I tapped my own chest, as if I could touch that essence of her once more.
This wasn’t normal.
My thoughts being consumed by her was unavoidable. She had command over my mind–but she shouldn’t have been able to control my body.
Nor I hers, not from such a distance.
Tendrils of dread and delight fought inside of me.
My gaze slashed to Zandyr’s, frantic for answers. “What’s going on?”
“You–” His eyes widened in surprise. “You don’t know?”
I did. I thought I did–but I still couldn’t allow myself to hope.
Or maybe I didn’t. Because I felt Allie’s energy and flutters of her feelings, but not her thoughts. Those were as caged from me as they’d been on the night when she’d destroyed the dining room.
“Oh, Brother.” He rested a hand on my shoulder. “Your life has changed forever. It seems you have found your true mate.”
Chapter 49
Allie
Dax and I stood face to face, arms outstretched. His shook.
“Just a show,” I muttered, placing my palms above his.
The avalanche claiming hundreds of lives in a blink had already set the stage for dangerous magic.
Now we only had to use that opportunity.
He nodded. Once. Twice, trapped by his own ghosts. He would have kept on nodding if my voice hadn’t burst out of me.
“Steal my voice. Make it bloom and boom.” The chant ripped from me as Dax’s power lapped it up greedily.
Blood recognized blood.
From between our palms, blue smoke began to sizzle and billow. The warriors stepped back, mystified and cautious. I wished they hadn’t been here at all. Old Vegheara tricks didn’t need to be witnessed. I just hoped they didn’t realize what we were doing.
From the side, it looked like our powers melted together. But I knew better.
Whereas my power coiled into lean, precise tendrils, Dax’s rose as a darker, thick mist, snaking through the air andchanging directions on a whim, so that nobody could predict its next move.
It undulated higher and higher, swelling into a terrifying tower.
Glimpses of that awful green mist threatened to break my concentration.
I gritted my teeth and fought against them, as Dax’s power yanked on the parched well of magic inside of me. Sweat poured from my temples once more.
Dax gritted his teeth, eyes squeezed shut. He didn’t want to see his own magic and I didn’t blame him.
It was an otherworldly sight, like a monster who’d been caged for too long, finally free to wreak havoc. It whirled toward the heavens, as if it wanted to swallow everything in its wake.
“Make me their worst fear,” I whispered.
His brows knitted together and his lips parted as the smoke grew and shifted. It surged into a skull that looked not of this world, a great big gaping mouth open to show its fangs.
The she-beast they all feared me to be.
