And I stood tall, no longer needing Goldriel to support my weight as I raised my head at Adara. My wing was definitely broken, but the pain was secondary to the dizzying high of power that settled deep in my soul. She hissed, a shadow of doubt flitting through herslitted pupils.
I smiled and dropped the spell book into the snow, immediately feeling the connection to its magic sever. But I had taken enough, bolstering my ownacatas Adara had done–not to cast a spell, but to fill up the well of my depleted magic.
To stand on my own to finish this.
“Yield,” I commanded, as golden battle magic formed at my fingertips, sparking and whipping around me on that silent, snowy mountain top.
Adara only snarled and advanced a step.
I smirked. “I hoped you’d say that.”
And I unleashed every ounce of magic from that spell book upon my twin.
Adara screeched as brilliant gold erupted from my palms and engulfed her, the force of an ancient and terrible power that she had tried to warp and control exacting its own retribution onto her.
I squeezed my fists shut. And where a massive beast had stood just moments before, a slim figure appeared crumpled on the ground through the dimming golden light. The magic had knocked her back into the thick trunks of the tree, and she shifted back to her regular form, unconscious.
The second that last glimmer of gold faded, so did the strength of the spell book’s magic. I sank into the snow, utterly spent, all of the wounds I had felt before tapping into the spell book’s magic slamming back into me full force. Crawling on my hands and knees, I slipped my hand into my pocket of space, unearthing the nullifying cuffs. I slowly affixed them to Adara’s wrists, then each ankle, the metal flaring green as they clicked and locked, nullifying Adara’s fae magic, and restricting her shifting abilities.
My eyelids grew heavier, my bruised and battered body shutting down. I just needed a few more seconds.
I growled, pushing my body away from the brink of unconsciousness, my vision swimming, my head thudding and unnaturally light.
I reopened my pocket of space, picking up Goldriel with one hand, my other sinking into a snow drift. I didn’t feel the cold.
Using the moon stoned tip of Goldriel, I pushed the spell book into my pocket of space. I didn’t want to touch it, wary over the amount of power it held, and the consequences I would already face using its magic. I didn’t want to hold some foreign power in my veins after seeing what happened when Adara used it.
Was I already corrupted?
I didn’t feel corrupted.
But I also couldn’t feel the tips of my fingers or anything below my knees, so this probably wasn’t the time to ponder that. I needed to get it to Hale, have him look at the book. And then it needed to be destroyed. That much magic in the wrong hands, well, Adara was bad enough.
The spell book disappeared, and I could have sworn the damned thing seemed disgruntled as I shoved it into thin air. I gently fisted my palm, locking it in my own pocket of space. With the edges of my vision blacking, I tried crawling back toward the tree line, towards Adara, my twin reduced to little more than a shallowly breathing mound in the snow. My broken wing threatened to pitch me forward.
I needed to get off this mountain, acutely aware that myacatwas so thoroughly depleted that I was no longer healing at all. I was very much in danger of death, though dying from the cold was a little too anti-climactic for me.
I needed to tell Keerian where I was. My frostbitten fingers fumbledto touch my ring.
I needed…to tell him something.
What was I telling him?
I needed…
I closed my eyes.
Brightlightflashedthroughmy eyelids, bringing me back to consciousness. I cracked my eyes open in time to see black wings blot out the full moon. A whistling shriek pierced the quiet.
The great black dragon landed in the snow with enough force to shake the mountain. He roared, the sound of promise and devotion, as his wings spread wide, opening his maw and shooting silvery fire high above the tree line.
“Resso?”
Either my fuckled mind was now conjuring hallucinations, or the cranky cave dragon was really standing before me.
I was bone cold, so cold that I could no longer even shiver. The dragon, who, only days ago, had curled up around his horde and told me he did not interfere with the wars of royals, let out a rumbling whine and gently nudged me with his nose.
I groaned, trying and failing to get up off the snowy ground. Craning my neck, I saw Adara stir and open her eyes, a soft whimper escaping as she beheld the shackles adorning her wrists and ankles. I glared at her.
