Page 112 of Fallen Heirs

“Wrong. Not everything. Is that what he’s made you believe? That you could survive this? Youcan’t.Not if you continue wielding celestial magic.”

“I won’t start from nothing again!” she screamed. “I’ve come too far!”

“Kill him and… you won’t… have to,” Constantine told her.

She looked from him to me. “You almost killed the only person who’s ever cared for me, ever understood me!”

Fuck me,she was completely brainwashed.

Beyond saving.

It wasn’t like it had been with Alena. There’d always been hope there.

But with this, with the woman who’d once been my mother, there wasn’t even a spark. So many years twisted by him and her obsession with power had seen to that.

She was gone.

Utterly.

“He doesn’t care for you. He’s not capable of it. You’re just a tool to him. A weapon now too. He could have wielded the celestial magic himself, but he had you do it so you’d perish instead.”

“You know nothing! You’ve never known me!” she screeched, upping the power she was sending my way.

My foot slipped and it pushed me back into the tree with a bone-jarring thud.

I took a chance and pulled one of my palms away, firing the other up into the sky, intending to create a fusillade of magical missiles to rain down upon her, to break this standoff before it was too late for me and her magic overpowered me.

I’d just managed it, about to direct them toward her, when she slammed her fist down onto the ground and created a massive magical shockwave that had me roaring as the searing pain took my whole body and sent me hurtling deep into the forest, downing tree after tree from the force of the brutal impact.

By the time the hell ended, I landed hard on my back on the grass, white light filling my vision as she levitated toward me, making her way through the carnage.

I was choking and barely able to draw in a steady breath as she reached me, her eyes flaming ferociously.

I tried to lift my hand, but I couldn’t, my body needing more time to recover from the damage that such a massive blast of her power and the blunt force trauma of hurtling through the trees had caused.

She hovered there, levitating before me like an angel of death.

All I could do was watch as she raised her palm to deliver a death blow.

I saw her magic flame.

But then an explosion of golden light filled my vision a moment before a shimmering dome suddenly encompassed me.

And there Alena was standing between me and my mother, her back to me, her magic flaming on her upturned palms wildly.

“You’ve reached a new low today,” she called to her levitating form. “Trying to kill your own son.”

“Stand aside, Nephilim. I’m wielding celestial magic.”

“But you’renota celestial.”

In the next second, she unfurled her wings, then shot up into the air, snagging my mom on the way. I watched as she flew her up at breakneck speed into the dark clouds and beyond.

Everything was eerily still for a moment.

All I could hear was my weak breathing and Constantine’s rasps and pained groans in the distance back over by the gates.

And then a sharp whistling sound like that of a missile about to strike its target cut through it a moment before my mom fell from the sky looking barely conscious before she hit the ground a few feet away, the impact creating a crater in the middle of the forest.

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