Catching his wrist mid-swing, my fingers locked around bone and sinew that felt like iron beneath my grip. More flames erupted from my palm, searing his skin.
Victor snarled and wrenched free, smoke curling off him as he backhanded me across the jaw. I tasted blood, staggering back and barely keeping my footing.
“Demon trash!” Victor shouted over the roar of the office burning down around us. “You think she’ll really choose you over me?”
I stepped into him again, ignoring the way my body protested.
“She already has,” I said.
I slammed my palm into the floor, calling Ravaric’s power.
He answered in fire.
It surged outward, shattering tile, splitting stone, climbing the walls like a living wave, hungry and desperate. The heat compressed the air until it felt like the demon god’s breath itself.
Victor leapt clear with impossible grace, landing atop a shattered table, red eyes blazing. His skin blistered where the flames brushed too close.
Alarms began to wail somewhere deep in the mansion. Shouts echoed in the corridors. Guards converged, magic flaring in panicked response as weak, ineffective sprinklers attempted to douse the hellfire I’d lit and stoked.
We clashed again, and again, and again.
I let all of my power tear through me unchecked, let it roar out of my chest and into the world. Columns cracked, the lights shattered overhead, and molten glass rained down as Victor tore me aside to avoid the collapse.
A demon screamed somewhere to my left. A vampire hit the floor and didn’t rise.
I didn’t look, but Victor did. Just a fraction.
I seized the moment and him by the throat, driving him backward, straight through the far wall of the office. Stone exploded outward into the hallway beyond, debris raining down around us as we crashed through into open space.
He slammed into the floor hard enough to crater it.
Before he could rise, I hauled him up again, immense heat boiling over my skin, the bond screaming in my chest like a living wound.
“And do you know why she’ll always choose me?” I growled, his claws raking weakly at my arms. “Because with me, she’ll always have a choice.”
I leaned in close enough to smell the rot beneath his cologne.
“Say hello to Sanguiel for me.”
I slammed him down again and brought both hands together.
The fire compressed, focused and white-hot.
Victor screamed beneath me, the sound almost sweeter than Sage’s laugh.
It cut off abruptly, swallowed by the roar as I poured everything I had into the flames. The heat distorted reality itself, the air rippling as if the world couldn’t decide whether to exist anymore.
When I finally pulled back, there was nothing left of Victor Corvane that could threaten anyone ever again.
I stood over the scorched remains, chest heaving, ears ringing, my body screaming in protest now that the threat had been neutralized.
For half a heartbeat, there was silence.
I had won, and Sage was safe.
But before I could truly celebrate, the cold hit.
Not a physical cold, but something that made my soul shiver.
