Page 120 of Of Flame and Fate

Destiny screams.

And so does Johnny.

What happens next is hard to say. I’m no longer me. I’m one of many atoms in a bomb that goesboom.

I soar into the atmosphere, my limbs listless and weak, jolting when my back strikes a sharp rock and I roll down an incline raging with fire.

I don’t know how to stop. But my mate does. He appears, the brutal way he snatches hold of my arm, slapping me awake.

“Hang on,” he yells. “I have you.”

The earth is quaking, the remains of the burning arena falling away into the giant crater I’m currently dangling over.

“Oh,shit,” I say.

Gemini holds me with one hand, using the other and his bare feet to scale the side of the rumbling wall.

Chunks of dirt fall like hail, pelting our heads and crumbling against our faces. But I refuse to look down. No way in hell do I want any part of that inferno.

Shayna pokes her head out from the ledge. “Dude!” she says.

Koda appears, so does Bren, reaching for Gemini as he nears the top and yanking us out.

“Time to get the fuck out, peeps,” Bren says, tossing Emme over his shoulder and darting toward a nearby grove.

Gemini hauls me into his arms and races away, placing me down in a small clearing only when the trembles at our feet subside.

Everything behind us is on fire, everything. Good thing we have that arena size crater sucking it all in.

“Did I do that?” I ask.

“Yup,” Bren answers.

With the exception of me and my sisters, whose clothes hang in pieces, all theweresare naked, not that I see much.

Everyone is covered in soot and coughing. Including me.

“What exactly happened?” I ask.

Shayna and Emme exchange glances. “You sorta blew everything up,” Shayna tells me. “Again.”

I point to the hole. “But how did I create that? That’s . . .huge.”

Gemini shakes his head as if he can’t believe it himself. “Your power and Johnny’s had it out. From what we could see the impact broke through the ground and struck a fault line, empowering it with magic and creating the crater.” He frowns, looking out across the hot mess. “The witches are bespelling the first responders and survivors.” He tilts his head, listening closely, not that I hear a damn thing. “They’re inferring the fire started within the arena after the earthquake struck due to defective wiring.”

I look back at the swirls of blue, white, and gold, my power intermixing with Johnny’s, I suppose. It must have been something to see the colossal amount of energy it took to feed the fault line, and to watch nature respond so brutally in return.

But it was something else entirely to experience it, and to be the cause.

I watch the flames eating their way into the sky a while longer before I speak. “Destiny’s dead.”

The quiet that stretches out among us is almost more than I can take. Bren huffs. “Yeah. That’s what it looked like.”

I raise my chin. “You saw what happened to her?”

It’s Gemini who answers. “We all did. The magic that unleashed when you fought Johnny debilitated us. We couldn’t do or see much past the visions.” He looks at me. “They were yours, weren’t they? The ones of Destiny in bed with Tye fighting to revive her?”

“Not completely. I think she wanted me to see, so I did. With how bad she was hurting, it was the only way she could communicate.”

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