Page 91 of Shadowkissed

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 canfeelit—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 isright herein his hands.

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

“Because you never made me,” I snarl. “Youstoleme.”

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 youstrong.” 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’swinning.

“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 itbreaksthe 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 andmine.The air around me bends, trembles, crackles like the sky before a supernova.

“I amnotyours,” I whisper.

And then I rise.

My feet liftfrom the earth as the power takes me.

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