Page 117 of Vicious Is My Throne

“Get off me.” I patted Tristan’s neck. “Please, I have to see who’s hurt, Tristan.” With a long-suffering growl, he unwrapped his body from mine, pinning me down with one of those huge feet as he surveyed the decimated forest one last time before letting me up.

“Gods, Anaria, get these fucking things off us.” Tavion sounded strangled. “Hurry.”

I lurched to my feet expecting to see carnage, only for Raz’s entire shield to be engulfed in a writhing nest of living, liquid shadows. “Anaria. Please.”

Despite my weak knees and racing heart, my lips twitched. “They’re completely harmless. Just relax.” Magic floated around us with wonderous light, the bite of freshly struck lightning in the air.

“Gods, Anaria, please.” That was Raziel, and my twitching lips lifted into a smile.

“Such big babies. Come back to me.” I held out my hand, my fingers black with dirt, and they reabsorbed into my fingers. “You did well, protecting my friends,” I crooned to my darklings like they were sweet little pets. “So very well.”

“Do not ever do that to me again.” Raz shuddered. “You have no idea what that was like. I would have rather been shredded apart. Do you know they’re cold like fish?”

“Try being pinned down by a wyvern. It wasn’t much better.” Tristan let out a deep, rumbling growl.

I blew out a breath, staring at utter destruction.

Bloodwood Forest was gone except for a few naked trees, stripped of bark and branches, standing at random spots between us and Ravenswood Castle. From what I could see, the castle still stood, though one of the turrets seemed to be leaning precariously.

“Did the wave already pass over us?” Tavion retied his tangled hair back from his face. “Did we miss that whilst tangled with your horrid…What did you call them? Darklings?”

“Must you speak to them like they’re…pets?” Raz asked with a shudder.

I tensed. “No, we didn’t miss the wave. I don’t know why, but there was no wave, at least none that I saw.” I shrugged. “Maybe we got lucky and avoided the worst this time.”

I gazed up at the pink-hued dawn and frowned.

Flecks of black rained down around us like black snow.

Everywhere those speckles of dust landed, my skin burned, everywhere the black touched the ground, little tendrils of rot spread like cancer.

“You have to get the fuck out of here.” Tavion pulled me toward Tristan, snapping at the falling blight, his deadly tail thrashing back and forth. “Get on his back and into the air. Right now.”

Oh gods. This was…I had made everything worse. So much worse.

Then the unthinkable happened.

My body locked up and my muscles went stiff as something cold and awful crawled through me. My darklings spilled out of my fingers, trying to escape the onslaught of whatever was happening to me.

They writhed in a frenetic, terrified nest, a horrified Tavion sidestepping away.

I shook uncontrollably as cold, ancient magic slithered through me, as immense as the mountains, older than time, more than I could ever hope to contain.

I bore the onslaught, vaguely aware of Raziel’s screaming and Tavion’s shouting somewhere outside of this bubble of muted pain. Then my power jolted, a shock of pure energy, and my vision went white.

There had been broken places in my magic, I realized.

Spots where my magic didn’t fit right, like two joints grinding against themselves, trying to turn but always wearing down. But this…this strange, foreign magic not only filled those fractured spots like the cold darkness fills the emptiness between the stars, the intrusion did something far worse.

The dark void at my center woke up.

Like a great slumbering beast, my smoldering well of witch magic opened an eye and peered around—the ground, the air, everything rumbling.

Or maybe that was me shivering uncontrollably.

No, that was definitely the magic, an endless well of power that felt vaster than the sea, more endless than the universe.

The power swallowed me in waves of inky darkness, but the effect wasn’t smothering. Those cold shadows were comforting, like I was being rocked gently. The well receded, the feeling of vastness shrinking down until it was only me, my aching body, and cold wetness seeping up through the back of my jacket.

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