My witchmagic floods through Morrigan’s ritual circle.
Not the controlled trickle the drain was designed for—a torrent. Everything I have, everything I am, poured through the channels she built. Royal witch blood, the most ancient and powerful lineage in existence, unleashed without restraint. I feel it leaving me—not as a loss, but as a weapon. As an attack.
Morrigan’s eyes widen. “What are you?—”
She wanted my power. Now she has it.
The focusing crystals crack as magic surges through them—too much power, too fast. One explodes outward, shards of enchanted stone spraying across the chamber. Then another. And another. The channels in the floor overflow, witch light spilling across the stone, pooling in cracks, seeping into every surface. The ritual circle blazes so brightly, it becomes painful to look at.
Morrigan tries to sever the drain. I feel her magic grasping at the channels, trying to close what she opened. But it’s too late. The floodgates are open, and my power isn’t stopping.
“Stop!” Morrigan screams, her hands raised in a warding gesture that does nothing. “You’ll kill us both!”
“Maybe.” I keep pushing. The manacles are still suppressing my fire, but my witch magic doesn’t care. It flows and flows and flows, more power than Morrigan’s ritual was designed to contain. “But I’ll take you with me.”
The irony isn’t lost on me. She built a drain to steal my power, and I’m using it as a pipeline to destroy her. Every defensive measure she created is now working against her—the amplification crystals magnifying the flood, the channels directing it straight to her, the barrier keeping her trapped inside her own ritual circle.
She’s drowning in me.
“You can’t—” Morrigan stumbles, magic crackling visibly across her skin. Her hair is lifting, floating in the current of power that flows between us. Light seeps from her pores. “The ritual—it’s supposed to?—”
“Supposed to drain a Fire-Bringer.” I smile, and I know it’s not a kind smile. “But you forgot what else I am. What our mother was. What the Valdorian royal line has carried for generations.”
The manacles on my wrists crack. Too much power flowing through the system—even the suppressors can’t contain it. White fire begins to leak through the fractures, my Fire-Bringer flame returning as the enchantments fail. Heat surges through my veins, mixing with the witch magic that’s still pouring through Morrigan’s broken channels.
“I’m a witch, Morrigan. The most powerful witch born in centuries. And you just opened a direct channel to everything I have.”
The manacles shatter.
My fire erupts—white, blazing, merging with the witch magic already flooding the ritual. Fire-Bringer flame and royal witchpower combined, the full force of my dual bloodlines unleashed through Morrigan’s own amplification system. The chamber fills with light so intense, it becomes its own kind of darkness, burning away shadows that have no right to exist.
She realizes her mistake too late. She wanted my power. Now she has it—all of it—and it’s consuming her from within.
“You wanted what I have?” I advance through the flames, untouched by power that’s burning Morrigan alive. My hair streams behind me, copper highlights blazing. My eyes have gone white—I can feel them, the incandescent light replacing amber. “You can’t steal it. You can’t contain it. It was never meant to be taken.”
She falls to her knees, the ritual circle collapsing around her as my magic overwhelms everything she built. Her dark hair is burning, the white streaks turning to ash. Her skin is cracking with light that seeps from beneath, my power too vast for her body to hold. She looks small suddenly. Fragile. The terrifying witch who haunted my nightmares reduced to a woman dying badly.
“Please.” The word escapes her like a sob. “Tamsin—sister?—”
I stop.
Not because of the word. Because of the way she said it. For just a moment, she sounds like the sister I remember. The one who protected me before jealousy consumed her.
“I loved you.” My voice breaks. “I looked up to you. And you threw that away for power you could never have.”
“I know.” Tears stream down her cracking face—tears of grief or pain or both. “I know, and I’m?—”
She doesn’t finish.
The power completes its work. Morrigan burns from the inside out, white fire consuming dark magic, decades of accumulated evil turned to ash. She dies screaming—the sameway Lyric died, the same way our parents died, the same way so many others died because of her choices.
Poetic justice, delivered by the sister she spent a lifetime trying to destroy.
I stand in the ruins of her ritual chamber, surrounded by shattered crystals and melted chains and the ashes of the woman who was once my family. The walls are cracking. The floor is splitting. The whole fortress is coming apart, its wards tied to a life force that no longer exists.
My fire gutters. My witch magic recedes. The exhaustion I’ve been holding at bay crashes over me like a wave, and I sink to my knees in the crater where my sister died.
It’s over.
