Page 93 of The Other Side of the Mirror

Bash and Tobias both tensed at my sides, their hands tightening on their weapons.

“I knew if I simply waited for you to free your brother, you would return yourself to me. And you even brought youranima…”His handsome face lit up with pleasure. Handsome, if it hadn’t been contorted with sadistic malice. “Perhaps you won’t be so resistant to my advances when he’s dead.”

Bash growled low in his throat, and I felt a primal kind of rage. Because he had threatened my soul bonded, and that bond wanted to tear out his heart.

“Perhaps if you had any idea how to respect a woman, you wouldn’t have to chain them to your bed.”

He only gave me a wicked smile. “Forgiveness benefits the forgiver, darling.”

“So does revenge.”

Those pale eyes narrowed.

I raised my sword. A black halo blazed around it as the blade was imbued with my power. “I stabbed you once, Aviel. Come closer and I’d be happy to do so again.”

But Aviel’s gaze had gone to my brother. I spotted the flicker of rage that crossed his face when he saw Tobias maskless. Then his anger crackled around the room like lightning.

It bounced harmlessly off the dark shield Bash and I threw around us, though I winced as it scorched against my magic while trying to find a way in. Tobias’s eyes were wild as he saw his own light used against us. But his face was too pale, and I knew he was far too drained from his imprisonment to fight much longer.

“Get him out,” I said softly to Bash, always by my side. “No matter what, get him out.”

Because even if the rest of us fell today, if Tobias had the answer to stopping this monster…

Bash nodded, reading me as always. Lightning fell like sizzling rain around us, tearing jagged lines down the sides of our shadowy shield. It wouldn’t hold much longer. Bash’s fingers threaded through mine, warm and grounding?—

And then everything seemed to happen at once.

Our shield dropped, rushing forward in a wave. It clashed against Aviel’s light, our magics bursting against each other in a collision of pure power.

Tobias threw his dagger with deadly accuracy. Aviel jerked back, though not before it sliced across his cheek. He snarled as a mixture of Bash’s shadows and my darkness whipped around him, holding him in place. Then an explosion of light burned through our magics, ricocheting through the room as Aviel stalked forward.

I lifted my hand, about to strike, when a group of soldiers sent a wall of fire toward us. My darkness snuffed it out. Bash lunged forward, burying his sword into the chest of the closest soldier.

When I looked back at Aviel, he made a short, choked gurgle. And I knew that Yael was attempting to summon the breath from his lungs. Two soldiers rushed at her, breaking her concentration as she threw up a shield of air just in time, blocking their combined blasts of fire and ice.

As Aviel took another step, the stone beneath his feet shot up to form a spiked dome around him. But I saw Rivan’s focus turn to Yael as more soldiers drove her back. The stone ring crumbled as light forced itself between the cracks, breaking it apart.

Aviel turned to me, slowly advancing amidst the chaos, his face mottled with rage. There was a dull roaring in my ears.

And suddenly I saw my parents, murdered right before they told me the truth.

I saw Tobias rotting in a dungeon as his power was torn from him over and over.

I saw Bash and Marin, losing their parents one after another. Their father, forced to the ground before that sword came slicing through the air.

I saw Rivan’s father being cut down after saving all those villagers.

I saw the scars left on this realm as its very magic was ripped from the land.

And I saw myself, chained to that bed, terrified and bleeding as he held me down.

All Aviel’s fault. And just the start of averylong list.

My mother’s screams rang in my ears as I closed my eyes, and I tunneled into my darkness, pushing myself deeper into the well of my magic than I had ever gone before. My fury consumed me, melding with my darkness, everything he had done compounding in a rising wave. The latent energy bled into my vision as my eyes went wholly black, my teeth chattering at the intensity I was barely holding back?—

And then I let my power explode.

Pure darkness barreled from my hands, my eyes, and from the cracks in my heart in an explosion of endless night. Like the space between the stars.

---