-journey, toward
the end, which came far sooner than I’d ever expected. I had no substance, a soul without a body, as mine had been destroyed.
Without a body, I didn’t feel the cold, but as I drifted, I sensed that my surroundings were beyond icy.
Why am I drifting?
Was this the normal pathway to the Eternal Lands? Or was I judged evil, to never find peace within the final plane? The living
world remained close to my soul as I dwelled on the mess left behind, and I was surprised to find that I hadn’t quite cut
my ties with my former life.
Logan. Pain bloomed like newly released magic in my soul. It burned in a way I wished I could die from all over again.
The urge to return to him crushed me in its grasp, and if there were an ability to make noise here, I’d have been screaming.
When a stream of fiery ice appeared before me in blue waves, surrounding whatever remained of the darkness, it drew me closer until I was bathed in its illumination. My magic thrummed to life with me even in death, and I was once again soundlessly screaming in the vacuum.
I could feel other magic around me.
Other reapers.
Paisley . . .
I heard the call as loudly as if it were shouted into my ears, which was impossible because I no longer had those.
Our sister.
It was a chorus of voices, nearly deafening in its intensity.
We are reapers. Your sisters. Our power is a collective.
Their words were a concerto of layered voices, combined with a magic that called strongly to my own.
We drew forth the beasts to devour dark magic. We kept the planes from colliding in a cataclysm of power. We had an important
role to play in the magical world and they destroyed that. You are the last of our kind. We cannot let you fall, or everything
falls.
The blue flashed, and with it, a scene appeared in the flames. I recognized the buildings immediately . . . I was looking
at Weatherstone College. Only, it wasn’t the prestigious college I was used to seeing. Instead, its decaying walls dripped
with a pulsing darkness that appeared to be devouring the very material used to build the grounds.
This is how the school looks beneath the veil. That darkness of the planes colliding. It’s been happening for so many years
now that all the worlds are on the brink of collapse. We need your power, Paisley. We need the reapers. You must return.
The pitch and cadence of their layered speech grew until it crashed against me. The blue fire caressed my skin, sinking deeper
into my essence, and I felt it tugging at my soul.
I didn’t fight it.
I’d always known there had to be a reason for our affinity, and it turned out I was right. The fear of the past was almost the magical world’s entire undoing. We were on the brink of destruction, with the five planes merging to annihilate the natural world.
I was all that stood between them and the end.
The voices of my ancestors, sister-witches, the other reapers . . . filled me as thoroughly as the blue fire, and it was only
when every cell in my body flooded with power that I realized what the icy fire had been all along.
My connection to the collective magic of reapers. We were never supposed to work alone. We didn’t call the monsters and control
them without the help of our sisters.
Darkness trembled around us, and with this, a new unease filtered through to me.
Go! they chanted at me. Your mate is unraveling the existence of the world. You must stop him, and then together, you will save them all.
Logan!
They filled me with their communal power, the equivalent of hundreds of reaper witches; I’d take this part of them with me
to the plane of the living.
My bond to Logan was drawing me back home.
To finish what the council had started.