Page 113 of Hidden Kingdoms

I could do this, I could help. Prove that I wasn’t some useless person they held in a room until they figured out what to do with me.

Sucking in lungfuls of icy air as best I could, I drew on my magik. Pushing it skywards, urging it to repair the shield. Body shaking with effort, The Darkness began to pulse along the dome, its inky tendrils splaying out, the eerie laughter growing louder.

I risked a look over at Bastian, saw the frown of confusion on his upturned face. Did he hear that, too? More lights faded out one by one as magik began to run low, their replacement not nearly enough to make a difference.

Another set of cracks spiderwebbed overhead as a shudder rippled around us, and pitch-black shadows pressed heavily against the shield,as heavy as smoke could get.

As another soldier fell to his knees with a cry, his magik burned out, I turned to Bastian. His eyes were tightly shut, jaw tensed in concentration. Before I could second guess what I was doing, I reached for his hand, gripping it with my own.

His eyes flew open with a gasp as our magik crashed together—dancing, flowing out of us with a light so strong, I had to close my eyes against its glare.

There had been no time for him to shield against it.

I could feel the fiery burn to the energy that coursed through him, and as it raced within my skin, it lit me on fire. The heat that so often menaced the air around me, now was inside me.

This wasn’t the burning of my dreams, where pain seared through my flesh. This fire set every nerve in my body alight, caressing my soul as it replaced the agony of my back with a taste of pain so carnal, I let a groan slip past my tongue before I remembered where I was, and what I was supposed to be doing.

Repairing the ward, not getting off to fire magik.

Squeezing tight, I embraced his magik, letting it meld with my own before pushing it from me streaming into the ward. As I looked up, squinting through the brightness that haloed us, I saw the shine of the iridescent shield rippling from our combined energy and absorbing it into itself.

The cracks were being chased away, and the gnawing sense of fear lessoned a fraction. My own magik was rushing through him, too, and as I looked at him, his eyes were wide as he stared back at me. I tucked away the realisation that that may havebeen the first time he had looked at me with anything except anger or irritation since we passed through the walls of the boundary.

Other lights began to beam up around us as people recovered or replenished their own magik, and finally, the cracks began to lessen.

Mine and Bastian’s combined energy was still pouring into the largest of them, the one The Darkness had managed to worm part of itself through, and its anger vibrated above us as our magik fought against it.

A sound like thunder rumbled through its inky blackness before it shrieked with anger as the gap it had wedged itself in began to close around it. As the last of the crack was almost mended, it reared back, bunching itself together, a mere wisp of smoke breaking away from its main body and hurtling away from the ward.

Too late, I realised its choice of direction, and it was upon me before I could focus enough to redirect my magik towards it. Instead, I grasped Bastian’s hand tighter as I flung my magik at him, hoping he could use it to seal the last rift before breaking our contact a second before The Darkness reached me.

It crashed into me, sending me to my knees once more as it ripped through my chest with such force, I was convinced there would be a smoke-sized hole there.

The agony that circulated through my body was too much to bear, especially after using so much energy on strengthening the ward. My mind was clouding, vision blackening at the edges. Pain stretched to every part of me until it became all I was made of.

Moments before my eyes closed, my body succumbing to everything it had been put through, a roar of anger rang through the space, and I watched as the last rift closed over.

The gloom began to lift, and sunlight reached the ground.

The ward was shimmering and whole once more.

43

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

ELODIE

Through the pounding in my head, I tried to make sense of the quaggy ground below me. The way cold was seeping into my skin and how my body felt like it had been run over by a truck.

Maybe that’s why I’m on the ground.

Seconds; that’s all the time my mind had granted me, before the memory of The Darkness resurfaced, bringing with it the sharp slice of pain blazing across my back. Reminding me exactly why I was now lying in the cold mud.

How many more moments would I have like this? Where my subconscious gave me those precious few moments before reality came calling.

And the reality was always shit.

It no longer felt as if the air around me was being churned by the sadistic influence of a floating blob, but it did feel like my brain was. Yet I felt empty, hollow. Like the essence of myself had turned to smoke.

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