Page 144 of Lourdes & the Mafia
One of Thuriel sitting on a throne, his wings intact, a blazing glow around him and those creatures bowing at his feet. He looks the same as before he fell. Before his wings cracked and before his magic began to drain.
It’s not a future set in stone. That I can feel deep in my veins. It is merely a wish. One he’s pushed inside my mind, forcing itself onto my magic.
“Bring it into existence.” His laugh grates on my bones. “Bring my desires into being, seer.” His nails dig in deeper. “Give me my magic. Give me my wings.”
My mouth opens on a silent scream. It feels like he’s manipulating me from the inside. I have no control over my body. All I can do is watch as the images take over. My eyes are open, unseeing into the night sky. I’m drifting between two places. The place of vision and reality.
In the real world, the moonlight beams down against us. His body is heavy above mine. His expression twisted into something manic and possessive as his nails keep digging into my skin, magic glowing from his fingertips.
I blink and I’m in the vision again. He’s warping me. Controlling me.
Everything I thought I could use to fight against him leaves my grasp.
I want to cry out. I want to fight. To thrash. But it’s hard. Too hard.
I never should have come here. I should have known I wouldn’t have been able to fight…
Flashes of blood.
Flashes of magic.
I open my eyes again and his broken wings are cracking as they span out at his back. The black veins begin to disappear into his flesh like the ink bleeding through vanishing against water.
“Yes,” he cries out above me. In the distance, I can hear his minions chanting as his form begins to take true.
He’s pulling his future illusions into the present. Pulling what he wants from my mind, using my magic to see all that will come to pass and dragging it out to make it come true.
A power I didn’t even know I could wield.
To see things is one thing.
To interact and change the course of history and time itself is another.
And it’s something that I need to take back.
I can’t let him overpower me. Even if he already has, I need to fight back with everything I have. I need to fight.
I need to fight.
I need to rise.
I shriek and my hands lift. In real time and within my vision. He laughs at my trembling efforts, as my palms twitch against his face. But he doesn’t push me away.
That’s his mistake.
I scream as our skin touches and I rip my magic away from him. It’s a part of me, not a separate entity. It belongs within my blood and bones, within my very soul. I haul it back to myself while simultaneously sending out a call. A cry in present time down a line of people I can see from behind my eyelids.
“Let. Go. Of. Me!”
Something happens then.
A barrier forms around me. A barrier of darkness and light intermingling. Like a shield of protection is wrapping around my entire body enclosing me in its soft glow.
Thuriel’s eyes go wide for a fraction of a second. As if he’s realizing what’s happening before even I can.
And then, he’s blasted backwards, off and away from me.
As soon as his weight is off of me, I sit up on the stone slab. Every muscle within my body is screaming, like his fingerprint of destructive magic is still inside me. I blink in and out of the vision and reality, desperately trying to pull what he brought into being back.
