Page 38 of The Legacy of Ophelia
With shaky movements, I pushed myself to my hands and knees, nearly vomiting as I took stock of myself. There was noblood on the floor and no wounds beyond where I’d bitten my cheek and slammed my shoulder into the marble when I fell.
“Look at me, Ophelia,” Echnid instructed, desperation piquing his voice.
Stiffly, without another glance in my direction, Ophelia rose and faced the god. Her spine straightened, her wings snapping in tightly.
“What are you going to do?” Echnid asked.
Misty white ether stirred around him, creeping over Ophelia’s body. Everywhere it touched, she stiffened, but after a moment the tension uncoiled from her frame. What in the fucking Spirits was hedoingto her?
“Leave her alone!” I snapped, but they ignored me.
When Ophelia spoke again, it was with that unsettling calm. “I am going to wake a seraph.”
“As I thought,” Echnid mused, and for the first time, he sounded truly, gleefully evil.
With a nod from the god, she turned toward me, all vibrancy siphoned from her stare again. No Angellight cracked her magenta irises—no life at all. And though I had no fucking clue what was going on, I was certain of one thing.
This…This was not Ophelia.
Whatever she was going to do, it wouldn’t work, and it wouldn’t be her choice.
Who else would he make her do this to? Which of our friends or family would he drop at her feet?
Panting, my body still ringing with the memory of that torture, I nodded at her, and Ophelia pulled up that glimmering, gold light—one as heated as Angellight, but with a different, unique vibrancy.
Myth magic.
It pooled around her frame, rolling along the hem of her gown as it lapped at the awarded taste of freedom like a damn living creature.
White mist tangled with every gold tendril as if the god was warring with it. Consuming and feeding off it.
“Now, Ophelia,” Echnid commanded when she hesitated.
And she shot a beam of myth magic at me.
At first, it poured through my veins and muscles, pumping my blood faster. But after a moment, I knew why Ophelia had screamed so much when the seraph emerged.
Why she’d seemed like a living inferno those first few days.
Her magic felt like it was flaying my skin from my bones, like it was ripping me limb from fucking limb and leaving fire in the wake of its ruin. I bit down on the screams trying to burst from me, knowing she wasn’t totally gone. Hearing my agony would only make it harder for her.
But the longer she used the magic, the more awareness returned to her eyes. And she saw the grievances in my tight jaw and the sweat pouring off me. In the way I collapsed to the floor again.
The words and arguments of everyone around me faded together.
For a beat, the magic faltered, like Ophelia had won. But Echnid instructed her to keep going, threatened to have Thorn resume if she quit. She screamed and raged between every breath.
My hair fell before my eyes, sweat-slicked and heavy, but I squinted at the god’s eager expression. At the white-gowned women who rose off their settees and flocked to his sides like curious, doting mistresses.
Ophelia’s myth magic flashed, and for a delirious moment, Rozelyn’s eyes turned a slitted, glowing red and her hair crawledwith snakes. In the next agonized blink, they were back to normal, nothing but anticipation gleaming at me.
My back ached, like the magic was trying to rip wings from my being. Trying to create a legend where none hid.
And that was what Echnid didn’t understand as he sat there beaming with thirsty malice. Ophelia may have the power to bring myths to fruition, but she couldn’t create them. And I was no seraph, didn’t hold a bead of life to revive.
“More,” he demanded.
“Please, no,” Ophelia whimpered, her voice back to its normal tone. “It’s not working.”
