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I looked closer, heard the rasp in Fletcher’s voice as he staggered toward me. Like he held his own gravity, my feet fled to him. “Fletch—” I wrapped him between my arms, desperate to find where he was hurting.

“Get us out of here,” he uttered in a broken croak, sweat pouring down his temples.

At his command, I put my hands on his face and let my magic race through my vines, but nothing was releasing from my fingers .

He was bleeding—dying. Panic filled my thoughts and my magic kept getting stuck at my nails.

“Hurry,” he spluttered, blood spilling off his lips.

“I’m trying!” I screeched.

Pulling everything from the depths of me forward, even my split, to just get a little scribble of something to help was futile. The pressure and blinding agony of seeing him like this was shoving it all back down.

“Please.” In the next strained breath, he collapsed.

“Fletcher!” I followed him down. I moved my hands on his body, trying over and over again to subdue my panic to unleash my magic.

Running over his back was more blood. Like something had gone straight through him.

“Go! Go without me. Go, Fletcher!”

“I can’t.” He coughed. “He took my magic.” After a wince, he said, “You can do this.”

I rolled him over, aqua-filled hand, pressing down on his wound. It was the only thing I could think of to save him. The only thing that calmed me enough to let my magic fly. If I knew Fletcher was going to be all right, then I could do this.

“Don’t,” he strained, enunciating the “T” to be sure I heard him clearly.

“I have to! I won’t let you die. ”

“You’re too small.” He attempted to shove my hands away but failed. “It might open in your heart.”

Fright didn’t even begin to cover what I was feeling. It was danger and terror and everything I’d ever been petrified of. “I’m too scared right now. I can’t figure out how to use my magic! This is all I can do, Fletcher!”

“Then run,” he urged, getting to knees then collapsing again.

“No!”

“Run,” Fletcher urged in the midst of a hard gulp.

A boom went off behind me, and Fletcher let out a yelp of anguish as his body jerked. His blood splattered on my cheek.

“Say goodbye to him, Ripley,” a deep voice bellowed.

I looked up at Graff with a sinister look on his face and the barrel of a gun pointed at Fletcher’s head.

I screamed, body blinking in and out like a glitch until I teleported between Fletcher and the gun.

“Yes, Ripley! Our princess cannot be associated with this piece of garbage! I’m saving you from a life with a Cidris, a thief, a monster . You might not see it now, but I’m saving all of Elizy.”

“ Graff! ” I warned, willing the tears to stay buried in my chest so I could continue to have clear vision.

“I tried to keep you from being at this mission to spare you seeing this.” He rolled his eyes. “What is it with you and him—”

I hadn’t heard much of what he said. The image of the gun aiming at Fletcher’s head—at my chest—was enough anger to jolt my split awake and propelled me into survival mode.

Unfathomable power coursed through me. It flooded my body in torrents of uncontrolled energy.

My arms were enveloped in black-and-sapphire-patterned veins that branched out like a malignant disease.

Every path it trekked over my body burned in white-hot trails as a blood-curdling scream released from my chest just before my vision was engulfed with a crystalized hailstorm of obsidian icicles.

Violent streaks of magic ignited along my skin that were outlined with a ruinous shade of Fletcher’s violet magic.

In the wake of my infernal scream, the ground shook aggressively. Graff was knocked off his feet, his body tumbling helplessly to the ground. There was a thunderous crack that rang with deadly intent.

My eyes trained on the ground beneath where he lay as I jerked my hand out, glittering magic threading through it like the tangles of vines I stood upon. I released it with expert control and perceived loveliness. The ground beneath Graff split in two.

“Ripley!” Graff pleaded with an overtone of mercy.

But it only amused me as I tilted my chin down, and tauntingly said, “Bye.” A new roar escaped my lips as the fracture grew wider, into an abyss. The rocky walls glowed an inferno rouge and the depths radiated of a boiling heat.

Graff slipped between the widening crack then reemerged as bright lava bubbled to the surface, swallowing him whole.

A smile tugged at the edges of my mouth. Burn. Burn, my lovely.

My eyes lifted to the Cidris Facility to see licks of yellow flames breaking through the top of the cliff it was embedded in, and suddenly, everything was right.

I opened more of the ground, letting it crack into the entrance of the facility and farther still.

I laughed as I let the lava spring from the crevice, catching fire to all its surroundings.

However, I wanted to ensure there was no escape for any Cidris remaining.

I willed my magic to intensify—to not only boil the inside of the facility with lava but also to bring down its ceiling.

Roots cracked at the top of the cliff as it separated in two with a satisfying crack.

Trees above buckled and snapped as they hurtled into the chasm, falling onto the facility.

The ground rocked as the divide split wider apart and buried the facility in ash and roots and rubble.

“ Ripley! ”

Fletcher screaming my name in that raw, guttural tone sent my split magic running scared to the corners of my mind. Both his and my magic rose with overwhelming presence as my head whipped over my shoulder to see him on all fours, crawling away from lava oozing toward him.

I gasped as I raced to him, touched his arm, and was finally successful at breaking us apart with the wind.

It was a long moment and six tries before Aldris’s house surrounded us. I hovered over him on the floor of the front door as Aldris, Mirin, and Rosaanne came running to Fletcher’s side.

“I saw! I’m glad you found him!” Rosaanne screamed. “I tried teleporting him away, but I didn’t know where he landed. Is he okay?”

“Give him your blood!” I screamed at Rosaanne. “Heal him! Please! ”

“Ripley,” Mirin chimed sadly. “That doesn’t work on other Elizians.”

I knew that somewhere deep within me already. That was why Fletcher’s zigzag scar over his temple never healed completely after drinking my blood. But I thought maybe non-royal blood would somehow be better. This meant there was only one way I could save him.

My hands darted to the gaping wound in his torso first. Tones of aqua dashed down my arms toward my fingertips. Release, release, release !

“Aldris!” Fletcher roared as an order to get me away from him.

“No!” I barked. “They will take care of me in Elizy. Let me do this.” Then, my body suddenly detonated every ounce of my magic into Fletcher.

A torrential explosion of raw power fled my body with merciless force.

And before I could be certain that I had taken his fatal wound, the world spun, and spun, and spun and turned to oblivion.