The pressure swells—hot and suffocating—boiling in my veins, clawing through every limb like wildfire, hungry and endless. The air thickens, humming with power.
The guard senses it—they all do.
He glances up at me, and for the first time, I see it.Fear.
I unspool.
Tear my magic free.
The world splits apart.
Light detonates from my hands, raw and unchained, a force that shakes the ground beneath us.
A scream rips from my throat, guttural and primal, as I flood the tunnels with white-hot Lightborne magic—a storm of celestial power unleashed.
But Kael doesn’t burn. As if responsive to my intentions, the magic cocoons him, wrapping him in an unbreakable shield—safe.Mine.
But the others?
The ones who tried to take from me?
Who thought they could touch him?
They don’t stand a chance.
The light consumes them—shredding through flesh, searing through armor, reducing them to nothing but flickering embers in the air.
No screams.
No time to beg.
One heartbeat, they exist.
The next, they’re ash.
And the tunnels fall silent.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
KAEL
The world waversat the edges, exhaustion pressing down like a blade to my throat. The cloak is still in place. I feel the threads of shadow stretching thin, unraveling, but I grit my teeth and hold them. Nyx. Aura. Just a little longer. If I let go now, The Joining’s soldiers would see them—would know.
My breath shudders in my lungs.
And then I see her.Elyssara.
Standing apart from the others, magic still humming in the air around her. Untouched. Unshaken. A star in the dark.
And I wonder if she even knows the weight of what she just did.
Gods. She’s fucking powerful.
Therion and Merrik haul me to my feet, sweat still beading along my skin, my legs nearly giving out beneath me. Every part of me feels hollowed out, as if the magic siphoned straight through my bones.
Jax whistles low, arms crossed as she fixes Elyssara with an unreadable stare. “Well, that was something. Probably could’ve done that from the start and saved us the hassle, eh?”
“Jaxxy,” Merrik rubs his temples, exasperated. “Can you ever just...not?”
