“I deserve it!” I exploded, and light burst from me, all seven shades of Angellight plus my own shimmering gold shot six feet around us. A column tunneled up to the sky, trapping me. Jezebel stumbled back. “I deserve it!” I screamed over the roar of my magic. “It ismy fault. My fault, Jez, don’t you understand?”
My sister pressed a hand to the medley of light separating us and yelled, “No! Under no circumstance do you carry this blame alone.”
“But I did it!” With every panting breath, the wall of seraph power solidified, like a glass barrier keeping me from her.
Protecting us both, maybe.
But Jezebel—my courageous, devoted sister—pounded on the barricade. “You may have freed the god, but you didnotdo this!” Her voice rose, silver light crackling against mine, veins shooting through the gold. “You are not responsible for the actions of a deity or for the prophecies they’ve assigned to you.”
Then why am I the one who must bear it?
There had to be some level of responsibility if I was the one carrying the burden, didn’t there?
If you join Echnid, none of this will matter anymore.
No. I shuddered, wings flaring wide as if to shield me.
No, not that voice again. It echoed through me, grasping for me with such dominance.
“Get out, get out, get out!” I screamed. The taint of his mist poured down my throat, and I crashed to my knees, whimpering, “Echnid wantsme. He wants me.”
He had pulled at my magic today—he had taken it. I’d denied it until my shattering thoughts allowed the truth to push past my barrage of Angellight. Somehow, in the desert, Echnid had pulled my own magic from the air today. Had seemed to command it.
This fearsome, beautiful thing I’d come to claim—the power of myths and seraphs that I alone had woken—the god had used it as his own.
I’d thought he’d done it once before, when he was forcing me to hurt Malakai. But then, I’d had even less agency over the magic. I’d convinced myself it wasn’t possible.
But he had.
The wall of power rippled around me in time with my shaking body, the light burning brighter.
“Ophelia!” Silver-blue bolts shot through my seraph power. “Ophelia!” Jezebel shrieked and shrieked.
Partner with the god, and all of these worries will be absolved,the voice slithered through me.
No—I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.
The phantom sensation of Echnid’s misty power streamed into me, consuming me. I shuddered, choking on it. Clasped sand in my palms. The grains slid between my fingers—as so many things in life were. All of these little opportunities stolen and warped by a curse that was mine to bare.
But I tightened my grip. This curse was mine to bear, but it did not have to be mine to fall under.
My body is my own.
My mind is my own.
And with that thought, I screamed.
Echnid wanted me to become his puppet, his weapon. But I would become something else entirely.
The column of light exploded across the dunes, power tunneling out of me and wiping away the mist trying to claw out a home in my body. It dug up the roots of the taint and melted them until nothing but ash remained.
I’d burn the whole realm if that was what it took.
I didn’t know how long I yelled, how long seraph magic illuminated the night. But I kept going until my throat was raw and there was nothing left of me to give.
And when the light winked out, all of that endless power snapping back into my body, I collapsed forward onto my hands and knees, my trembling wings draped around me.
“Apeagna?” Tolek stood before me, taking a step closer as worry-laced chocolate eyes met mine.
