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I couldn’t worry about that now, I needed to focus.

And I did. Now that I was locked onto the Hellfire steadily, I pushed harder and watched in amazement as the white power emanating from me extinguished it entirely.

I called my power back and gazed at the area. Completely unblemished, unharmed, as if the Hellfire had never raged.

Cassius swept away the containment circle and the runes with a wave of his magic, and then he was in my space, staring intently at me.

“You didn’t attack the Hellfire. You healed. The white light you employed is your Celestial Light, the same you’d use to heal.”

Yeah, it had felt the same as when I’d used it for that purpose.

“It was what the flames were calling for, what the grass and air being ravaged by it were calling for.”

“That is incredible,” he breathed, actually looking in complete awe.

He took my hands then, startling me, but I didn’t pull away.

He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, concentrating, and I felt a brief warmth at the point of contact, before he pulled back.

“Miraculous. There was absolutely no damage done to you from employing that against Hellfire. No weakening, no depletion of your reserves or power stores.”

“Is that not… normal… for a True Celestial?”

He released me and stepped back. “Any time another employs their Celestial Light, it is straining and temporarily damaging to them, and they require time to heal afterward. That wasn’t the case with you.”

“What does that mean in the grand scheme of things?”

“It means, Ariana, that you are more than they even realize.”

23

~Nyx~

Kai was playing a dangerous game.

Although, honestly, I’d seen it firsthand the other day—he’d had to.

Those were the stakes we were working with.

I mean, I’d almost been taken out in a brutal attack byPuritas.There was a True Celestial on the mortal plane because it had been revealed that Ariana was bound to a duty she’d had no say in. Vorzyr had been revealed to not only have special Celestial-related abilities, but to have been the product of Malrik and Draco corrupting his bloodline. There was a threat out there who was believed to be yet another True Celestial, one who hadn’t revealed themselves yet, but who could very well be in possession of Draco’s sword—a sword that wielded fucking Hellfire, of all things.

There was a lot.

But, once again, through it all, Kai had been able to see the forest through the trees.

And thereIhad been damn well discounting that.

Failing him.

I hadn’t trusted him with his Cassius plan.

I came to a jarring stop as I walked into his cave lab to find tons of papers, books, grimoires, and ancient volumes covering pretty much every available surface.

Oh no.

I knew he was extra stressed out because Ariana had begun her training with Cassius and she’d been taking off to be with him for the last few days.

To be with him just from a learning standpoint, the gathering of knowledge.