“You know, Charlotte was such a good girl. She almost had that shadow demon bitch kill you, but fucking Rod infected you,Gravesend,”she spat my last name like it disgusted, her but I smiled at it. “Otherwise, you’d be dead. You owe dark magic your life.”
Demons were dropping like flies around us.
As soon as the relic took the dark magic, the agents, my mates, and the council members decimated the cultists.
None of them stood a chance.
“I owe dark magic my pain, sure, but my life? I oweNebulamy life,” I told her before my power lurched, billowing forth toward her before she held her palms out and unleashed a torrent of dark magic that met my power with fierceness that threatened to overwhelm me completely.
I ate every bit of it, and my power had it killed before it ever entered my body.
Nebula’s power flooded my veins, boosting my own. As my power strengthened, it was like it completely connected to my soul and a huge pulse erupted as a magical blinding light zapped through the temple.
“Holy Fates,” Grimsworn uttered from where he fought off to the side, but I could hear him. “Your power is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Your familiar has truly merged with you.”
Hunter, Bram, and Skel circled me, placing their hands on my shoulders and back before flooding me with their powers as well.
“Nebula’s powershould’ve been mine!”Sybil screamed. “How dare you steal from me!”
My power raged against Sybil’s, and tears pricked my eyes as I forced my power to eat every bit of dark magic she hit me with, but it was like she had an infinite supply of it.
Pain exploded from my matebond with Dex, vertically down my throat—histhroat, but I couldn’t see him. He was alive, and he got away, but whatever he was harmed with was something lasting in a way that worried me.
I had to stay focused, and I had to trust that he would be okay.
But Dex?—
“Fuck!” Skel shouted as a blade came down his left eye from the shadows, and he stumbled before placing his hand back onto my shoulder. “I’m okay, princess, just focus on the witch!”
Bram’s matebond lanced with pain across his cheek, and my heart ached at how everlasting it felt. “Focus, Pandora!”
Then, Hunter’s shoulder seared with agony as a blade went through it. “We’re okay, starlight. Focus.”
I trembled, feeling their pain through our matebonds, but I tried to focus on Sybil.
She grinned as she noticed me falter. “Mates are a weakness.”
Reed, holding the relic, screamed in pain as his stomach was ripped through by another blade. He stayed upright, but I could feel every bit of his pain. “I’m okay!” he shouted.
“Fuck these things!” Damien tumbled out of the shadows with a shadow demon holding a bloodied tourmalyke blade. He wrestled it out of the demon’s grasp before plunging it through their eye socket and into their brain again and again until their life-force drained. “Wren’s safe with Lachlan, Thorn, and Rhett! Alister and Kian are with me in the shadows,” he called to Rowan before fading out again.
“No. They’re a strength.” I let out a sharp breath of relief before calling on every spark of magic tied to my soul—my soul eater power, Nebula’s boost to my magic, and all of my mates’ powers that I had access to: vengeance, fear, chaos, and my shadow. I let go of any restrictions and channeled everything I had into the large smoke cloud fighting and eating the dark magic blast Sybil had focused on me.
Her dark magic stream had lessened considerably before finally dissipating with a forceful wave, blasting everyone but her and I away from the center circle.
“It’s over, Sybil.” My power destroyed the dark magic circle, and I stepped into it, standing at the edge of the crack to the Veil.
She let out a weak chuckle, swaying on her feet. “Why do you insist on using my first name? Demons call others by their first name when they’re close, don’t they? Do you consider us close?”
“Orif you’re not even worth the last name recognition,” I bit out with hate. “Which you aren’t. It’s a sign of disrespect when I talk to you like you aren’t worthy of your last name. You’re nothing more than a pest to me.”
My power swallowed her, but as soon as I delved into her mouth, I noticed her soul was split into different parts inside of her body. Usually, souls were in the center, where the heart beat. But hers only had a fragment of her soul there.
“Last time, you almost ate my soul in its entirety. Couldn’t let that happen again.” Her cracked lips curled up.
“It’s a necromancer trick!” a man with brown hair, green eyes, and glasses shouted toward me as he came out of the shadows with Damien. “She has soul shards embedded in her limbs. It would allow her to be resurrected by a necromancer.”
She let out a weak laugh. “I have necromancer friends who will ensure I come back from this. Necromancers aren’t as extinct as you’d like to believe.”
