Page 177 of Rising Out of the Darkness
Alastor’s face paled as fire ripped out of every inch of Will’s transforming body. The first blast shook the walls of the cavern, sending rocks cascading from the ceiling. I narrowly moved us intime to not get squashed under them. Another blast ripped from Will, met by Alastor’s own dynamis. When the two powerful dynamis collided, another blast ricocheted from them.
The force sent all of us crashing to the floor and tore a hole through the side of the cavern. Declan rolled his body on top of me, shielding me from the rocks that crumbled all around us.
Will’s howl broke through the sounds of tumbling rocks.Run.
He had sacrificed himself so that we could escape, so escape was exactly what we were going to do. Remorse tugged at my heart as I glanced back one last time at Will. With a deep breath, I turned towards Declan and rolled him off me.
“Lena” he grunted, as I somehow found the strength to pull his broken body up and hold him next to me. “You need to make it out of here. Please let me go, love, save yourself.”
“No!” I snarled. “I’m never leaving you. We escape together, or we stay here and die together. There’s no option in which I’ll be leaving you alone.”
He tightened his arm around my shoulder. “Alright, let’s get out of this Hell, Wildfire.”
As we clawed our way through the hole, another growl rang from behind us. We turned our heads just in time to see Will pounce on top of Alastor. A grin lit up my face at the sounds of Alastor’s screams.
However, I didn’t get to enjoy the moment for long. More growls filled the cavern. Thousands of dark eyes met ours. A whine and a beastly shriek tore my gaze away as Alastor attacked Will with his lightning dynamis.
Three hooded creatures appeared behind the wave of foul beasts that now filled the cavern. The leader of the pack howled, and the horde barreled towards us. Blood pounded inside my ears as I scrambled up the rest of the rocks, pulling Declan in bursts. I gripped the soil on the other side of the hole and pulledus onto it. We both took a moment to inhale the fresh outside air. Wind howled against our broken bodies, and all at once my body jolted with a surge of power.
Declan’s eyes caught mine. “Did you feel that too?”
Every inch of my body hummed with my dynamis. The glow of my body was dim, but it was there. Alastor must have used blood magic to curse our dynamis while inside his lair. No wonder we hadn’t been able to sense it.
Claws scraped against the rocks behind us. Panic resumed, as well as the familiar pinprick of my dynamis begging to be released from under my skin.
“Love, we’ve got to zephyr.” His eyes shifted to his broken leg and back to mine.
Tears gathered in my eyes as I pulled my crumpled body to its feet and helped Declan do the same. My heart tugged as the pain drained the blood from his handsome face.
He pulled me into his arms as his lips brushed over my temple. “I’ll never get tired of the feeling of holding you in my arms, love. When you’re in my arms, I know I’m home.”
I pressed a kiss to his cheek.
Wind blasted all around us as we zephyred away.
Chapter 74
Declan
When her lips brushed my cheek, relief warmed my body, and for a moment everything else faded away. That moment, however, became short-lived. Exhaustion weighed heavily on us both, and the hold on our dynamis snapped.
Elena’s cry tore a hole through my heart as we fell out of our zephyr.
One branch after another tore at our already mangled bodies. I wound my arms around Elena, trying to shield her from every impact.
We both hit the ground with a sickening thud. More cracks of bone filled the air of the clearing we had slid into. The arm lying underneath Lena throbbed; there was no doubt in my mind that it was either dislocated or broken. Elena curled into me as her breathy whimpers floated to my ears.
She clutched her bleeding thigh with her hand. My jaw clenched at the sight of bones piercing through in multiple spots on her leg and ankle. Elysians might heal faster than humans, but not with this many wounds. At this rate, if we didn’t find a Healer soon, we would both bleed out.
With my bruised, but not broken arm, I brushed the tears away from her cheek. She winced as my fingers brushed alongthe cuts and bruises on her face. I placed my palm flush against her cheek and tried to summon my dynamis to heal her face. It flickered inside me, but settled back into its shallow well.
Elena’s mangled body trembled. I could tell she was beginning to panic as her breaths became fewer and more ragged.
“Shhh…deep breaths, love.” I pressed a kiss on the top of her head.
“It’s not s-s-supposed to be this way,” she stuttered between sobs, my thumb brushed against her cheek as I tried to soothe her. “Why would the gods give us such powerful dynamis, let us find each other, become mates, just to have our fates end here? Declan, we’ve fought the darkness all of our lives, we can’t let it finally win.”
She had worked alongside a Healer all of her life, she knew as well as I did that there was no recovering from this. “My love”—I held her trembling chin— “no matter what happens today, the darkness will not overcome the light in this kingdom. You’ve given the kingdom hope, and hope is far more powerful than any dynamis Alastor could steal.
