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LIORA

E verything slows when he steps through the rift. Seraphiel. Tall, golden-eyed, every inch of him dripping power and poison. His wings spread behind him like the sky itself bowed to his presence—shimmering, spectral, unfurling like memory and fire.

The world shudders around him.

The Veil howls in protest.

And I stand against it all—glowing, trembling, bracing for impact.

“Mine,” he says, voice slick and sweet, a blade dipped in honey. “Come, little star.”

I don’t move. I can’t. My muscles lock even though every part of me screams to act.

He lifts one hand.

The blood on his palm is glowing— mine.

From the ritual that nearly broke me. From a cut I didn’t even know he took. He must have gotten it when he had me as captive, when he let me escape… The bastard had it all along.

Blood magic.

“No,” I whisper, and then louder—feral— “ No. ”

But the spell’s already reaching for me.

It hits like chains made of light and memory. Snaps around my wrists. My throat. My ribs.

I can feel it—threads of my own magic rebelling inside me, pulled taut toward him. Like he’s the magnet and I’m the metal and everything I’ve ever feared about myself is right here in his hands.

“You were made for me,” he says softly. “Why do you fight what you are?”

“Because you never made me,” I snarl. “You stole me.”

He moves closer.

The ground blackens beneath his feet, veins of molten red crackling through the earth. Around us, the battlefield waits. Frozen. Terrified. Watching.

Even the wind holds its breath.

“I made you strong. ” His voice wraps around me, threading through my thoughts, low and poisonous. “I shaped you for the end, Liora. And the end is now.”

I feel it happening—my knees beginning to fold. My hands shaking. My light dimming.

He’s winning.

“Liora.”

Dante’s voice.

One word.

Like a flare through the fog.

I turn my head, barely able to lift it. He’s there—bleeding, defiant, eyes burning with something stronger than rage.

Love.

And it breaks the hold, forces me to remember that I am stronger than this. Than him. And that I deserve love.

The chains shatter.

The blood-magic burns itself out in my veins, howling as it dies.

I gasp, stumble—but I don’t fall.

My hands flare with power.

Shadow coils up from my fingertips, velvet-slick and deadly. Light bleeds from my chest, gold and starlit and mine. The air around me bends, trembles, crackles like the sky before a supernova.

“I am not yours,” I whisper.

And then I rise.

My feet lift from the earth as the power takes me.

No glamour. No filters. No masks.

This is who I am.

Fae. Celestial. Starborn and cursed and awakened.

Seraphiel raises his arms like he can embrace the moment.

But I don’t give him the chance.

The first blast of my magic knocks him twenty feet back.

He crashes through a tree that bursts into flame on impact. The scream that follows is not pain—it’s ecstasy.

“YES,” he roars. “That’s what I want—show me, little star, show me what you truly are!”

I do.

The battle explodes.

Magic collides. The sky cracks. Light and darkness crash into each other in a violent, celestial storm.

He throws knives of memory and illusion—I burn them away with truth.

He tries to bind me with shadow—I unmake the shadows.

He tries to pull me toward him again, whispering promises I once feared.

And I laugh in his face.

“You don’t control me,” I say through gritted teeth. “Not anymore.”

His smile falters.

Just for a second.

And then I strike.

My magic slams into him, full force—light and shadow combined, chaotic, wild, mine. It knocks him back into the rift, cracking the air behind him. The Veil groans like it’s tearing.

I drop to the ground, landing hard. My knees hit the dirt. My breath heaves.

Across the field, Dante is running toward me—covered in ash and blood, but alive.

His arms wrap around me before I can speak. I fold into him like gravity, like this is the only place I’ll ever belong.

“Holy shit,” I whisper, voice shaking.

“You did it,” he says.

“Not yet,” I say into his neck.

But I will.

Because now I know what I am.

And I finally know what I’m fighting for.