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His hand fell.
A hard force tackled me, blowing me off my feet. Meallan’s claws raked the air my neck no longer occupied.
Alisdair and I tumbled through the snow, his body shielding me as the wolves chased us—raining blows on his back.
“R-run,” Alisdair rasped. “Get far away from here. Leave me—”
They tore him off me. Throwing him on the ground, they descended on him—united in one goal: killing Alisdair Shadowsoul.
“Stop it!” I screamed, and screamed, and screamed.
Every ounce of Meallan’s hatred, brutality, and obsession with ruling fed his blows and the heat of his fire. They kicked, beat, bit, and clawed him again and again, my screams the backdrop of their fun.
Alisdair wasn’t going to survive. No one could.
Rage, fear, and desperation swelled in me, igniting the deep and pulsing well of magic resting within my soul. It bashed against its bindings—surging, swarming, swelling to reach the far corners of my being, and then burst beyond—eager to do my bidding.
It smashed against the barrier, and stopped.
“No!” I pulled harder—demandedmore! “You’re my magic! You cannot be kept from me. You cannot be taken!
“Eldur,” I bellowed—unearthing a spell from another time and another life. “Eldur!”
My magic thrashed against the barrier, pummeling and beating it harder than the wolves beat me. It felt like I was being savaged from the inside out—taken apart by the seams. Any more and I’d explode.
I pushed harder.
My screams pierced my eardrums. My nails bent painfully back digging in the ice and dirt.Agony! Heart-wrenching agony!
And still I kept pulling, drawing,forcingmy magic free of its chains.
Alisdair would not die like this—murdered by a pack of dim-witted wolves, led by a cowardly fuck who was too afraid to face him at full strength. If anyone was going to kill my frustrating, harsh, smirking husband, it was going to be me.
And I will fucking kill him if he dares to die and leave me forever cursed, forever lonely. Forever without him.“Eldur,” I screamed. “ELDUR!”
I broke.
Glowing, white light erupted from my skin and escaped the tree line, reaching for the heavens. Dark, swirling clouds heavy with ice cracked down the middle—peeling before the light beam. Our moon, our mother, our Meya of the moon, earth, sea, and stars rose from behind her own barrier and shone down on me.
Long, white locks swirled around me—alive with the same energy bursting beneath my skin. I knew as my lips parted that it was over. Meallan would wake up minutes from then in the pits of hell, cursing his failed coup to the far corners of his fire pit and back.
“El—”
Pain exploded in my temple. I went flying, thrown off my hands and knees—tumbling through the snow. The glow left me, racing away with my magic behind the barrier as if it was never there. Never anything but a fool’s desperate dream.
Meallan stood over me, holding the branch in his grip. Behind him, Alisdair lay broken, bleeding, and still.
“What was that?” the woman whispered. “How did she do that? I thought her magic was bound.”
“I don’t care why or what the fuck she is. Kill her and be thorough,” he said. “I’ll take care of Shadowsoul’s body.”
I lay in the cold, my spinning vision making my stomach twist.
Meallan snarled when no one responded to him. “Tullia! Kuan! I told you to—” He spun around on their bleeding corpses. Three bodies littered the snow, and my husband wasn’t one.
“Wha—? Where is he!”
“I believe I promised—”
