Page 17 of Hell Fae King

So what’s the purpose of this rock?I wondered.Ajax had given it to me for a reason.

Before, it’d been about training.

Now, it was about surviving.

Energy engulfed me, a foreign spell clawing at my skin with icy sensations. I swatted at it, but that only sharpened theblades. I gasped, the pain unlike anything I’d ever felt as arctic liquid shot through my veins.

Literally, I realized.Or… or it feels…

My limbs seemed to freeze with icy precision, snuffing out my inner flame.

Just like Az, I thought.They chilled his Phoenix. Smothered his fire. And now… now they’re doing the same to me.

But as the frigid energy reached my fingers, it dissipated and the stone heated in my hand. I focused on the conflicting power, noting the way it countered the chill with warmth.

Except… except it wasn’t trulywarm; it was…absorbing.

I blinked, confused by that revelation. Yet I could feel the death stone pulling in the air around me, stirring some sort of enchantment inside that devoured the glacial power around it.

Like me,I registered in a heartbeat, my lips parting.The stone is a siphon.Or it functioned like one, anyway.

So how do I use it?

My fingers flexed around the sharp edges, the juxtaposition of cold and hot making me shiver and sweat at the same time.

Think, Cami,I told myself.It’s absorbing the chill like a flame consumes oxygen. And infernos burn hotter under the right circumstances…

Thus, with the right parameters, I should be able to intensify the stone’s siphoning ability.

I need to give it more oxygen…

Because the material—theenergy—was already there, ready to be devoured.

I closed my eyes to focus on the parameters in the equation, trying to determine how to bolster the conditions and enhance the power.

Lucifer’s Source instantly opened itself to me, the beacon of energy ready and willing at my fingertips. I’d evaluate later whyit was so easy to reach now. Just as I’d apologize to its owner later, too.

Az was what mattered at the moment.

Surely Lucifer would understand that.

Or want to kill me again,I thought bitterly.Well, fuck that.

These zombielike fae needed toburn, their icy presence overwhelming and deadly.And hurting Az.

I could feel it now—the blizzard swirling inside him and killing his inner fire.

He was nearing death, his flame almost extinguished. He might be immortal and capable of rebirth, but something about this felt…permanent.

No!I mentally shouted as furious vitality swam through me, Lucifer’s power a kiss to my senses that roared through my veins. I fell on top of Az, one hand still clutching the stone while my opposite palm went to his chest, right over his heart.

Then I used everything inside me to ignite the stone, forcing it to take more, to blaze hotter than before, toconsume.

But I didn’t let the rock keep everything. Instead, I pulled some of that fiery energy into myself and out through my palm into Az. It was such a natural response, one I wasn’t even sure I could do, yet accomplished as easily as breathing.

A rerouting of power.

My bodysiphoningthe vitality and redirecting it.