Page 122 of Owned

I stared at my captors as they staggered back, and a raw cry tore from the throat of another man. Then he collapsed, all his menace gone in an instant.

I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.

All I knew was that I’d struck him down.

Me.

Avril.

The quiet girl whose magic had been too pale to even light a goddamned candle.

I didn’t know who she was anymore.

Exhilaration and disbelief flooding through me.

The sight of them on the ground, still and silent, filled me with a savage hope.

I’d done it. It didn’t matter that my skin was hot and feverish, that the air still shimmered with leftover sparks. What mattered was that I had fought back, and for the first time in my life, I had won.

The realization was intoxicating. I could barely hold on to it, afraid it might slip away if I looked too closely.

“How—”

“Don’t talk, just get her!” someone shouted. Their words were jagged with anger and the sound of them broke the spell of my disbelief.

The world came back into sharp focus.

I was still trapped in the forest, still hunted. But everything had changed.

The fear that had wrapped itself around my heart was gone and had been replaced by something reckless—and it made me giddy and bold.

If I could take one of them down, I could take them all.

“All of them,”the grimoire said. Its voice was stronger now.“Make them pay—”

The masked figures closed in, their movements precise and deadly.

I saw the flash of their eyes behind their masks. I’d murdered one of their comrades. They wanted revenge.

They couldn’t kill me—not if they wanted anything from Lucian. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t try.

They advanced without hesitation, stepping over the fallen man as if he were nothing but a bump in the road.

My brief victory had done nothing to deter them.

If anything, it made them more dangerous.

The magic still hummed through me, a bright, wild thing that I didn’t fully understand.

But I knew one thing—I wasn’t helpless.

I wasn’t weak.

“Not anymore,”the grimoire agreed.

The masked men closed in like wolves, but I wasn’t afraid.

I wanted to lash out with my magic again, but the strength of it was waning—I could feel it fading from my fingertips with every breath.

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