Her radiance collided with the coils around me, searing the sickly green lines where they bit into my chest. Steam rose, and for the first time, the spell faltered.
Hope flared.
I dragged at my shadows, gathering them to the thin cracks she made. They surged weakly, like a starving beast catching scent of blood, but they surged all the same.
The agony didn’t lessen—it sharpened, focused. The fight turned inward. I was no longer battling Rindais’s coils, butmyself—my own unraveling. Each second was a knife edge, each breath a choice: give in to the pull of nothingness, or claw upward toward her light.
I clawed.
Come on, you’ve survived a hundred years of darkness. You won’t break now. Not in front of her.
Images flashed through my mind: Meryn’s steady gaze, the weight of the forest’s curse, the taste of ash when Nyx cursed me. And then Elena—her hand in mine as we broke the wards, her voice when she promised to return, the look in her eyes when she chose me over them.
The green coils constricted, but her flame seared brighter.
I forced my shadows into the cracks, again and again, even as each attempt tore pieces of me away. Smoke spilled from my arms, my chest, my mouth….
My strength was fading, slipping away with every passing second. And as I knelt there, my vision darkening, I saw her—Elena, standing before Rindais, magical flames licking up her skin.
Why was she going up in flames? She couldn’t be using her phoenix power forme, could she?
What would happen if she used up too much—would she set herself ablaze, like the phoenix of legend?
Would she come back to life as someone else, even asElenawas gone forever?
“Elena…” I whispered, my voice fractured by the pain that tore through me. My vision swam, her figure a blaze of light amid the choking green. “Don’t… waste your fire on me.”
Her eyes met mine, fierce and golden, and I knew instantly she hadn’t heard a word. Or rather—she refused to listen.
Rindais sneered, his expression twisted with contempt. “You would risk everything for a creature like him? A being of darkness, a cursed soul bound to shadows?”
Without a moment’s hesitation, Elena stepped forward. “I would,” she said, her voice a quiet, steady promise that echoed through the chamber. “Because he’s more than that. He’s more than you or the Elders will ever understand.”
Her voice was thick with emotion, and a faint warmth blossomed in my chest, a fragile, flickering hope.
Anger turned Rindais’s handsome face ugly, and he snarled as he raised his hand toward me, a surge of dark magic striking my fading body, heavy and oppressive.
If this was the way I died, so be it. Once I was gone, Elena would be free to destroy the mage.
Through the haze of pain, I saw Elena, her figure outlined in the blinding glow, her arms raised, her face contorted with pain as flames licked up her whole body.
“I won’t let you take him!” she cried. Her voice shook the walls.
With a surge of strength, she stepped forward, her light growing brighter, more intense, until it filled the chamber, pushing back against Rindais’s magic, consuming the sickly green light that clung to the walls.
Her power wrapped around me, a warmth that seeped into my bones, soothing the pain, and calming the shadows within me.
I managed to whisper her name, barely more than a breath. “Elena…”
She turned to look at me, her gaze soft, filled with a tenderness that left me breathless. “Dario,” she murmured, her voice steady, reassuring. “I’m here. I won’t leave you.”
Her words wrapped around me like a balm, soothing the emptiness within me, and for a moment, I felt something I hadn’t allowed myself to feel in a century—peace.
She was here, beside me, and I would give anything to protect her, even if it meant surrendering to the darkness that awaitedme and giving up my life so she could be free.
Rindais’s voice sliced through the air, cold and mocking. “You can’t save him, High Priestess. His fate is sealed. His power was always meant to feed me.” He smiled at her. “And you were always meant to be mine.”
Before I could reach for her, before I could warn her, a blinding burst of corrupt magic filled the chamber, sweeping over everything in its path.
