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I stormed out of the laboratory and down the hallway, up the spiral staircase, and out of the cottage underground. Ipulled my shirt away from my throat. It felt too tight. As if I was being strangled. I pushed my hair back again in aggravation, but all it did was fall forward once more, tickling my cheeks.

My head fell back, and I released a guttural, frustrated scream.

Lightning struck behind the cottage and I hadn’t even realized I had released magic along with my frustration.

I screamed once more, and the rain began. In a matter of moments, I was soaked through, my vision blurry through the rain droplets clinging to my lashes.

I screamed in frustration again and fell to my knees, all the angst swallowing me. A hand on my back startled me. I flung my hand out without thinking clearly. Luckily, Nikolai was ready, and he deflected the fireball easily.

I startled, realizing what I had done. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking—”

He cut me off by grabbing me by the back of the head, pulling me against him. He kneeled in the mud with me, holding me as I cried. I had done the same for him when he had broken apart in the library, and now he did the same for me.

“I can feel it. Your anger. Your frustration.” He pulled away only enough to capture my eyes with his. “Your eyes, Diana. They’re swirling with your magic.”

I pulled away slightly. “They haven’t done that since I’ve been bound. I’ve been in control… I’ve—”

Nik shook his head. “Maybe it has nothing to do with control. Maybe it is the magic… taking a piece of you. Bound ornot, that is the nature of Stormshade magic. It is always a balance.”

I shook my head, tears dripping down my cheeks and mixing with the rain that pelted my skin. “I can never escape all this.”

“You can.” Nik pulled me against him once more. “This is almost over, Diana. We will finish this.”

“And my mother?” I croaked against him, gripping his jacket in my fists. I held on so tightly my knuckles were white.

“I don’t know. I wish I could tell you she would be fine, that we would figure it out and that everything was going to be ok, but I don’t know if that is the truth.”

I tilted my chin up to gaze at him. His eyes were the depths of the ocean, swirling full of emotion. “What will I do?”

“You will do nothing.” His voice was raw when he spoke. “If it comes to it, I will wield the blade.”

“But Donika is mine to kill,” I protested.

“And she still will be,” he said. “If a piece of her still lives in Annelise, that is not your burden.”

“I can’t ask you to do that, Nik.”

A muscle feathered in his jaw. “You didn’t ask.”

I shook my head to protest, but his hand clasped my cheek, pulling my mouth to his. The kiss was salty and desperate, full of all the anger and frustration that drowned me. The guilt. I could taste the smoky rainwater and my own salty tears on his lips.

I pulled him against me, desperate to release every last kernel of anger that threatened to tear me under. He kissed me back just as fiercely, his rough lips claiming mine.

Marking me as his.

Whatever came next, he would be by my side. He would help me get through this. The only problem was… I didn’t think I could tolerate losing one more person I cared about. I wouldn’t survive it. Annelise and I had just started getting to know each other. I had just begun to forgive her.

When our lips parted, his were red and swollen, rainwater streaming down his cheeks. His blond hair was darkened and dripping. He looked as if he were plucked straight out of my wildest dreams. As if the Mother made him just for me. The corner of his mouth lifted into a smirk under the torrents of rain.

A warmth bloomed in my chest through the bond and I quirked my brow at him.

“Did you do that?”

He nodded—his lips parted ever so slightly. I ran my hand from his cheek, down his chiseled jaw, to a drop of rain at the edge of his lower lip. I captured it with my finger, dragging his lip down with it. I sent him a blast of warmth in return and his eyes heated, his jaw ticking as his smile turned wicked.

“Diana—” My name wasn’t a prayer this time, more like a warning.

My smile turned sinful in return, thoughts of what we could be doing right now, beneath this rain running through my head.