“That’s for my father, you lowlife piece of shit!” he yelled.
He sliced him again.
“That’s for infiltrating my property and trying to take me out, you treacherous bastard!”
Zander tried to fight back, but Ren’s magic overpowered him, and he fell to the floor. There was fear in his eyes when he looked up at Ren. He was finally getting a taste of the fear he’d caused so many to feel during his reign of terror.
“This is for laying a single finger onmyEllie!” Ren slashed him across the neck.
Zander’s eyes widened, and he moved his mouth, but no words escaped from his lips. He lifted his hand to his throat, but his head fell back before he touched the split skin where blood poured out onto the floor.
His eyes rolled up, and his head lolled to the side, facing me.
When I looked into his eyes, they looked back at me with a vacant stare.
It was over.
Ren stood over Zander, breathing hard.
“No!” Lucia shrieked. She stared in shock. Ren’s power let her go—I didn’t know if he’d done it on purpose or let go because the fight was over without thinking.
She dropped to the floor and scrambled to her feet.
Now that Zander was dead, the shock turned to horror, and her face twisted in a mask of pain and anguish.
“What have you done?” she cried.
Ren looked up, and when he saw her, he frowned, his face twisting in confusion.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he demanded.
“You monster!” she shouted, and her hands trembled. Her face changed from horrified to furious. “You’ve ruined every single thing that mattered to me!” she hissed.
Her power built like static electricity. It danced on my skin and caused the hair in my neck to stand on end and try to march down my spine. The shards of glass on the floor trembled, defied gravity, and floated in the air, held up by her magic. Her hair flew around her head.
She looked like a creature out of this world. Her skin was so tight around her skull, she looked like a living skeleton, and all I could think was that she was the bearer of death.
And she was going to take Ren out.
Her fury was enough to do what needed to be done. For a moment, I wondered if she’d been there, too, if she’d hurt Ren as badly as he’d been hurt when they’d found him in the forest.
“No!” I screamed. I wouldn’t allow her to hurt Ren. Not after everything he’d done for me. Not after what I felt for him.
I jumped up and dove in front of Ren.
Lucia was like a ball of energy, building and building, and she spontaneously combusted. I was in front of Ren when the power came at us. There was no time to think, no time to wonder what I was and what I could do. All I knew was that I had to protect him.
My power was at the surface. I could feel it humming and buzzing. I grabbed it and yanked it out, and suddenly, the room was filled with light. I was at the center, magic pouring out of me. I created a shield before me, a net that caught everything Lucia threw at me. It caught the power and held fast. The humming and buzzing increased. Every nerve ending was alive, and the power was so strong I felt like it might pull me apart. I absorbed everything she had, catching it at first, and when she stopped throwing it at me, I started taking it from her.
She screamed, her voice becoming higher and higher, the pitch like a shattering whine that sliced through everything.
The furniture in the room trembled, danced in place, fell over. It moved around the room, as if an earthquake rattled the very foundations of the fort we were in.
When I couldn’t take any more of it, when the power was so much, I felt like I would burn out or explode—a supernova—the magic cracked and shattered.
Lucia screamed as waves of hot magic washed over her, tearing at her hair, her clothes, her skin.
An explosion blasted everything away from us. The wooden furniture crashed and splintered against the walls. The walls cracked. The floor split open, shifting, shaking until a crevice gaped across the floor. Then, it stopped.