But she didn’t. She never did.
The mage had barely taken three more steps before I lost myself.
The shadows obeyed no thought, no strategy—they were me and I was them, a storm of rage incarnate. They boiled from the cracks in the earth, rose like serpents from the walls, poured from the empty sockets of shattered windows. The air itself grew heavy and suffocating, thick with black mist that reeked of brimstone.
He dared. He dared touch Meryn.
He would pay for this. He wouldsuffer.
My hands shook as power roared through me, more than I had wielded in years. Lanterns guttered out one by one, smothered in darkness, leaving only the sickly green glow of the mage’s spells as he flung them wildly in desperation.
But no spell could outpace the fury of a curse born from a goddess.
I saw him. Cornered now. Spells flaring and dying like sparks against the wall of darkness pressing in on him. His cloak whipped about him as though he stood in a gale, though no wind stirred but the one I made.
I would end him.
A bolt of green streaked toward me. I didn’t dodge. It fizzled against the torrent of shadows clinging to my skin, harmless as rain. I stalked closer, the ground quaking beneath each step.
Somewhere distantly, Elena’s voice called my name. I didn’t hear it. I couldn’t. The roar of blood in my ears drowned everything but the pounding fury that screamed for vengeance.
The mage raised his hands in a final, pathetic ward. Shadows ripped it apart. Tendrils lashed forward, coiling around his legs, his arms, his throat. He gasped, his mismatched eyes bulging, and I reveled in it—the sight of him bound, helpless, exactly as he had left her.
Meryn.
My chest heaved, grief sharpening into cruelty. I imagined tearing him apart, not swiftly but slowly, letting him feel what it was to suffer loss with every heartbeat.
I lifted my hand. The shadows rose to strike.
And then—warmth.
A glow pressed against my side, soft but unyielding, cutting through the storm.
“Dario.”
Her voice.
The single thread of sound pierced the chaos, wrapping around me, tugging. My shadows hesitated, their writhing slowed, uncertain.
I snarled, straining against it, desperate not to be stopped. I had every right. Meryn’s cry still echoed in my head, breaking me open in a way nothing else had for a century.
But the warmth grew. Golden, steady.
And then—hands. On me.
Small, delicate, but fierce in their grip, clutching my arm, my chest, anchoring me to the world I was about to burn. I looked down and found her. Elena.
Her hood had fallen back, her hair spilled golden even in the shadows, catching the faintest threads of moonlight. Her eyes blazed—not with fear, not with condemnation, but with determination. She pressed herself close, against me, into the storm, as though the shadows meant nothing to her.
“Enough,” she said firmly, her voice shaking only slightly. “You’ll lose yourself. And if you do—you’ll lose me too.”
The words hit like a blow.
Lose her?
The shadows faltered, wavering like flame in wind.
I stared at her, my breath ragged, my chest heaving. She stood there unflinching, her light seeping into me, brushing against the wild edges of my fury, soothing, tempering, as though she had done this a thousand times before.
