So I strode right up to my past self and snapped my fingers in her face. “Snap out of it. You’ve used Kalen’s strength. I bet you can use his powers, too. When those beasts come up the wall, blast them all to the underworld.”
But my past self just stared straight through me now, the guilt still swirling in her eyes.
I snapped my fingers again. “Snap out of it!”
No response. Frustration rising within me, I dropped back my head and roared. This was a memory and nothing more, and I couldn’t change the past. If only I had known this then, I could have stopped the enemy before they’d smashed their way through the Dubnos streets, killing so many innocent shadow fae.
“Wake up!” I screamed into her face.
* * *
Light slammed into my eyes. I gasped, blindly throwing myself to my feet even as I felt as if a hammer were splitting my skull. The world around me seemed to roar, and the acrid stench of smoke and death clogged my nostrils. Blinking rapidly, I tried to make sense of where I was now—where the dreams had taken me next.
That was when I heard his voice. It was the storm fae from the Dubnos courtyard, the one who had knocked me down. “Awake already? Seems I’ll need to hit you harder this time.”
Everything within me narrowed to a sharp point. My vision went crystal clear, like the glistening waters of the lake near Teine. The enemy storm fae stood just before me, not far from where he’d been only seconds before he’d knocked me out. How much time had passed? In my dreams, it had felt like hours, and yet…
He curled his hand as if ready to choke the breath from lungs once more.
“Kalen,” I whispered, lifting my eyes to the battlements. The stone wall was a blur of steel, blood, and mist, and I couldn’t spot him among the fray, though I could feel him there. I hoped what I was about to do wouldn’t weaken him in any way, but I had to trust what I’d felt before. I had to trust those dreams.
They had not failed me yet.
The storm fae sneered and reached for me. “Your lover is not here to help you this time.”
I breathed in the mist and let it coat my lungs as I called upon the power that flowed through Kalen—and me. Inwardly, I reached for it. I wrapped my mind around that thread and braced myself for the impact of all that brutal magic. I felt the darkness of it and its pure, unyielding might. And as the enemy fae stalked toward me, I threw that power right into his face.
It rushed from me with a violent recoil that threw me against the broken door, but the power also blasted the enemy across the courtyard. He collided with the stone fountain and then collapsed on the ground. From here, I could tell he wasn’t breathing.
I flexed my fingers, fear and awe tangling together in my gut. It had worked. Against all odds, I’d fought this fae and won by using Kalen’s powers—powers he couldn’t access himself, powers he’d always struggled to control. I’d zeroed them in on one solitary enemy, and it had worked. It made no sense to me at all, but an explanation didn’t matter right now. All that mattered was that I had a way to fight—reallyfight.
I was only one person, and the streets were full of the enemy, but I would do my fucking best.
With a deep breath, I yanked off my gloves and faced the scorpion creeping toward me. His talons hissed across the dirt as he shot his pincers right at my face. I ducked and then whirled, spreading my wings and ignoring another flash of pain in my back. It was still healing from where the storm fae had slammed me against the broken door, but I didn’t have time to wait. I would just have to fight through the pain.
I shoved up from the ground and raced into the misty sky. As the scorpion reached up its pincers for me, its fangs snapping at the air, I loosed Kalen’s power once more. It hurtled out of me, throwing me back several feet in the air. But it hit its mark with a powerful punch. The scorpion keeled over and landed on the ground. Dirt misted all around him.
Through the bond, I felt Kalen’s attention snap to me, as if he’d finally realized what I was doing. I shifted in the air to stare across the courtyard where he stood on the top of the wall, surrounded by a dozen dead shadowfiends. His eyes were wild and bright, and his chest heaved with belabored breaths.
I lifted my hand to him and smiled, feeling the coil between us snap tight. It pulsed between us, almost as though it matched the beating rhythm of both our hearts. He gave me a nod, urging me onward. And so I turned, picked out a group of storm fae pouring into one of the buildings down the street, and flew.
Forty-Nine
Kalen
It was impossible to get to Tessa, and I’d been trying for a good, long while. Too long. I’d felt something snap between us, and when I’d managed a glance at the courtyard, I’d seen that storm fae advancing on her fallen form. My heart had nearly torn itself out of my chest from the desperation to go, to help, to rip that bastard’s head clean off. My fear for her life had nearly strangled me.
But the shadowfiends had swarmed the battlements. No matter how hard I fought, another one blocked my path before I could reach her.
And then I’d felt the strangest thing.
It had been a gentle tug with the softest of touches on the core of my brutal power. I’d fought so hard against that power all my life, but it had abandoned me now when my people needed it the most. A moment later, a stream of it had flowed out of me. It wasn’t the avalanche I knew so well, the all-consuming boom that seemed to shake the very stars themselves.
I’d understood at once what was happening. Tessa had somehow found a way to channel my power, and she was using it against the storm fae. In a momentary break in the battle, I’d stumbled to the edge of the wall to see her blast a scorpion into the ground.
Now she was racing through the Dubnos streets, taking out enemy after enemy. I’d never seen anything like it before.
“It’s all clear!” Roisin called from the watchtower.
