Page 80 of Her Cruel Redemption

Lightning tore out of me, arcing over their heads, ever impossible to aim.

And at that same moment, the sky tore open.

Lightning speared down from the sky, striking a moment after the bolts from my hands in the exact same spot with a roar of sound so deafening I clapped my hands over my ears, cringing down in sudden terror.

The very earth seemed to shift and shudder, so much that I thought the ground would open up beneath my feet, that Madeia was so furious at my attempt to wield a power that should be reserved for gods that she was going to consume me whole. I staggered, falling to a knee, hands still clapped over my ears. But then the ground stilled. Everything was strangely silent.

I opened my eyes and looked up blearily, rising to my feet to see the damage I’d wrought, taking in the enormous crater some hundred meters away from me, the spasming bodies and the strangely still ones scattered on the ground around it. I felt only dimly attached to it all, like I wasn’t part of the same scene, like I was floating above and looking down on what had happened. But somewhere deep, deep inside me, somewhere that felt both embedded within me and far, far away, grew a sense of horror at what I’d done.

I glanced up at the sky, squinting against a spatter of rain, to find the clouds above were whirling, flashing purple with follow-up streaks of lightning. And in this distant, floating state, I felt more connected to the lightning than I did to the battlefield. Because I had called it down. I could call it down again. In a volt of energy far more powerful than I could manage on my own without vomiting up the contents of my stomach or completely losing consciousness. And that dim horror, that sense of angry gods, of what I’d done beingwrong, faded away, replaced by an overwhelming wash of bright, powerful awe. Andelation.

‘Rhiandra.’

The sound of my name drew me back from the clouds, back down to the mud and chaos of the battlefield. My head spun. Pain lanced through my limbs, but that, too, seemed distant.

‘You have to stop.’

I scanned my surroundings groggily. I was on my own, an island in a sea of turmoil, surrounded by a stretch of stillness beyond which the battle still raged.

Alone except for a figure slowly approaching.

The air quivered as I recognised him, recognised the tousled dark hair, the sharp cut of his jaw, a gaze like a blade pinning me from thirty paces. And all that detachment lifted as a stunning whirl of rage and magic and pain and longing centred on him, like he was the anchor of the storm above and within me. Without thinking, my feet were moving in his direction. Energy surged through my veins, thrilling me. Burning me up from the inside out. It was pain. Pleasure. Thrill. Abject terror. Lightning struck across the field again, further away this time, theboom!thundering through me. Each step towards him felt like an echo of it. My hair had fallen loose. It was rising around me, a dark cloud crackling with power.

If anyone had been near us, they were either dead or gone.

‘You want me tostop?’ I taunted. ‘What’s wrong? Are you afraid to look upon your own monster?’

He held his ground, eyeing me warily, the light cast by the flickers of lightning painting a strange, shifting gleam to his eyes. ‘Can’t you see what you’re doing to yourself? Punishing me isn’t worth it.’

I laughed. ‘Then stop me,’ I spat. ‘Try take my mind.’

His gaze didn’t waver. ‘I won’t.’

‘Or youcan’t.’ I raised my arms. Another bolt of light smashed through the clouds, struck the ground on the other side of the wall, hitting somewhere within the city, and it was soeasycompared to flinging the energy myself. So simple, to draw down the lightning from the clouds. If there was screaming from the strike, the pounding in my ears was too loud to hear it. ‘I’d like to see you try though. Then when I beat you, it’ll be because I was stronger, not because you gave in without a fight. So come on.Fight me.’

‘You’re losing, Rhiandra,’ he said. ‘Your general has called a retreat. The lightning isn’t going to change that. I can feel the fear pouring off your soldiers. They’re too afraid of you to regroup now.’

‘No, we’re not losing. Just you wait. The tide is about to turn,’ I snarled, thinking of the soldiers in the tunnels. Any moment now they’d be opening the gates, and this time it would be to let us into the city, joining our forces together. Then Draven would be eating his words.

‘Your reinforcements aren’t coming,’ he said softly, as though he was reading my thoughts. ‘We intercepted them before they ever reached the exits. I had sentries watching those caverns.’

‘But… sentries? How did you…’ That thrilling, thrumming energy was beginning to ebb, beginning to turn. I couldn’t pull my thoughts together, not with the after-effects of magic slowly tightening around me.

He almost sounded consoling as he replied to my unasked question. ‘How do you think we got inside the city in the first place? I know this city better than its king.’

My heart was thudding heavily. Keeping my eyes open was a struggle, but struggle I did. I knew this was important. But my groggy mind couldn’t quite pull together why it was. ‘You knew about the tunnels,’ I finally managed. My knees wobbled. I staggered. He surged forwards, catching my elbow. I gasped in a few breaths, looking up at him, suddenly far too close, closer than I’d prepared for. But there it was, that fear I’d been digging for, had been longing to see, was finally written all over his face. But it was all wrong. He was supposed to be afraid when I was charging towards him surrounded by lightning. Not now. Not like this.

‘You’re making yourself sick,’ he said, his tone so gentle. ‘You could make yourself so sick you’ll never be the same again. Let me help you.’

‘No!’ Suddenly, rage burned through me again, singing away all the exhaustion like a flare of white light burning away the shadows in a darkened room. I wrenched away from him. I didn’t want his help. I wanted him to suffer. The wayIhad suffered. The way I’dburned.‘Don’ttouchme!’ Lightning crackled between my fingers again, scorching away the pain and the nausea. A haze of red tunnelled my vision. The lightning in my veins turned molten, searing through me as if I were the conduit instead of the wielder.Strike, strike, strike,my heart seemed to thrum. Above, I felt the static gathering.

But Draven was backing away from me now, palms turned outwards. ‘Alright,’ he said. ‘Alright, you’ve made your point. What do you want? Do you want me on my knees again? Do you want me to beg you? I can do that. Just take a breath.’

But I could hardly catch that breath. My throat was thick with something I couldn’t swallow down at the idea that there was something,anything, he could do to make it better. He had twisted me into this corner where my own magic burned me alive. And now he wasn’t even defending himself. How dare he look at me like that? Like he cared. Like I mattered.

‘Why did you let me run that day at the river?’ I spluttered, voice cracked through. I wanted him to deny that he’d let me run at all. But I’d seen the soldiers fall to their knees. And in the grips of the feverish delirium of magic poisoning, I needed to know why.

‘Maybe for the same reason you didn’t cut my throat,’ he replied. But I wasn’t even sure that was what he said. Because I was on the ground. Because my vision was fading out. And the last thing I saw before my consciousness fled was that whirling grey sky.

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