Shit.I fought it, not allowing her reaction to draw Van out of me.
“How dare you ask me what good I have done?” Her voice had grown even darker. Blue flashed in her palms—she didn’t have control.“What right do you have to question me? You, who wouldn’t be free of those woods if not for my mercy? You, who murdered so many in cold blood?”
She finally noticed the flames in her hands, which seemed to startle her.
My resolve to be angry with her quickly diminished as her face fell. It was as though she realized then that she could break me so easily. I didn’t lean away.
“You feel it…” It wasn’t a question. It was a quiet plea, needing her to acknowledge the pull I’d felt so strongly from the moment I met her.
My power must have been warring within her. I could almost feel her urge to tear me limb from limb, to burn down this tower, to leave nothing but ash. I’d seen the way half of my flames had changed someone before—I wouldn’t let it happen to her.
“That feeling, you cannot let it consume you, Asterie.” I quieted my voice further, still begging.
“Says the Destroyer. You know nothing about me and have no grounds to tell me how to feel.”
True, and not.I knew her.In some depth of my soul, I always had. “You have a kind heart. But you know now what my power is capable of. You read the text. It doesn’t care about you or your heart. Or them.” I motioned out to the woods toward Luz.
The dark swirling in her eyes began to calm.
“You told me yourself—you don’t know what direction this supposed war is coming from. Do you not fear at all that you could be the catalyst? That I could be?”
If her eyes could throw fire, then they would have been, but her irises had returned. She didn’t speak, and her chest heaved as though she was trying and failing to catch her breath.
“I would sooner kill you, killing myself in the process, than see you go down in a field of flames with the people you love,” I admitted. I meant it—however well meaning her actions seemed, I wouldn’t let her judgment become clouded by my flames and wrath.
When she looked up at me, her warm brown eyes were pooling.No, please, anything but tears.Give me anger—give me fire and fury.Falling to my knees beside her, my hand instinctively reached to wipe away her tears.
Amara’s words rushed back to me. “She would bring you to your knees before you ever laid a hand on her.”
A dagger pulled from Asterie’s boot met my neck—the blade erupted into blinding blue flames. She stopped just before drawing blood.
“Beautiful,” I whispered, taking in every detail of her face as the flames licked at my skin. Any anger I’d felt was replaced by a desire to kiss her,still a damned fool.Yet I’d done far stupider things for women who didn’t make me feel half as alive as she did.
“I should kill you,” she said as her dagger hand shook.
“You should, but where would that leave you?”
Her posture slackened, but the knife remained at my throat. “I don’t want to see you,” she breathed, seeming to struggle with the words. “After we meet the Queen and do her bidding—I don’t want to see you again, ever.” The anguish in her words tore me open.
“That was always the plan, wasn’t it?” I managed a weak smirk. “I will live in the shadows of your mind alone…but this power will still exist in you. So you need to be careful with it, Asterie.”
She sheathed her dagger and got to her feet. “Careful with it?Like you were during the fall of Phynx?” She threw the words over her shoulder as she walked away with lethal grace.
I flinched against them because she was right—I had not been careful then.
My back fell to the ground, exhausted by the energy ripped away from my body.
This was a nightmare.
I cursed Amara for not destroying my power in the first place, cursed Asterie for her righteous rage and cursed myself for ever trusting in an enchantress’ well-meaning actions again.
This may not have been how it had happened before, but I felt damned to repeat a vicious cycle of regret.
Chapter22
Asterie
At Emmerick’s request, Queen Wymark sent a carriage to the road nearest the Central Tower. Fenris and I hadn’t spoken a word to each other since our argument in the arena.
