Page 21 of Academy of the Wicked: Year Three

But he's not looking at me with hate. Not fear. Not even anger.

He's looking at me with concern.

As if he can see through this monstrous form to find the person he held this morning. The woman he made love to with such careful reverence. His Little Mouse, lost inside a guardian's rage.

Movement above draws my attention. Atticus descends like judgment, vampire grace married to killing intent. His blade manifests from crystallized blood—his own, shaped by will into an instrument of execution.

My eyes blaze crimson, power gathering to meet his attack. Some part of me—the Guardian, Gabriel called it—snarls at this challenge. How dare he raise weapon against?—

The blade connects.

I shriek as agony beyond description races through me. Not the clean pain of physical wounds but something worse—like being unraveled, each thread of my existence pulled apart toexpose the void beneath. He cuts through my massive form as if it's nothing more than shadow and suggestion.

The realm itself trembles with my pain. Mountains crack. Lava reverses its flow. Reality hiccups, unsure how to process a guardian's agony.

Tears pool in my eyes, but they're not water.

Molten lava streams down my cheeks, each drop a small catastrophe where it falls. The part of me that remains Gwenivere—small, frightened,human—realizes the terrible truth:

I'm the root of this power.

Every tremor, every flame, every moment of destruction flows from my emotional state. If I can't contain myself, I'll kill them all.

"STOP, ATTICUS!" Cassius's voice cuts through everything—pain, rage, confusion. Command and plea tangled together. "Stop!"

Atticus pauses mid-descent, second strike arrested by the desperation in Cassius's tone. But I see the calculation in those crimson eyes. He's weighing options. Mercy versus necessity. Love versus survival.

I stumble backward, massive form surprisingly clumsy. Panic rises like bile. I'm the problem. The danger. The thing that needs to be stopped before?—

"No," I whisper, though it emerges as a rumble that shakes the air. "No, no, no."

I scurry further back, each movement sending fresh disasters through the landscape. My hands rise to ward off—what? Help? Attack? I don't know anymore. The claws slice through my own shadowy flesh, drawing lines of golden ichor that sizzle where they fall.

A whimper escapes—a pitiful sound from such a massive form. I drop to my knees, then curl inward, trying to make myself small.

Trying to disappear.

"Gwenivere!" Cassius calls, and he's walking toward me.

Walking. Across ground that should incinerate him. Through flames that should reduce him to ash. As if I haven't just devastated everything in reach. As if I'm not currently the most dangerous thing in any realm.

I shake my head frantically, hands raised to ward him off. But the gesture becomes self-harm, claws raking across my own form in unconscious echo of earlier pain.

"Stay back," I plead, though the words emerge as barely coherent rumbles. "I'll hurt you. I hurt everyone. I need to—need to?—"

Hide. Disappear. Cease.

My own shadows respond to the desperate need, rising around me in protective walls. Not Cassius's controlled darkness but wild, panicked things that build barriers between me and the world I'm destroying.

"GWENIVERE!" His voice carries new urgency. "DON'T RUN FROM US! IT'S OKAY!"

I don't believe him. Can't. The evidence surrounds us—friends broken and bleeding, realm twisted into a nightmare, everything I touch becoming weapon or wound.

I hurt him.

The thought loops with damning clarity.

Hurt those I love.