But instead I slowly nudge that third and fourth door open and power consumes. A red sheet of aura so palpable I wouldn’t be surprised if they could see it now. Expanding across the entirety of the field. Past even the furthest reaches that I have tested before.
That deep tenor hum erupts in my blood and I begin the movement to circle my blood whips around myself. Feathers of blue flame flutter after them as they create an almost shape like an ophanim with me within. Rings within rings that for some reason remind me of a supernova. Red from my blood, blue from my flame.
I can feel threads from green and purple representing my other magics.
I am too tired.
Pure, damning wrath vibrates with every molecule and spark within me. I am ending this now.
The remaining witches had been inching closer and I can feel their auras. I can feel the ground responding from the wood witches who smell like that cloying earth scent. But there’s another that is almost familiar.
Bones burning on a pyre.
I lock eyes with milky glazed ones and pain eviscerates my body. Hairline fractures split through every bone in my body with theneedto move. To bow, to kneel, to obey.
I had thought the last bone witch alive was Nana. Was Esmirra of Ebony who wanted to leave that title five thousand years ago.
“What a child,” I breathe, but my words thunder through the field. It stills the witches for a moment and I can feel eyes on me. That voice did not entirely sound like my own.
Cracks riverbeat loudly inside my head.
Pain, pain, pain.
“It’s not the same.” And I’d laugh if I was able to feel anything. I step my foot back without a waver of difficulty and twist my arms around and up. “You think this is pain?” The song in my blood whispers in the space with a melody. “You don’t know burning.”
There’s a sort of click as I keep the witches and that death devil in my sights. Like in the classroom before. An inherent knowing. Fate.
“But I’ll show you.”
They’re dead. They just don’t know it yet.
That hum hitches right before I release.
It knows now. Uncontrolled and raw. There will be no stopping it this time. No way to prevent it. No way to block.
Fate.
I release.
Thirty-Four
Varian – Septmust 5
A few minutes prior. . .
It was always there, right in front of our faces. She is not a spy for either side, but she also isn’t a vampire. She wasneverhuman.Neverturned. And the goblin didn’t even hesitate with Callahan. She spoke as if it was obvious we had always known.
It should have been so blatantly obvious.
I slash my longsword through the body in front of me a second too late. Pain cripples my left leg and while their body hits the ground mine does as well.
Luckly, when I look around there are no more near me. Neither are they around Castiel and Thorne who are closest to me, but I doubt they would have noticed since they’re both locked on the battle happening before us.
We were all dead. When we realized it had all been a distraction it was too late. A blood witch had sentenced our deaths and once made, there’s no way for survival. So I had turned back. I had allowed myself to have one more look at her.
Except she hadn’t been there. And then magic erupted and that web of blood that was our death sentence shattered. The little bloodsucker had somehow appeared in the middle of the field past me, Thorne, and Castiel.
Ropes of blood were curved and hovering over us. Blood that smelled like something I couldn’t live without while being the only thing that would always kill me. And when she turned back I met eyes that were the same color. Full, vivid, and teeming with magic I’ve never seen before.
