Page 172 of Last Gift: Supernatural Battle

“I love you, Wild. I’m sorry.”

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Wild placed his hand atop mine. “I am with you, my love, always. Don’t hold back.”

His words unlocked the last of my resistance against the power demanding I rise.

So I rose like a puppet on a string, and that was the irony of my ability to see and direct the threads around me—I was as much at their mercy as everyone else.

I walked forward into the sea of chaos before me.

Screams rent the air. Claw met blade, and light and darkness grated against each other for the upper hand.

Pain and death. Blood and despair.

A blue thread speared toward me, and I pushed it away into the nearest churning mass of yellow. I stepped over the newly decapitated, yellow-scaled demon as the blue demon stared at his hands, aghast.

I pulled his threads in around his throat. The blue demon’s head slid from his body.

My hands were flung outward by the overwhelming force of the power inside me. I mirrored a bolt of red away from Winona, then twisted the power of four magus into a spiral that blew an opponent in every direction.

My hands moved largely of their own accord because I sure as hell couldn’t keep track of all the magus lives I was saving and the demons I was killing. I was a puppet, and they were my puppets.

My actions were pure instinct. All reaction and no logic.

No hesitation.

No mercy.

The reminder of King Julius’s words and his death and—my chest tightened—Varden’s death, sharpened my mind against the awe tinging it. I doubled down on my efforts, screaming as I pushed with all my might to intercept a wave of deep and dark purple magic from encompassing Sven and Rooke.

They were surrounded and had given up the fight. Instead, they were arm in arm and looking into each other’s eyes, ready to die.

No fucking way.

My hands clawed as I seized the tendrils escaping all the enemy surrounding them. The twenty or more demons froze on the spot, and then—with no finesse and only sheer force—I shoved all their threads into one another in a knot.

I hadn’t intended to kill. Just to incapacitate so the magus fighting toward Sven and Rooke would have time to reach them. But as I watched the writhing demons, I saw that their threads had hooked into each other. Similar to the way I’d embedded my father’s dagger into the demon king to weaken him, their threads were doing the same to each other. The threads connected all twenty of the supernaturals. There was a constant shifting of power through the threads as their poisons worked their misery. They were killing one another and had no way to stop it.

A calm exhale left me.

I know what I need to do, I thought at Wild.

A hand gripped mine, and I glanced at him. We were hovering in the air. I hadn’t noticed that happening, or that Wild had floated up to join me at some point.

Then do it, he replied in my mind.

He smiled, but I couldn’t do the same. My life wasn’t the only one hanging in the balance if I drew too much power. The path before me made it clear that this next move might not end with me breathing.

Him breathing.

We will always be together, Wild reminded me. Don’t be afraid, my queen. I am not.

My resolve firmed, and I squeezed his hand.

A power shook within me like a caged beast desperate for freedom. My entire body shook so hard that Wild abandoned his grip on my hand to hover behind me, holding me tight against him as the building energy threatened to tear me apart.

The ground shook.

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