Page 56
“Okay.” I tighten my grip on his wrists. “We stay together. We come back together. And every time we come back, we understand more about how to kill the drakon than we did before.”
“It’s the only advantage we have.” His nose brushes mine, my electricity jumps between our skin, and his eyes flutter closed for a second before opening again. “Now, we have about two minutes before it surfaces. The glass sphere cracked last time because your fear was leaking through the containment. So, we need a different approach.”
“Like what?”
“Channel your magic into me,” he says, and it’s a command, not a suggestion. “Every volt you’re leaking, push it into my body instead of the water.”
My heart lurches. He says it so calmly, so Logan, that it takes me a second to catch what he’s volunteering for.
“If I do that, you’ll be the exact thing it’s hunting.” I shake my head, not liking this one bit. “It’ll have two targets instead of one.”
He gives me a small, mischievous smile that makes my heart flutter. “There are far worse things than being full of your lightning, Jade. And I’ve been training for over a decade. I need you to trust that I can handle this.”
My electricity surges against his palms, and I press my forehead against his, closing my eyes. For three seconds, the accumulated deaths disappear. There’s only the cool press of Logan’s skin and the quiet, desperate intimacy of two people who keep dying together and choosing to try again anyway.
“I trust you,” I finally say, and the words come out steady for the first time since the original reset.
His lips brush mine, and the electricity that arcs between us makes both of us shudder. “Then jumpstart my heart and give me everything.”
I press my palms flat against his chest and let every volt in my body flow into him in a continuous, flooding current. The low, shuddering sound he makes sends heat straight through my stomach, and he leans further into me, his fire flaring brighter. My electricity merges with his magic, my lightning weaving through his fire, and as our magic becomes one, I feel more connected to him than ever.
Then the water stirs beneath us, yanking me out of the moment.
“Here it comes.” I pull my hands from his chest, and my blood turns to ice.
Logan stands. I step behind him and place my hands on his back, maintaining the current from before. The connection is a live wire running from me into him, my electricity humming alongside his fire and air as our magics twist into a helix of power.
The water around the boat begins to swirl, the same circular pattern as every loop before, and my hands tighten against Logan’s back as the drakon’s head breaks the surface. It comes up slowly, water sheeting off its scales, silver light crawling through them. Its head keeps rising until it looms over our little fishing boat, and its white-hot eyes sweep across us with fresh, unhurried curiosity.
My ribs seize at the spot where the third snap happened. My throat closes around a breath of phantom lake water. I’m crushed and drowning all at once, and my legs are backing me into the bench before I make any decision at all. Because that massive, dripping, glowing-eyed head has killed me twice, and every cell in my body is screaming that it’s about to make it three.
The drakon’s jaw drops open, white light building in its throat, and Logan’s fire erupts from both hands, streaked with silver. My lightning’s tangled through his fire, riding the blast straight into the creature’s open mouth, and the drakon’s swelling, its head widening, its coils thickening in the water around us.
No. He was supposed to contain my lightning in whatever his equivalent of the glass sphere is—not release it.
“Logan, stop!” I pound my fist against his back. “My electricity’s in your fire! It’s feeding it again!”
His fire cuts off, his body going rigid under my hands. But the drakon’s bigger now, its white-hot eyes locked on me with the same bright intelligence from the first loop, its scales crackling with the electricity it absorbed through Logan’s blast.
Absorbed.
The word echoes through my mind, and I step out from behind Logan. Because what if I can take it back?
It’s my lightning. My frequency. And right now, it’s trapped under that thing’s scales, lighting it up from the inside, every strand of it straining toward me.
Fire asks permission. Lightning takes it.
“It’s mine.” I raise my free hand toward the drakon, palm open, and reach for the current the same way I reach for the sky when I call down lightning. The storm overhead rumbles low and long, thunder rolling across the lake in a sound that vibrates through the boards and up through my boots. “Come back to me.”
The connection snaps into place, my frequency finding the lightning under all those scales, and I grab hold and pull. My fingers claw at empty air. My heels drive into the boards. Every muscle from my hand to my hips strains against the drag of it, and the creature is strong, but the lightning is mine, and I haul on that truth until it starts to give.
The drakon fights back, shrieking and thrashing, but no. I’m not letting it win. So, I keep pulling, my shoulder screaming against the strain while my whole arm shakes with it. Sweat runs into my eyes, stinging, and I don’t dare blink it away. If I do, the connection will break, and if it breaks, I’ll die—again.
Finally, the first thread tears loose and snaps toward me. One thread becomes ten. Ten becomes a flood of silver light rushing beneath its scales and streaming toward the point of its chest nearest to me, glowing brighter and brighter until the creature is lit from within.
A loud crack echoes through the air as it rips free, tearing out of the drakon’s body in a jagged rope that slams into my open palm hard enough to shove me back a step. Current races through my arm, flooding into my chest, and my veins light up beneath my skin, my storm singing home into my bones.
A laugh tears out of me, wild and breathless, because it’s working. Every nerve ending sings, power refilling the places I released my lightning into Logan, and for the first time since the crush, I feel like myself again. No, I feel better than myself. I feel full.
