Chapter 42
Chapter forty-two
Raegan
It’s cold. And dark.
Am I still in the water tank? Was everything just a dream?
No. There’s too much pain.
It’s everywhere, seeping through my veins until I’m burning with it. I’m nothing more than a vessel for pain.
I’m saturated in it.
As if I’m floating in an ocean of pain and it’s absorbing through my skin, infusing my lungs, my gut.
My stomach.
That’s where I feel it the most.
So much pain.
Pain.
Pain.
“—gan!”
A fire burning the cold.
A livewire of heat threading through my limbs, pooling in my stomach.
Aching.
Begging.
To be used.
“Rae!”
“Fight him!”
“Raegan!”
“Raegan.”
As my body warms, the distant voices become clearer. More familiar.
Dane. Kellan. Aiden. Jackson.
Consciousness comes rushing back like a speed train. Air, on the other hand, doesn’t.
My hands wrap around whatever’s cutting off my air on instinct, trying to pull them away as I drag my eyes open.
Charles.
We’re still fighting him.
The men who mean everything to me are calling my name. Their voices are strained or rough with emotion.
But I’m also glad it’s me and not one of them in my place.
I won’t give up.
I promised I wouldn’t die.
I won’t lose.
I’ve barely used my gift in this fight. There’s no way I’m out of it yet.
It hardly takes anything to draw it out; it’s as if my gift’s been simmering beneath the surface, ready and waiting to be let loose. Red lightning arcs and scatters over Charles’s scales. It strikes him in the chest. The arm. The head. His side.
He doesn’t budge from where he’s standing.
But his grip loosens enough that I can breathe again.
I suck down air, focusing my gift on him to keep him distracted while I regain all the oxygen I lost. White-hot pain sears through my gut when I take too deep a breath, and I’m left panting and shaking.
“You can’t hurt me,” Charles reminds me, but I see otherwise.
My lightning doesn’t penetrate his scales, but it still hurts. He’s trying to hide it, but I can see the tiny flinches. The way he shifts himself with discomfort when it crosses his thickened skin.
It hurts him, but it’s not enough to beat him.
Especially not in my current state. Not while I’m dizzy from blood loss. Or in so much pain I’m almost numb.
The others don’t stop attacking the invisible barrier he has up between us and them.
I see them repelled off their feet, then race back to try again.
Their attacks are struck back just as much.
All except Dane, who’s holding his ground against the barrier somehow, his white light a single flame as it slowly forces a hand-shaped hole through.
Charles squeezes my throat again, and I gasp, digging my nails against his scales.
Fuck.
Think.
How can I beat him?
So much pain…
Darkness edges my vision. It’s a sweet promise to return to nothingness. That numb, weightless feeling I’d once had in the water tank. There would be no pain if I give in to it.
No. I promised…
They need me.
And I need them.
I’m a world breaker.
Queen of destruction.
I’m Raegan of Ruin. And I won’t go down without giving him my all.
I’ve fought through pain before. This is no different.
I draw out all of my gift. Everything I have, I release it.
My power erupts in a powerful blast. Everyone but Charles and I are slammed into the walls. Red lightning scores the room in jagged strikes that tear it apart. Chunks of ceiling falls. Whatever furniture was in the room disintegrates. The flooring cracks and turns to ash wherever lightning touches.
Charles chuckles. “You’re going to kill yourself and all your friends in here before you can hurt me. And I’ll walk out of here without a scratch.”
More.
More wasn’t the answer last time.
What else?
Black dots my vision.
Memories flash before my eyes, the past intermingling with the present.
Times on the island with the guys.
Seeing them again for the first time.
Thanking them for rescuing me from Gordon.
Them desperately trying to reach me while Charles has me in his grasp.
Love confessions.
Fun times with the Guild.
With Portia. Elias.
Hearing their voices as Charles steals the last bit of air.
Eating breakfast together with them at the dining table in the Loft.
Training together.
Dane’s gift making progress against his barrier like a beacon of light, penetrating Charles’s gift. Kind of like...
Jackson telling me about his new move on the balcony.
Wait. Go back.
“I compress it…”
“It’s the same amount of force contained in a more precise attack.”
I don’t have any time to think about it.
I let instinct take over to do it. Take all the power I have, everything I’ve released, and then squish it down.
Compress that same power into something small.
The lightning stops, and I can feel my gift disappearing from my extremities as I draw it tighter and tighter into a ball in my chest. I concentrate it down, down, down…
until not a flicker of my gift is still visible.
But I can feel it.
All that power… all that force…
It’s here in this tiny ball.
I send it to my hand.
My index finger.
And I point it at his chest.
I can’t see anymore. I’m barely conscious, praying that I aim for his heart. As soon as my fingertip brushes against something, I let it go.
It’s like pulling a trigger on a gun.
One second, the power is a massive energy at the tip of my finger, and the next, it fires and vanishes.
There’s nothing left.
No gift.
And no air.