For the first time in my life, I don’t want to analyze why.
I just want to stay right here, with him, forever.
5
JADE
Sam’s handslips out of mine.
I’m reaching for him, and I’m screaming, but the hellhound’s teeth are already in his shoulder, and his eyes go wide, and I can’t get to him, no matter how far I run.
The Hydra’s head is coming down. Soul-fire’s burning through me, consuming me until I don’t know who I am anymore. Thad’s dagger is plunging into Oliver’s chest, over and over and over again, and then the blade’s in my stomach and blood’s soaking my hands, and black flames are surrounding me, pulling me into a never-ending vortex. The plane’s falling out of the sky, and Elizabeth’s crumpling, smoke from my lightning rising from her body until my eyes burn and I can’t see anything at all.
Suddenly, something sweet’s touching my lips.
I flinch away, but there’s a hand at the back of my head, a voice cutting through.
“Open your mouth.”
Logan. That’s Logan.
“You need to eat.”
Ripe flesh presses against my lip, juice drips onto my tongue, and the taste is the colors of peace and sunset.
My eyes flutter open.
Logan’s above me, storm-gray eyes dark with worry. He’s holding golden fruit to my mouth, shimmering juice glistening on its flesh, and it smells like honey and cotton candy and every sweet food that’s ever existed.
“That’s it.” Relief floods his face. “You’re okay. Just eat.”
I’m too tired to do anything except open my mouth and let him feed me. The juice slides down my throat, warm and golden, and the tightness in my chest loosens until I don’t remember why it was ever tight at all.
“More,” I manage, and Logan presses another piece to my lips, and I bite down.
The nightmares are still there, hovering at the edges. Sam’s face. Elizabeth falling. Oliver bleeding and burning. But they’re getting fuzzy, like trying to remember a dream after you’ve been awake for too long.
Another bite, and the glass sphere’s dissolving. Not shattering, just... melting.
I’ve never felt like this. Even before Blaze Academy, there was always the fear of disappointing my parents, and the constant, gnawing anxiety that I wasn’t good enough, would never be good enough, and was fundamentally broken in a way I couldn’t fix.
Now there’s just nothing.
Warm, golden nothing.
“How do you feel?” Logan cuts through the haze, and he looks like a guardian angel, those gray eyes watching me with so much concern it makes my chest ache.
“Good.” I reach up and touch his face, because I can, because I want to. “All the bad things are gone.”
Worry flickers behind his eyes, and he doesn’t lean into my touch like he normally does. But then I smile at him, and his expression softens.
“You passed out,” he says. “The storm drained your energy.”
The storm. Right. I made a storm.
Tempest’s champion.
The words float up from deep in my memory, and I turn them over in my mind.Storm goddess. Cosmic destiny. Chosen one.All those heavy, impossible expectations that have been crushing me since T touched my forehead and filled me with electricity.
