Page 86 of Fated

It didn’t take long to sense its hideous presence.

“Get out,”I commanded inside my mind.

As if it actually heard me—understood me, it let out a grisly snarl.

“I recognize your power,girl. You command the ancient power of the celestials.”

The snake-like voice hissed in my head. I didn’t know what it was talking about, and I didn’t care. I wasn’t interested in conversation.

“Let Ash go,”I demanded.

A dark, cruel laugh echoed from within the thing, sending a chill through me. Every part of me screamed to pull back, to escape its presence.

“The king is mine,”it spat, its voice dripping with venom.

The king?I pushed the question aside, done listening to the thing. I hated it, loathed it with every fiber of my being for what it had done to Ash.MyAsh.

“HE’S MINE!”My voice roared inside my mind, releasing a colossal wave of magic.

It barreled into the creature, the curse screaming in response, thrashing violently, desperately hooking its claws deeper into Ash.

More random images flashed through my mind, fragments of Ash’s memories.

It took all my strength not to let go of him, not to pull away from the monstrous presence lurking within him. Sweat dripped from my hands where they rested against his head, and I could feel the tremor in his body. The rapid, panicked thud of his heart pounded beneath my fingers, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he fought off the pain.

It wasn’t enough. All I had managed to achieve was to piss the thing off. Desperation clawed at me. I’d held back, afraid of my own magic—and now, Ash was suffering because of it.

My confidence slipping, the weight of my failure was already pressing down on me.

Then, through the chaos, Ash’s breathing settled, his hand moving to cover mine again. “You got this, Areya. I trust you.”

His words pierced the fog of doubt clouding my mind, snapping me out of the spiral of despair into which I had been tumbling. Ash trusted me completely and unconditionally, and he had my trust equally, in return. If he truly believed I could kill this thing, then I could.

Turning my focus back on the beast once again, I felt its gleaming black eyes watching me carefully, but I didn’t care. I thought only of Ash, of the beautiful melody of his laughter, the light in his eyes when he smiled at me, the goodness in his soul that no darkness could touch.

Bracing myself, I began gathering my strength, and then … let go.

I slammed open the dam containing my magic, and only when I commanded it did it surge forward as a blinding wave of golden light, straight into the core of the demon inside Ash.

This time, there was no holding back, not allowing it another chance to hurt him.

The force of my magic slammed into it with such astounding power that its claws instantly retracted, and before it had a chance to scream, my light burned through the darkness, dissolving it into nothing more than a puff of smoke.

The moment the curse vanished, a spectacular wave of power exploded outward from Ash.

The entire room—no, the entire earth—quaked beneath me as the mighty force of his magic was unleashed. The sheer magnitude of it sent me flying backward, crashing onto the hard floor. The river of magic inside me was a mere drop, a single molecule compared to the torrent of power coming from Ash now.

Breathless and stunned, I sat there, shock and awe reverberating through my entire being. My chest rose and fell rapidly, trying to process it all but my eyes remained fixed on Ash.

He still sat at the edge of the bed, head bowed, utterly motionless.

“Ash?” I said, my voice barely a whisper as it trembled out of me.

There was another moment of suffocating silence and then a sound that shattered me to my core. It wasn’t a word, or even a sob. It was a raw, utterly broken noise full of pain and devastation, and it came from Ash. Slowly, he lifted his head, revealing eyes no longer their familiar stormy gray but a piercing, luminous emerald.

But it was the look in those eyes that stopped me cold—a look so haunting, so profoundly broken, it stole the air from my lungs. Tears streamed freely down his cheeks and the raw agony in his expression was undeniable, utterly wrecked, hopeless.

He attempted to stand but collapsed to his knees before me.

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