My eyes are wild, bouncing around the ballroom, at the gold that suddenly feels like it’s closing in on me. “I can’t control it, I can’t—”
“You can,” he growls in my face, the coils of his own power twisting like roots along his jaw. “Try, Auren. It’s your power, it answers to you.”
But he’s wrong. This isn’t my power at all. This is something born from inside of me, from the raging anger I held in too long.
My entire body shakes from the crushing weight of it, and all around me, the gold starts to boil and hiss, and it takes everything in me to hold it back. Even still, it slinks forward, creeping, pushing the boundaries. My heart leaps into my throat when I see it inching around Slade and trying to latch onto his feet. I shoot my hand forward to direct it away, a terrified gasp flooding from my surging chest.
I barely have the might to send it back, but more is advancing, a ripple going through the floor, edging nearer. I have no idea where everyone else is, but terror grips my chest. What if I killed the Wrath, or Digby, or innocents? And yet, that’s what is going to happen, because my control is fading fast.
“It’s going to hurt you!” I cry, hands now scrabbling to push him away. “Go, Slade, I can’t...I can’t hold it back much longer, and I don’t know how to stop it!”
Hands land on my cheeks, cupping my face, and my eyes spring
open, though I hadn’t realized I’d even closed them.
“Look at me.”
Frightened eyes lock onto him. “You have to leave.”
But the stubborn male shakes his head. “I already told you. If you think I’m leaving without you, you’re out of your damned mind.”
The echo of his previous words brings a sob up my throat as exhausted, terrified tears track down my face.
How quickly this astonishing power turned so disastrous. How quickly it overwhelmed me.
I can’t do what he’s saying. I’ve never had good control over my magic, and now, it’s running rampant, its will trying to buckle my own.
“Auren, your aura is fading fast, you have to let go!” he pleads.
There’s alarmed fear in his eyes now, and his aura lurches around me, like it’s trying to grasp onto my own to keep it from fading. I’ve never seen him look afraid before, and the sight of it makes me tremble.
I can feel myself draining, but if I let it go like he wants me to, then the tentative tether I have on the gold will give way. It will unleash on him and anyone else in its path before it settles, and I can’t let that happen. I made the gold unleash with the heart of a beast, and now, its single-minded will is to destroy.
“Leave. Please,” I beg.
I shudder with the effect of the drain, of trying to hold onto this power that’s overtaken every part of me.
My vision blacks out, and I slump, ears roaring, though I don’t know if that’s the magic overloading my veins, or my galloping pulse. There’s a tug through my gut, like my very life-force is being pulled on, and it tears a ragged breath from my panting chest.
I can hold it. I will hold it, until he’s out of harm’s way, for as long as my exhaustion can stand it.
My eyes are heavy, my breathing labored. Sweat drips down my neck and stings the jagged cuts of my ribbons, and I feel something in me sinking.
I’m dying.
“Dammit, Auren, you don’t have time. Let go!” Slade roars.
I open my mouth to tell him I can’t, but all that comes out is a pitiful whimper.
Then, he suddenly yanks my face forward and presses his lips against mine. The shock of it stuns me for a moment, and my faltering hold on the magic wavers.
Slade pulls back, something pained in his eyes. “Forgive me,” he breathes against my mouth.
I want to ask him what he means, but I don’t get the chance.
In the next brush of his lips against mine, his power rises up, the cloying, corrupt magic that steals the breath from my chest.
A choked noise catches in my throat as I feel something horrible rake down my insides, like poisoned air. My wet eyes go wide in shock, and I try to flinch away from him, but Slade holds me still, green eyes keeping me hostage.