“I can’t stay.” I fisted my hands, trying to keep my magic contained. My fingertips sparked despite my efforts.
“If your magic wants out, you should release it,” she said.
Through trembling fingers, I wiped the tears that trickled down my cheek. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You don’t know . . .”
No one knew what it felt like to kill and kill and kill so effortlessly. To be used as nothing more than a weapon. To feel my magic swim through me like a poison drumming through my veins. Not asking or waiting. Simply there.
I wound my arms around myself tightly, and at that moment, I relived each life my magic had taken. Their final breaths caught in my throat. Their hearts stammered in my chest.
“I’ll take you somewhere safe.”Hoshiko came to stand beside me.
On hurried feet, I went to him, climbing his scales with clammy hands.
My magic raged beneath my skin, no longer a whisper but a scream.
It wasn’t only the lives I’d taken, but feeling each life as it died and left this world. And each death would continuously take pieces of me until nothing was left.
Chapter
Nine
FINLEY
The screambeneath my skin grew and grew, drowning everything else out. My thoughts, my breaths, even the thundering beat of my heart.
My magic was done asking. It was clawing its way out while I tried to hold it back. It ripped through me, blistering my skin as it bubbled and tried to surface.
“You have to take me down,”I told Hoshiko, afraid it’d burst out of me and harm him.
His wings batted furiously.“We’re almost there.”
But even with Hoshiko’s magic containing mine, it fought and raged, tearing through me as it demanded to be released.
Finally, he lowered his body, gliding us down quickly. Still, I wasn’t sure we’d make it. Before he landed, I stood atop his back, launching myself from him before my magic touched him. I hit the ground hard, tumbling to my knees and side.
“Finley—”
“Stay back.”I wrapped my arms tightly around myself, teeth clenching as a rageful wave surged from my core to my fingertips.“I can’t—”My voice cracked.“You need to get away from me.”
“No.”The single word shook the air as his magic wrapped around mine, easing the threads so they’d release more slowly.
It worked for a few beats until another surge hit, strong enough that neither of us could contain it. It didn’t simply take from me, but bled me, tearing through my flesh with boils that spread across my body.
My knees buckled. I saw them, the faces I’d sentenced to death. Their dying tremors echoed in my bones, their fading warmth bled into my veins. My skin burned as if I swam in flames, every inch of my skin blistering from my unrelenting magic.
“Hoshiko,” I choked out, panic clawing at my lungs. “If it turns on you?—”
“It won’t.”
His magic reached to temper mine, but there was no stopping it.
“Trust me.”His deep voice came out tender and reassuring, and his certainty wrapped around my soul like armor.
The scream in my blood pitched higher. The air shimmered with heat and death and a coldness I only felt in the depths of my soul. The smell of scorched earth flooded me.
But Hoshiko was there. Unharmed.
He folded one of his mighty wings around me, as if to shield me from the world. Or maybe to shield the world from me.
