My sister.
My dad.
I screamed. The ear-piercing noise burst out along with a wave of dark magic, sending everyone and everything within a thirty-foot radius flying backward, including Ender.
I turned to face David, who was the first to his feet, smiling at me with admiration.
David turned to Chaos, who slowly rolled off his side and to his four feet, shaking his head. David lifted the dagger above his head—the dagger that most likely was the one Miss Lee said could kill a dragon with one slice—and aimed the tip at Chaos.
“No!” I roared and shoved my fist into the ground, it sinking a good five inches.
The ground around David collapsed. Chaos scrambled backward, barely avoiding the small crater.
I pulled my hand free and made my way over to the crater and jumped in, landing in a crouch. When I stood, the dust had settled enough to show David leering at me, not phased at all by my assault. I turned, shoving my hands into the dirt walls and imagining an impenetrable fortress overhead. Words flowed from my mouth in a language I didn’t know I possessed until black vines enclosed the crater. Interwoven trails of dark glowing lava, a rich shade of red, pulsed as if the vines were alive.
The magic was so enticing, so alive.
“Addicting, isn’t it?”
I pulled my hands from the dirt, turning to face him. He tucked the dagger away behind him.
I panted, unable to respond. I could feel his formidable power now and wondered if it was something I could take. I stepped toward him.
“You can’t take another ether’s dark magic.” David assessed me with hunger and desire, like he could read my own cravings. “I have tried, though I’ve never came across a level five dark ether mage. That hunger you feel will abate marginally when you take your soul-bound’s magic.” His words lit an internal desire and he grinned, stepping closer. “Yes, my lovely. This world will be entirely ours. Free of dragons. If any ether mages rear their heads, we will consume them.”
My lips turned upward into a smile, and I felt half-hinged. I clutched my family, Ender, and the fact that this was the dark mage who had taken my mother’s life, boiling her from the inside out with blood magic.
David is the reason my family is broken, why Vivian’s biological parents are dead, why I killed April, why we hid our entire lives, and if he continues, he will be the reason my remaining family dies… why Ender dies.
My smile turned bitter and I reached out, grabbing him by the throat. His skin thrummed with enticing, dangerous electricity and I pulled it to me, wrapping my hands around his neck. Another foreign enchantment left my mouth, and David’s body went rigid before he could struggle, his eyes wide in shock. I lifted him in the air, ignoring his hands, which made a feeble attempt to remove my grasp from his neck.
“You waited over one hundred years for someone to stand by your side, and you chose me.” I squeezed tighter. “You never chose better.”
As my hand clenched and his power shot through me like a live wire, something else ached in my chest, threatening to burst.
Ender. He was reaching out to me.
But my decision had been made.
With each passing of David’s magic into my soul, he aged, revealing the effects of dark magic on his body. Wrinkles appeared across his paling skin, his golden hair turning brittle and grey, and his clenched teeth yellowed and became rotten. All signs of his true self showed until I noticed his blue eyes turning grey—devoid of power. He hadn’t been turning back into his previous appearance as a dark mage. His body was turning to his true age.
The power vanished and I let go, the man before me dropping to his knees. David was unrecognizable. His sunken eyes gazed at me as his outermost skin turned to dust and eventually, the rest of him followed suit, leaving a pile of brown dust on the ground.
I no longer felt his power and my skin no longer prickled with energy. The burning vines above me turned to ash, coating me in soot. The ache in my chest grew into a warm throb, and the insatiable hunger died. I became disorientated, my head started to feel fuzzy, and my body became light. Dark grey-blue blurredmy vision. That was when I realized I had fallen and was staring at the sky.
A thump landed next to me and Ender’s face came into view. Beyond him, Chaos soared across the sky like a bullet. Sounds of fighting ensued but were distant.
My body burned.
My heart was torn.
I tried to speak, to confess one final thing to Ender.
But my body didn’t listen. He wouldn’t know that I loved him.
Then everything disappeared and I couldn’t hear anything at all.
Chapter Fifty-Five
