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Chaos engulfed me.

CHAPTER 39

Duwar gathered me into the heart of its storm. Vicious clouds of white-cored flames billowed around me, ripping my skin and snatching the hair from my face. My skin did not burn, my flesh resisting the licking tongues as though they enjoyed the taste but didn’t want to devour me.

At least, not yet.

I fought against the tension, lifting a hand to shield my eyes, squinting to make sense of this hellscape.

Decay was everywhere. Ruined earth shattered beneath my feet, cracking to dry plates of mud. There was no life. Not a speck of it.

I supposed it was fitting, considering Duwar gave life, and yet it could take it away.

And that was exactly what the power did. Duwar took from the realms, just as Cassial’s intended.

I wondered when it would finally take me.

Unlike the grass of the field that had been beneath me moments ago, I stood tall. My body had not yet shrivelled, the air in my lungs scorching but constant.

Duwar screamed like a dying animal both around me, andinsideof me. It unleashed its fury around me, smashing power and debris into my body. An instinct told me to release more of the power lingering within me, to prove myself worthy of surviving this final trial. But I wouldn’t give it what it wanted.

I refused the lure, instead I began to draw Duwar in. I offered the broken part of Duwar’s vengeance a home inside of me, whilst securing one for my own if I succeeded.

A home, with Erix and Duncan, with my friends and those they loved.

And it worked. Duwar’s power pierced me from either side. Thread upon thread of hot, angry power speared through my chest. The vacuous place in my chest began to fill, like a well in a storm, catching the rain and preventing the flood that would destroy the world.

The cost was yet to be made clear.

Pain. Pure, undulating agony exploded inside of me. I imagined that was what a star felt like when it died. Beautiful, no doubt, but the beauty was rooted in pure agony.

The clouds rolled over me, the darkness taking up my offer, the power sinking into my fucking bones. But it was too much. The more power that entered my body, the more I felt it press against my boundaries.

As suddenly as my own intentions worked in my favour, they began to slip.

“No,” I groaned as my feet left the floor, the strain against my skin becoming all-consuming.

Rip-roaring winds lifted me up, catching me in the swirling mass of fury that was Duwar. I kicked against it. The air, in the belly of the storm, was poisonous. Each breath burned. At first it welcomed me, but it was as if Duwar itself was refusing my body – begging for menotto steal him.

I pinched my eyes closed, trying to focus on the battle, not on the fact that my skin felt like it was cracking apart as brimstone and the fire of ruin replaced my blood.

“Duwar,” I screamed, choking on the name as though I wasn’t worthy of it. And I wasn’t. No one had been. Not even Altar as he used the chaos of the world and made the fey. Not the Creator who went to war for the unequal balance of power. “Please. Let. Me.Help.”

If the power heard me, it didn’t listen.

The shard inside of me shifted. Not moving to make room for Duwar, but it began to slip from its place. It stirred, as if Duwar was a serpent draining it from my flesh with fangs.

Panic seized me as I grappled, for the second time, to keep Duwar under my control. But like sand through splayed fingers, it left me.

I focused on my magic, mentally freezing the power in place until I could regain control. But it wasn’t working. I felt the power of the storm around me triple in strength.

As Duwar began to leave me, that was when the real agony began.

I shrieked, but no sound left me. Tendrils of power held my mouth open, spreading down into my throat, searching for purchase to the power within. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t close my mouth. My cry of desperation continued out of me without control, until my throat bled and the vessels in my skull popped one by one. Vaguely I was aware of the warm trickle of blood slipping out of my nose, down each ear and laying tear tracks down my cheeks. Even if I wanted to wipe my skin clean, my body was no longer my own.

I was a puppet on the strings of power, the puppeteer moments from destroying me.

It was just as the final thread of Duwar slipped down my mental fingers, I heard my name. It carried out across the wild storm, so poignant that even Duwar seemed to ease. I imagined the power turning its attention in the direction of the noise, surprised by the presence.