Page 223 of Owned

He hurled a projectile of red-tinged smoke that went wide, striking the bedpost instead of us, but the impact sent splinters of carved wood exploding across the room.

“Your aim is failing you,” my father observed, using my voice to twist the knife of Lucian’s growing weakness. “Along with your power. How long do you really think you can keep control over the Necromi if you can’t control your own sons?”

Rage contorted Lucian’s features as he abandoned finesse for brute force, and charged at us with hands outstretched.

My father spun us aside and used Lucian’s momentum against him to send him crashing into the wardrobe.

The impact shattered the ornate furniture, and hope flared in my chest. “Did you— is he—”

But a roar of pain and anger ripped through the brief silence as Lucian emerged from the wreckage. A shard of dark, polished wood protruded from his shoulder. Blood—darker than human blood should be—oozed from the wound, and his breathing came in ragged gasps.

“I will not be defeated by a ghost and a girl,” he groaned as he ripped the chunk of splintered wood from his flesh with a grunt of pain.

“Not just any ghost,” my father replied. “The ghost of the man whose wife you corrupted and murdered. The ghost of theman who dared to stand against you. The ghost of the father whose daughter you tried to claim.”

My father’s rage flowed through me, amplifying my own, a shared fury that stoked our magic beyond what either of us could have manifested alone.

The power built within me, a pressure that threatened to tear me apart from within.

“Now, Avril,” my father’s voice echoed in my mind. “The dagger.”

In a disorienting rush, I felt control of my body returning.

The transition was jarring, like being pushed into the driver’s seat of a speeding car.

For a heartbeat, I froze, overwhelmed by the sudden sensory input—the pain of my battered body, the taste of blood in my mouth, the scorching heat of magic coursing through my veins.

“Strike!” my father urged from somewhere deep within me. “Now, while he’s weakened!”

Lucian saw the shift in my eyes, the change as I reclaimed control, and understanding dawned on his face. He lunged for me again, but his movements were sluggish, predictable. I rolled across the bed and my hand closed around the hilt of the blackened silver dagger just as he crashed onto the mattress beside me.

“You littlebitch,” he hissed as his blackened fingers closed around my throat. “I should have killed you when I killed your mother.”

His words ignited something primal within me.

My mother’s face flashed before my eyes—but this time it wasn’t her cruelty that I remembered. It was her laughter, and her smile—fleeting moments that weren’t a part of my memories… but Dario’s.

For too long, it had been her final unknowable moments that had haunted me—and then the image of her rotting shade as it reached for me with dead fingers…

With a scream that forced itself from my lips, I drove the dagger upward.

The blackened silver blade parted flesh and bone with terrible ease as it slid between Lucian’s ribs to find his heart.

His pale eyes widened in shock and pain, his grip on my throat slackened, but only a little even as his blood rushed over my hand in a hot gush.

“This is for my mother,” I snarled as I twisted the blade deeper. “And for every woman you’ve used and discarded.”

Lucian’s magic erupted in a final, desperate attempt to save himself. It poured from his wounds like smoke and whipped around us in a frenzy of dark energy that tore at my skin and hair.

The candles extinguished all at once and plunged the room into darkness, broken only by the eerie red glow of his failing power that came from the orb.

“You... cannot... kill... me,” he gasped as blood bubbled at the corners of his mouth. “The Necromi— I will be eternal—”

“Nothingis eternal,” I replied. Despite the maelstrom of red smoke that raged around us, my voice was steady. “Especially not monsters like you.”

I clamped my legs around his waist and twisted hard, forcing him onto his back.

Straddling him, pinning him to the mattress, I pushed down on the dagger. My magic surged and swirled around my hands, lending strength to my hands and arms as the blade penetrated deeper, until the hilt pressed against his chest.

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