Page 92 of Crown of Ashes and Desire

“Get your hand off me,” I warned, light gathering at my fingertips.

“Or what?” His face was so close his cold breath ghosted against my skin. “You’ll strike me again?” His voice dropped lower, rougher. “This anger between us—it’s awakening something primal.”

His admission sent a jolt of unwanted desire through my core. Damn it, why did he have to smell so good? I was furious at myself for being so weak. I released the light I’d been gathering,not as a bolt but as a concentrated pulse that traveled through every point of contact between us. Hakan recoiled in pain, his shadows writhing wildly.

“I’ll never let you touch me again,” I hissed, fingers still tingling from the release of power.

The storm outside broke with spectacular violence. Rain lashed against the windows, driven by howling winds. Lightning split the sky in jagged bursts, thunder shaking the very foundations of the castle.

“Why are you doing this?” he demanded, genuine confusion breaking through his anger. “Why risk your life unnecessarily?”

"I'm trying to make sure we succeed," I shot back. "But I won't let you use this crisis to reassert control over me. We either work as equals, or we fail together."

“This isn’t about control!” He slammed his fist into the wall beside my head, stone cracking under the impact. “This is about keeping you alive!”

“Why do you even care?” I demanded. I refused to be intimidated by his display of strength.

“Because I—” He cut himself off, and turned away in frustration.

I grabbed his arm, pulling him back to face me. “Because you what, Hakan? Finish the sentence!”

“Because I can’t lose you again!” The words erupted from him, raw and unexpected. “I can’t watch you die knowing I could have prevented it!”

The confession echoed in the space around us, charged with everything we’d left unsaid. For a moment, the only sounds were the raging storm and our ragged breathing.

“You already lost me,” I said finally, my voice dropping. “Five years ago, when I walked away. When your ambition mattered more than whatever we shared.”

A shadow of pain crossed his features. “You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t remember every day what I sacrificed? What I lost?”

“Then why are we fighting about this?” I asked, suddenly tired. “Why does it matter to you whether I live or die, as long as your ritual succeeds?”

His eyes locked with mine, intense enough to burn. “Because despite everything that’s happened, despite what I did to you, despite the hatred between us now…” He hesitated, as if the words physically pained him. “I still can’t bear the thought of a world without you in it.”

The admission shocked us both. Hakan looked as if he wanted to snatch the words back, to bury them beneath his usual cold control. Instead, he backed away, his shoulders rigid with tension.

“Go to your chambers,” he said, his voice rough. “Stay there until we return.”

I reached for his arm again, prepared to resume our fight, but the moment I touched him, something unexpected happened. A jolt of energy surged between us—not pure light, not shadow, but something different. In the days we’d spent preparing for the alternative ritual, we’d noticed subtle changes when our magics interacted during the prescribed exercises—brief flashes of a different energy, neither light nor shadow. But nothing like this.

Where our magics met now, they didn’t cancel each other out but transformed, creating ribbons of twilight energy—a luminous purple-grey power that coiled around our joined flesh as living smoke. It pulsed with a rhythm that matched our heartbeats, growing stronger with each second of contact.

The ancient texts had mentioned this phenomenon—when shadow and light achieved perfect balance, they created twilight magic, neither consuming nor being consumed. But the texts had warned that such magic was unstable, requiring preciseemotional harmony between the wielders. Too much anger or fear from either party could cause the energy to collapse back into opposing forces, potentially harming both magic users.

Hakan felt it, too. He froze, glancing down at where my fingers gripped his forearm.

“What was that?” he asked, momentarily distracted from our argument.

I shook my head, equally confused. “I don’t know.”

Experimentally, I tried to step away. The energy between us tightened into a physical cord, making separation painful. Hakan's eyes widened with understanding as I struggled to process what was happening.

"The binding," he muttered. "It's evolving."

"What do you mean?" I asked, still unable to break contact without discomfort.

"The ritual preparations," he explained, frustration evident in his voice. "The exercises we've been doing to align our magics. They're strengthening the binding beyond what I anticipated." He met my eyes. "It doesn't want us separated."

"It? The binding is sentient now?"

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