15. Sakura #3
Wind screams across the clearing, tearing at Valesh’s clothing, driving her back from the siphon. She staggers, throws up a shield of her own power, but I’m already following with rain—sharp and hard, each drop charged with elemental energy.
“Impressive.” She deflects my assault with a gesture. “Your control has improved since you arrived. The bear’s influence, no doubt.”
“My control. My power. Mine.”
“Is it?” She circles to my left, and I turn with her, keeping myself between her and the siphon.
“You were unstable before. Creating disasters everywhere you went. Now suddenly you can direct your elements with precision? That’s not growth.
That’s corruption. The mate pull changing you into what they need you to be. ”
“You’re wrong.”
“Am I? Ask yourself—would you have this much control without him? Would your magic respond so readily to your will?” She smiles, cruel and knowing.
“The old pairings worked the same way. Witch and shifter, strengthening each other, becoming more than either could be alone. It sounds beautiful until you realize what it cost.”
“What did it cost?”
“Everything.” Her expression twists. “The Severing wasn’t cruelty. It was mercy. Cutting the ties before they consumed both species. The Preservers saved the magical world from its own destructive impulses.”
“By murdering witches with mate potential?”
“By preventing abominations from forming.” She hurls a blast of dark energy at my head.
I duck. Roll. Come up with lightning crackling between my palms.
“The only abomination here is you.”
I throw everything I have at her.
The fight is brutal and ugly.
Valesh is powerful—years of training, decades of preparation, the cold certainty of a true believer. She meets my lightning with shields of darkness. Counters my wind with anchoring spells. Every attack I launch, she deflects or absorbs.
But she’s also fighting alone now.
Behind me, I hear Torin’s roars and the screams of Preservers falling beneath his claws. The bear is magnificent and terrifying—a thing of devastation, all muscle and fury and protective rage. He moves through the cell like they’re obstacles rather than threats, and one by one, they fall.
“Your people are losing.” I press forward, driving Valesh back with a wall of flame that crackles with barely contained fury. “Give up.”
“My people are martyrs.” She doesn’t retreat—instead, she feints left and lunges right, toward the siphon. “And martyrs always win in the end.”
I realize her plan a second too late.
She’s not trying to defeat me. She’s been stalling. Keeping me busy while the siphon builds toward critical mass.
Her hand slaps against the crystalline surface.
Power floods the clearing.
The siphon doesn’t scream so much as shudder—a deep, structural groan as Valesh’s activation sequence begins to run. Light bleeds from the device in pulses, and I feel the Warding Line shiver, miles above us, centuries of layered protection registering the assault.
“No!”
I reach for the siphon with everything I have. Not to attack—to interrupt. My elements surge outward in a desperate, uncontrolled wave, elemental power slamming into the activation sequence before it can complete.
I’ve reached too far. Too hard.
The wild magic of the Overgrowth catches my power like a struck match catches flame.
It erupts.
The nexus point detonates outward in a wave of raw elemental force—wind and wild magic and centuries of compressed natural power tearing through the clearing simultaneously.
The siphon shrieks, its crystalline structure cracking as the activation sequence is violently disrupted.
Not destroyed. Not discharged. Destabilized.
The device lists sideways, its light guttering and wrong, the stolen power inside it churning without direction.
The trees shudder. The ground heaves.
“Sakura!” Torin’s voice, somewhere behind me, already swallowed by the chaos.
I try to turn toward him. The wild magic hits me like a wall.
The world goes white.
When the light clears, I’m on my knees in the dirt, my ears ringing, my magic a scorched and guttering thing inside my chest. The charm Grandmother Peach gave me burns hot against my sternum—it absorbed something, gave me something, enough to still be breathing.
The clearing around me is unrecognizable. Trees thrown back. The earth torn open in furrows. Valesh’s people—scattered, down, some moving and some not.
The siphon still stands. Damaged. Cracked. Its light is ugly and unstable, the activation sequence stalled somewhere in the middle.
Not finished.
Not finished.
I push myself to my feet. Look for Torin.
He’s not there.
The clearing is empty of him. The wild magic surge must have thrown him—through the trees, back the way we came, somewhere in the dark tangle of the Overgrowth. I can’t see him. Can’t hear him through the ringing.
Can’t feel him.
Torin.
Valesh is still on her feet. She took the position closest to the siphon when it erupted; it shielded her from the worst of the backlash. Her expression has shifted—the cold triumph is gone, replaced by something harder. Calculating.
She reaches into her coat.
I see the knife.
And I understand, a moment too late, that she has more than one way to finish this.