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Another fairy light flickers before snuffing out.

Hermio waves his hand, and his men take that as a cue. They move towards me, their magic rippling across their skin.

“Don’t kill him right away,” Hermio says, the corner of his mouth lifting up as he takes me in. “Because he is young and foolish, I’m willing to let him reconsider my offer—after he learns his lesson, of course.”

My hands begin to tremble as the fairies close in on me. A few of them notice, and they flash me menacing smiles.

They think I’m afraid of them. Fools. I’m afraid of my own capabilities. My mother taught me how to control my magic, not how to wield it. For all I know, it could either fail me or take out a block of Barbos. It’s a coin toss which it will be.

The first of Hermio’s men reach me, grabbing my arm.

Too late for worries now.

I close my eyes, lean my head back, and release my magic.

It’s the easiest thing in the world. No, it’s more than that. It’s letting go when you’ve been holding on. I almost sigh as my magic charges out of me.

Sweet relief.

The fairy who grasps my arm is the first to be hit by it. He doesn’t have time to scream when my shadowy power rushes over him. It rips him away from me and knocks him to the ground before engulfing him. My magic continues on, moving out like a wave and descending upon the fairies around me. Few have time to scream before my shadows devour them. A distant part of me can feel their bones breaking, their bodies disintegrating, their magic fueling the darkness ever onwards.

A few fairies are brave enough to throw their magic at me, and I can tell by the force of it that they are giving me all that they got. It dissolves uselessly against the wall of my own magic.

The men and women who still linger in the water—presumably those people who are here as entertainment rather than muscle—now flee from the pool, moving to the back of the room where Hermio is, their naked bodies glistening with glowing water droplets.

Not the slaves, I beseech my magic.

Astoundingly, it does as I ask, parting itself around the mortals as it lays siege to everything else.

The darkness extinguishes the fairy lights and eats up the illumination coming from the pools. Vale only has an instant to look terrified, and then thereisno more Vale, just fairy dust and magical residue.

Finally, the shadows close in on Hermio. The leader of the Brotherhood isn’t looking quite so regal as he scrambles out of the pool, turning around only to blast his power at me.

I’m actually impressed when the hit stops my shadows for a second. It’s not enough to overpower my magic, but it is enough to encourage the kingpin. Hermio throws wave after wave of it at me, each hit weaker than the last.

I stride towards him, cloaked in my shadows.

He crouches at the back of the room, naked as the day he was born. “Please—no,” he begs.

The darkness wants him; they’re practically salivating for that powerful flesh. There’s magic beneath that skin of his and they want to touch it, taste it,feedfrom it.

My shadows converge on Hermio from all sides, swallowing him up. He begins to scream—a high-pitched, almost feminine sound—and then it cuts off prematurely.

The darkness is ravenous, tearing the fairy apart in seconds. It’s not enough, not nearly enough, to satiate its appetite.

The shadows probe the exits, not ready to stop. They ooze through every crack and crevice they can find.

It’s too much, the power pouring off of me. My hold is slipping on my own dark magic, and I can’t release it the way I did back in Arestys; it’s not letting me.

… More, more, more …

… Let us live …

“No,” I whisper, beginning to sweat as I fight to reel my power back in. The darkness blows the barred doors off their hinges. In the distance I hear surprised screams.

“No,” I say again, my body trembling with exertion. “Stop.”

The shadows blast away another hidden door at the back of the room.