I wanted a life with you. A life without fear and pain.
“Then destroy it,” she snarls, her beautiful lips trembling with what can only be rage because, for some reason, my rejection of the wand has upset her. “You. Must. Choose.”
She has commanded me to destroy the wand, but I don’t know how she expects me to do that.
Even so, she shoves it at me, stopping a scant inch above my chest.
This slender wand and all its bright, destructive energy.
The power radiating out from it is like that of a wild animal that refuses to be tamed, even more intense up close.
When Peyton first asked me about this wand, I told her what I knew.
It brings power to its wielder, anything they want and everything they could imagine, but it’s an instrument of deception. It controls anyone who tries to use it. Even those who thought they had conquered it were manipulated into situations where the wand could do the most damage. Then, it killed them and everyone around them.
According to the myth, only a supernatural with a truly dark heart can wield it.
As I look up into Peyton’s eyes, her earlier scream echoes back to me once more.
It’s you, she said.Let out your rage.
And now she’s holding the wand out to me, giving it to me, and telling me to choose whether or not to destroy it…
My heart gives a thud.
It’s you.
It seems she knows my dark heart better than I know it myself.
Somehow, I make my hand move. At first, it’s only a twitch at my side, the barest movement.
It takes everything I’ve got to slide my hand, palm up, onto my stomach. I don’t have the strength to reach for the wand, nor the strength to speak any longer.
She doesn’t hesitate, placing the wand onto my waiting palm and curling my fingers around it before she withdraws again.
I want her to be wrong.
I want the wand to take control of me, to prove that my heart is not filled with darkness after all, even though that’s what she needs.
I wait for the power to take me over, wait as my heart thumps slower and slower until there’s no denying what I am.
“Now choose,” she orders me.
3. PEYTON PRICE
Striker must choose, and then I can judge him.
I remove my hand from the wand, waiting for him to show me who he really is.
I’m prepared for him to choose destruction.
I’m ready for him to take control of the students and command them to turn on me, just like Vulture did. I expect him to take hold of the ultimate power and use it for his own gains.
Blood oozes from the bullet wounds in his chest and the new cuts on his body from his fight with Hadrix.
With every labored breath he takes, the light from the wand increases.
Its myriad powers of deception and desire pollute the air around us.
