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But that full, calming breath wouldn’t come.

I barely even managed to draw in air at all.

Shit…I… I couldn’t breathe easy.

“Halo?” Nyx uttered, scrambling up from the coffee table and making a move to come to me.

“Stop,”Kai called, and in the next second, a barrier of his rose-gold magic flew up right in front of Nyx, knocking him back away from me.

He grunted, but with his agility, he was able to steady himself easily.

“What’s going on?” Vorzyr asked.

“Stay back, too,” Kai told him.

I looked down at my hands to see that, as I was digging my nails into the couch, my silver magic was alive with violent sparks of lightning, radiating out along the couch further and further with every moment.

“With my Primal Celestial Resonance, I can—”

“No,” Kai barked, cutting Vorzyr off. “Don’t touch her magic. Don’t interfere.”

“I can help her, Kai. I might still be working on controlling it, but—”

“It’s not that. You can’t try to control it. It’s essentially controllingher.No more. No fucking more of that. She’s at full power now and she had the courage to bring that about, to take back all that she is. So, nowsheneeds to accept that and handle it.”

“This is about her agency. Her empowerment,” Nyx mused aloud.

“But she’s hurting. This isn’t a regular situation,” Vorzyr argued. “I shouldn’t have brought up Malrik. It’s just served to pile it on when she was already reeling. She hid it so well, I thought it would be okay to bring it up. I hated keeping it in and not sharing it, once I realized the connection to everything else.”

“It’s not on you. She cares about you. She’d want to know what bothers you, what eats at you. She wants us to be one, remember? This is a part of that,” Nyx assured him.

“It’s not… your fault,” I rasped, wanting Vorzyr to know that beyond a shadow of a doubt. I didn’t want him to think that he’d triggered me, that he was causing me pain. He already had enough he was dealing with, things he’d been burying for my benefit. I didn’t want that. I wanted him to feel free to give me everything. I wanted them all to.

“It’sthem,”I uttered, raising my voice without meaning to. “The Celestial Plane… my family. The secrets and agendas. All of it.” I gritted my teeth as heat rolled through me, building to an uncomfortable degree. “So… many… violations of… free will,” I ground out, the strain of uttering the words, such toxicity, worsening the power surge I was struggling to control.

The lights flickered violently.

The furniture shuddered, the room rattling all over.

Cracks formed in the windows.

And a sweeping wind blew through the room.

My silver power rose higher, above the couch where I sat, and shot up into the ceiling, permeating through it and causing a couple of cracks as it drove higher.

In the next second, I was screaming, my hands shuddering as I fought against so much resistance to control it.

I only just managed to sweep myself away in a cloud of silver smoke.

I rematerialized outside,about twenty feet from the house, the weeping trees of the ravine surrounding the small clearing.

The power surge that I was fighting to contain was so overwhelming that I couldn’t hold myself up, and I sank to my knees on the ground, damp seeping through my jeans from the early morning dew slicking the blades of grass.

A burst of rose-gold magic filled my vision, and then Kai was there, materializing a couple of feet from me.

“Who you are is somebody who is fit to wield such divine and miraculous power.” He gestured at me on my knees struggling. “You’re notthis.You’re not at the mercy of those who wish to mold you to their liking. No matter where things currently stand, the situation is fluid, and it won’t remain as such. I won’t allow it, but more importantly than that—neither willyou.Because you don’t have to, sweetheart. There are ways through it. And we’ll all find them together. You’re stronger and more in control than you’ve ever given yourself credit for. Don’t allow the power to control you. Own it. Be one with it. Accept it, but wield it—not the other way around.”

“Kai… I… I don’t know.”