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“It ends here,” I called over the sounds of clashing metal.

“I agree,” she said, pushing back away from the wall and coming towards me.

My feet were shoulder width apart, Stormslayer in my left hand, Nik’s sword in my right. The wound on my stomach was throbbing, but I sent a pulse of magic down the bond and received one back.

Nik was ok. For now.

The battle was wearing on me, my muscles becoming sore, my energy depleting. I pushed more magic into the storm in the sky and released it, thunder rattling the windowsills as it snapped free.

The storm was its own, and I allowed that magic to siphon back into me, energizing me once more.

I could tell that Annelise was fading and would need energy soon. Luckily, she could pull from my storms, too.

A sense of calm settled over me as Donika approached, her steps slow and careful across the floorboards. She didn’t make a single noise as she approached me, her eyes on the darkened sky through the windowsill at my back.

I reached out to one of the storms and pulled more energy, the storm bucking against me at first but quickly relenting. I allowed the energy to fill me until I thought I could burst from it, as if it were filling every inch of me with raw, unfiltered power.

Right as I was ready to detonate, to end this once and for all, Donika brought her hand forth from behind her back. In her palm was a spinning ball of raw, dark energy.

It was black magic streaked with grey, a hurricane of power within the palm of her hand.

Her eyes tracked my body from my feet, across the weeping wounds on my legs, the stab wounds on my abdomen from Nikolai, across my chest where my tunic was torn. Over my forehead where the gash still bled into my eye.

Before I could register what was happening, before I had a chance to release the energy I had collected from the storm above, she hurled the black magic at me.

I felt Alastir’s border spell snap as my body went sailing across the room, falling through the glass window.

When the black magic touched my skin, I thought a million needles had pierced me. As I fell from the window, my only thought was that my skin wasburning off. That by the time I landed, I wouldn’t have any skin left at all.

The landing came much quicker than I had anticipated, and I fell against a balcony and not the battlefield that warred beneath. The wind entirely left my lungs and I gasped, struggling to capture any amount of breath I could. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t fill my lungs with air. My hand clutched against my jacket, peeling it away from me.

I was choking.

The rain came down in sheets around me, the biting wind whipping my already sopping hair across my face. The storms above were furious, raining their anger down. Out here on the balcony, I could hear the sounds of battle clearly.

My eyes were on the sky as I saw Donika appear in the frame of the shattered window above, her skirt whipping around her beneath the whipping winds. She smiled down at me for only a moment before she jumped into the spitting rain.

She landed in a crouch on the balcony beside me. I had fallen with both Nik’s sword and Stormslayer in my grip, but at some point they had clattered away from me on the stone terrace.

I swallowed, pressing my eyes closed as I tried to capture any breath I could manage to fill my lungs with. I gasped, clawing once more at my chest as I allowed the energy I had pulled from the sky to fill my lungs instead.

My magic breathed for me.

My lungs filled once.

Twice.

My breaths were coming in stuttering gulps now, but I could breathe. I turned away from Donika to locate my blades, but her foot across my back stopped me. She pressed down, but not enough to crush me or cause any injury. The sound of her laugh filled my ears as the rain cascaded down my face, filling my mouth with rainwater and blood.

“Tsk, tsk. Not so fast.”

She allowed me to turn over, her heel now pressed flush against my chest. If she truly wanted to, she could likely drive that heel right into my heart from this vantage point. Another ball of dark magic swirled within her palm. It appeared as a fire of darkness, licking against her skin as if it were made of flame.

How much of her soul had she had to sacrifice for that power?

As if reading the thoughts on my face, she pressed her heel down harder into my chest, causing me to wince. I tried to recoil, but with my back to the terrace stones, there was nowhere for me to go. As I watched her above me, I pulled more energy from the sky. Lightning struck out and hit the iron railing next to us.

It sparked, causing Donika to take a step back.