We’re tangled in fury and fear and hatred, rolling across the bubble’s floor like animals. Her blows are stronger, faster, anticipating my every move because she knows me better than I know myself. I don’t stop. I refuse to yield. I scream, kick, punch, and bite with every ounce of will I possess, drawing on reserves of strength I didn’t know existed. Still, she laughs, the sound echoing through our shared prison.
“You’re weak,” she hisses, pressing her advantage as she pins me down. “You always were. We could be free of all this, the doubt, the fear, the constant need for approval. We could be?—”
“I don’t want to be you,” I snarl, getting my knee between us. With a surge of desperate strength, I kick her off me, sending her sprawling.
“I’m not you!” I shout, jumping to my feet as something familiar and powerful surges through my veins. Water magic,pure and clean and mine, not stolen or corrupted. The relief of feeling something so fundamentally part of me renews my spirit, gives me strength I thought was lost forever. This isn’t dark magic, this is my birthright, my heritage, my truth.
My elemental water magic erupts in a blast from my outstretched hands, more powerful than I’ve ever managed before. The force sends her flying backward, crashing against the edge of the dome with enough impact to crack the magical barrier.
The bubble begins to tremble, hairline fractures spreading across its surface, and I watch as she fades, her form becoming translucent as she screams into the dark depths beyond.
“This isn’t over!” she shrieks, but her voice is already distant, echoing. “I’m part of you! I’ll always be part of you!”
“I know,” I say quietly, and I mean it. “I choose which part gets to drive.”
“Sam!” I scream, turning my attention to the two figures beyond the cracking dome. “Locke!”
They’re sinking deeper, their struggles growing weaker, and panic floods through me. Without hesitation, I reach for them through the barrier, my magic flooding through my fingers like liquid fire. I twist the currents with desperate precision, bend the lake itself to my will in ways I never knew were possible. With a roar that comes from the depths of my soul, I shove them both upward and out, the water exploding in two separate geysers that hurl them toward the shore with tremendous force.
Then I rise behind them, lifted on a column of spiraling water that responds to my call like it’s been waiting for this moment. I burst from the lake in a cascade of silver light, heart blazing with triumph, hair whipping in the supernatural wind I’ve created.
A bolt of lightning splits the sky, drawn by the magic coursing through me, slamming directly into my body over the glowing mark on my forearm. I scream as divine power races through mybones like molten gold, carving something new and permanent into my skin. The pain is exquisite, transformative, like being reborn in fire and starlight.
My second mark. I passed. I accepted the darkness within me without letting it consume me, chose love without denying the reality of my own capacity for terrible things. The relief hits me like a physical blow, and all the energy drains from me at once.
The world begins to spin, colors bleeding together as exhaustion crashes over me like a wave. I’m falling, the magic that held me aloft dissipates, but I don’t fear the water anymore.
The last thing I hear before blackness takes me is my own voice. Not the darker version of myself, but my own strong, confident voice echoing across the water and into the depths of my soul.
I know who I am and I accept both sides of myself, the dark and the light.
I choose the light.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
SAM
My wolf breaks free before I can even think to stop him. One moment I’m gasping at the lake’s edge, lungs burning with water and disbelief, my human mind struggling to process what I’ve just witnessed. The next, I’m fur, fang, and pure instinct, charging toward the limp shape falling from the storm-darkened sky like a fallen angel cast from heaven.
Esme.
She crashes into the earth like a broken star, her body unmoving, lifeless as a discarded doll. There’s no scream, no desperate gasp of air returning to starved lungs, just a sickening, wet thud as she hits the muddy ground near the water’s edge. The sound echoes in my bones, a death knell that makes my wolf howl in anguish.
I howl then, the sound ripping through my throat and into the gray morning like a curse torn from the depths of my soul. My paws tear across the slick stones at the lake’s edge, claws scrambling for purchase on the wet rocks. Cold water lashes my legs as I splash through the shallows, but I barely feel it. All I know is the dead stillness in her body, the way her limbs lieat unnatural angles, the terrible absence of her usual radiant warmth.
She’s not breathing.
My teeth find her sleeve and I tug her gently, gods, so gently, from the shallows, cradling her with a reverence I didn’t know I possessed. My muzzle brushes her cheek, searching for any sign of life. Still warm. Still warm, but her eyes are shut, her lips pale as winter morning, her limbs limp in a way that speaks of too much magic spent, of power drawn from the very marrow of her bones. Of a girl pushed past her limits and beyond.
Then—
Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!
Arrows bury themselves in the earth exactly where she’d just been lying, their black fletching quivering with the force of impact.
I jerk back, snarling, my hackles rising as my lips peel back from my fangs. Across the lake, Locke is coughing, doubled over and retching lake water onto the pebbled shore. He looks up with a snarl of his own, water streaming from his locs, his gray-green eyes wild with fury and something that might be fear. His gaze finds mine across the distance, and he sees the arrows. His head whips toward the cliffs, toward the gray stone faces that loom jagged and threatening above the lake. Archers, at least a dozen dark figures silhouetted against the stormy sky.
“Get her out of here!” he roars, his voice echoing over the water, raw with desperation.
