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Wilder’s shout rang out across the stone circle and he flung himself towards Talemir, just as the monster pinned his mentor to the white rocks and pierced his chest with its talons.

Shadows danced around them as therheguld reaperreached for Talemir’s heart —

Lightning carved through Islaton.

And then it was no more.

* * *

Wilder opened his eyes to a storm surging through the ruins of Delmira; to Thea, who was wielding forks of lightning against the reaper, driving it back from the rubble, driving it back fromhim.

Wilder was in the dirt, on his knees.

While the lost heir of Delmira defended him against the darkness.

Deep, heavy clouds swallowed the sky and an icy wind whipped through the ruins, the hair on Wilder’s arms standing up. Not taking his eyes off Thea, he staggered to his feet as the reaper buckled beneath the onslaught of her magic.

She was a beacon of power, thunder clapping overhead, bolts of brilliant white light pouring from her fingertips and into the sky, raining down upon the reaper.

Its shadows were retreating.Itwas retreating…

Thea cleaved the sky in two.

The canvas of clouds tore apart, as though to reveal a world beyond this one.

Ribbons of darkness surged, before vanishing into thin air.

Thea’s shoulders sagged, the magic at her fingertips snuffing out bolt by bolt, the storm raging overhead quietening. She rushed to him, her expression intense and raw.

‘Are you alright?’ she rasped, scanning him, her hands tracing his body for signs of injury.

Her concern nearly broke Wilder. He was still struggling to catch his own breath. ‘It was baiting you,’ he panted, leaning against a collapsed pillar for support.

Thea looked from the vine blight turned to stone in the corner, to the wraith heart she’d discarded in the rubble. ‘It knew to come here…’ she murmured.

‘Yes,’ Wilder managed. What he didn’t say was that the vine blight had been a perfectly positioned trap for an heir, one that he should have seen coming. For a moment, he wanted to tell her everything he knew, wanted to share it all so they could face it together. But doubt crept in like a high tide. What if it was all too much, too soon?

Thea watched the final wisps of shadow fade in the sky. ‘It knows who I am now. What I am.’

‘It’s likely reporting back to the Daughter of Darkness as we speak… It seems that they want to know what you’re capable of,’ Wilder allowed.

‘Good.’ Thea met his gaze with nothing but unflinching steel in her eyes. ‘Now they know to fear me.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THEA

She still felt the storm in her bones, in her heart; still felt the tempest raging within as she helped Wilder to his feet, the Warsword worryingly pale. She had never known such terror, never known horror to run so deep as it had when she’d seen him collapse, the darkness lashing at his mind as well as his body.

It had hurt him. And that had unlocked something inside her, rendering her incapable of conscious thought. She had moved on instinct then, funnelling that fear for Wilder into something more powerful, more deadly – rage.

In rage she found her magic. In rage she summoned the storms and wrought them upon the enemy. There had been no strategy, no caution, only action.

Only lightning in her veins and thunder in her heart.

And she’d unleashed it upon the realm. Had used it without rhyme or reason, to defend the one thing in the world she couldn’t live without.

Thea watched Wilder, the fear for him still raw and fragile in her chest. He was visibly shaken, that towering wall of warrior rendered speechless in the wake of what he’d seen, in the wake of what she’d done.