Chapter 38 Crash and Burn #3
I couldn’t do anything but stare at the space where the portal had been, chest heaving like I was drowning. My hands trembled, fingers curling and uncurling against the pavement.
“No.” The word came out broken, barely a whisper. “No, no, no—”
I clawed at the air in desperation. “Open it again. He was right there! I can reach him—Leo, please—”
“Mel…” Leo’s voice cracked, his face twisting with grief. “I—I can’t.”
Can’t.
The word detonated inside me.
Something in my chest broke. I felt it snap like a bone, the power I’d been holding back surging up my throat like bile. My vision went white at the edges.
“He saved us,” May rasped. Her voice sounded far away, muffled.
“He left us!” I screamed.
The world cracked with me.
The streetlights above exploded in showers of sparks and glass.
The pavement beneath me shattered, fractures spider-webbing outward in jagged lines that glowed green.
The asphalt buckled and heaved. A trash bin flew into a brick wall hard enough to dent the metal, and the impact sent rust blooming across its surface like a disease, spreading in seconds until the whole thing crumbled to flakes. Somewhere, someone screamed.
I didn’t care.
Leo cursed, scrambling back. May threw herself over Candace, shielding her.
“Melanie!” Leo shouted. “Stop—”
But I couldn’t. A visceral sob tore out of me. The decay spread outward in a wave, paint peeling off nearby cars in long strips, metal rusting so fast it screamed, a high keening sound like something dying.
The scream ripped from my throat, and the world answered.
The concrete beneath my feet cracked wide open with a sound like bones breaking.
Vines erupted from the ruptures, feral and wild.
They clawed up through the pavement, crowned in wicked thorns as long as my fingers.
They writhed and twisted, strangling lampposts, wrapping around car axles, and squeezing until metal shrieked and buckled.
Flowers blossomed along the vines in violent bursts.
Grotesque, beautiful and terrible, with petals sharp enough to cut, bleeding crimson and deep purple and sickly yellow.
Oleander. Nightshade. Hemlock. Corpse flowers with petals like rotting flesh.
The air thickened with their scent, cloying and sweet and wrong, the smell of funeral parlors and turned earth and something underneath it all that tasted like iron on my tongue.
My grief made manifest. My rage and love turned inside out, pouring from me in waves I couldn’t control.
Leo stumbled back, eyes wide with terror. “Mel, that’s divine energy—you’re burning yourself out, you have to stop—”
The power was a wildfire in my veins, burning through me, and I was the kindling. My vision swam. I tasted copper and ash, felt something hot and wet on my upper lip. Blood. My nose was bleeding.
I didn’t care.
I wanted everything to hurt the way I hurt.
“I should have stopped him!” The words tore out of me, raw and jagged. “I should have made him stay, I should have—”
My voice broke. I doubled over, arms wrapped around my middle. The vines pulsed with every ragged breath, growing thicker, wilder. A nearby tree withered and died in seconds, leaves turning brown and falling in a cascade. The grass beneath it blackened and curled.
My knees hit the pavement, and the impact sent another shockwave through the ground. My hands shook so hard I couldn’t feel my fingers, vision blurring. The power was eating me alive from the inside out, burning through my veins like acid.
“Melanie.”
The familiar voice cut through everything. I whipped around, and there was Luz.
She and Hecate had arrived while I was breaking apart. Hecate stood at a distance, hands raised, a shimmering barrier of golden light protecting Candace and the others from the worst of the chaos. But Luz came straight for me.
She stood at the edge of the destruction, tears staining her cheeks. Vines curled toward her, thorns glinting, and she didn’t flinch. She stood there, an anchor in the storm, her eyes locked on mine.
“You’ll destroy yourself if you keep going,” she said.
“I don’t care.” My voice was wrecked, unrecognizable.
“I know,” she said, and her voice broke. “But he does.”
The words hit like a blade between my ribs.
“He didn’t leave you because he doesn’t love you,” she continued, stepping closer.
A vine lashed toward her, and she caught it with her bare hand, thorns biting into her palm.
She didn’t let go. “He left because he does. Because you are worth protecting, and losing you would destroy him worse than any bullet ever could.”
Tears spilled down my cheeks, hot and stinging.
“And we need you too, Mel,” Luz insisted, reaching out her other hand. Blood dripped from where the thorns had cut her. “Look around. May is bleeding. Your mother almost died. Leo is terrified. And I—” Her voice cracked. “I can’t lose you, too. Please don’t make me lose you, too.”
And when I finally looked, I saw.
Leo, eyes wild with panic, still standing between the chaos and Candace and May. May, face streaked with tears and blood, golden light flickering weakly in her palms as she tried to heal herself and keep Candace stable. Candace herself was weak and trembling, but alive. Alive.
Because Kian had given himself up.
A broken sob ripped from me. The sound was animal, raw, and it tore something loose inside my chest. The earth shook once more—a final, violent tremor—and then went still.
The vines stopped growing. The wind died. The flowers shriveled and fell to ash, petals disintegrating mid-air. The decay halted, rust freezing in place, paint hanging in curled strips. The air thinned, the oppressive weight of death lifting just enough to breathe.
I bent forward and wept, gasping like my lungs had split open. Each breath was agony, every heartbeat felt wrong. My hands were still shaking, blood still dripping from my nose, my vision still swimming. I’d burned through so much power I could barely hold myself upright.
How was I supposed to keep breathing when half of me was gone?
Luz dropped to her knees beside me, her arms closing around me. She pulled me against her chest, one hand cradling the back of my head, the other still gripping the vine that had tried to hurt her.
“I’ve got you,” she whispered, rocking me. “Let it out. I’ve got you.”
And so I did.