Page 44 of Awakened Destiny (The Dark Ascendant #3)

Brigid

Her answer is a banshee shriek. She launches herself across the space between us with inhuman speed, a blur of pale limbs and desperation. The floor cracks beneath her feet from the force of her propulsion.

I sidestep, but she anticipates, changing direction in mid-air. Her fingers, now elongated with jagged black talons, swipe at my face. I smell sulfur as they miss by inches.

"I'll wear your bones like a fucking crown!" she screams. Dark magic crackles around her hands, arcing in unstable bursts that crack the walls.

"Brigid!" Lochan's voice calls, panic rough in his throat.

"Stay back!" I shout, not daring to look away from Laria. I can sense them all there, my mates, their fear a distraction I can ’ t afford right now.

Laria seizes the moment. She lunges again, this time connecting. Her hand closes around my throat, skin burning cold against mine. The forbidden magic flows between us like a painful electrical current, trying to dig deep into my flesh. My eyes water from the pain.

She ’ s trying to siphon my shadow magic.

"See how it feels," she pants, triumph ugly on her face. "To have something precious stolen."

But something's happening to her. The veins in her arm darken to pitch black, spreading like ink through water. They bulge against her skin. Her grip weakens as pain contorts her features.

"What—" She stares at her own arm in horror.

The black tendrils race up her neck, across her face. Her pale skin begins to crack like aged porcelain, revealing darkness underneath. Blood—or something that was once blood—seeps from the fissures, thick and viscous.

"The magic," I whisper, understanding dawning. "It's rejecting you."

"No." She releases me, staggering backward. "No, I'm stronger than this."

But her body betrays her words. More cracks appear, spreading across her chest, her shoulders. Her blonde hair darkens at the roots, turning the color of tar. Even her eyes cloud over, becoming pools of inky darkness.

"Make it stop!" she screams, clawing at her own skin, which only causes more fissures to form.

I want to look away but can't. This is my doing too—I drove her to this desperate act by merely existing, by being what she wanted to be.

"It's unstable. Your body can't contain the power you've taken."

She falls to her knees, skin fracturing everywhere now, black veins pulsing beneath. "I was... supposed to be... the one."

The magic has become a parasite, consuming her from within. Each crack in her skin widens, revealing the corruption beneath. Her fingernails blacken and fall away. Her lips split and bleed that same dark substance.

I take a step toward her, not knowing what I'll do but unable to watch without trying something.

"Don't," Marius warns from behind me. "There's nothing you can do. Laria, that magic, it's beyond saving."

Laria looks up at me with eyes that are no longer eyes—just windows into a void. Her voice comes out distorted, layered with sounds that shouldn't come from a human throat.

"This should have been you."

A sound escapes her that's part scream, part inhuman wail. I cover my ears, but it pierces through anyway, vibrating in my skull. Black liquid weeps from every opening—her eyes, her mouth, her ears, running in rivulets down her body.

She tries to speak, but her jaw dislocates with a wet snap. Her tongue has turned to black sludge. The shadows she tried to steal now turn on their captor, wrapping around her like hungry snakes.

Laria's body convulses violently. Her back arches at an impossible angle, bones cracking beneath her skin. For a moment, she hangs suspended, limbs contorted, head thrown back.

Then she bursts.

There's no other word for it. Blood sprays outward in a perfect circle, hitting the walls, the ceiling. Chunks of flesh and bone scatter across the floor. And ash—so much ash—floats through the air like dark snow, settling on my skin, in my hair.

I stand frozen, spattered with what remains of someone who hated me enough to destroy herself.

"Brigid?" Callen's voice seems far away. "Are you hurt?"

I shake my head slowly, feeling wetness on my face. Not my blood. Hers.

"I offered her a way out," I whisper, watching the last of the ash drift to the floor. "She could have stopped."

I feel hollow inside, like something's been scooped out. Laria was cruel, manipulative, dangerous—but this end? No one deserves this.

I wipe my cheek, leaving a dark smear across my hand. "She was so determined to have what she thought I had. All that jealousy, that rage. For what?"

"Power consumes those who aren't worthy of it," Marius says quietly, coming to stand beside me but not touching me.

"I never wanted her dead." The words catch in my throat. "Not like this."

"We know." Lochan moves to my other side.

Eira approaches cautiously, her eyes on the circle of destruction where Laria stood. "It was inevitable."

"Was it?" I ask, not really expecting an answer. I look at my hands, remembering how close I came to releasing the Morrigan's full power. "If I had struck first, would it have ended differently?"

There is no answer in the silence, just the soft patter of blood dripping from the ceiling.

***

Fiona kneels beside the remnants of what was once Laria, her fingertips hovering over the ash without touching it. Her voice is hushed with awe. "You tried to save her, even after everything she did."

I shrug, uncomfortable with her tone. "Anyone would have—"

"No," Callen interrupts firmly. His eyes meet mine, and something shifts in his expression—a new understanding dawning. "Anyone wouldn't have. She tried to kill you. She would have destroyed everyone in her path."

"But you offered mercy first," Lochan says. He takes a step closer, his body language open, like he's seeing me for the first time. "That's not just power. That's sovereignty."

The word hits like a thunderclap. Sovereignty. Macha's domain within the Morrigan trinity.

"You could have annihilated her with a thought," Tiernan adds. "I felt the power gathering in you. But you chose restraint."

I look between them, uncomfortable with their stares. "What was I supposed to do? Just execute her?"

"Any other would have," Callen says softly. "Power without compassion is just tyranny."

I feel the weight of their gazes, see the way they stand straighter, the subtle inclination of their heads. It makes me want to squirm.

"Stop looking at me like that," I mutter. "I'm still just me."

"No," Fiona says, rising to her feet. “ You're a true queen, Brigid. Not because of the power inside you, but because of who you are.