Page 68 of Claws for Celebration
"What about choice?" she asked, though part of her didn't want to hear the answer. "What about people's right to determine their own lives?"
"Choice is an illusion for those too weak to see the bigger picture," Malphas replied with gentle condescension. "You would give them the gift of safety, of prosperity, of lives free from the chaos that comes with unlimited freedom. They would thank you for it, in time."
The visions shifted, showing her the darker possibilities of leaving the world unchanged. Supernatural beings hunted to extinction by human fear and technology. Entire communities destroyed because they lacked the power to protect themselves. Lucien growing old and dying while she remained helplessly bound by mortal limitations.
"Your mate will age, you know," Malphas said, apparently reading her thoughts with disturbing accuracy. "Shifters live longer than ordinary humans, but even his enhanced lifespan is nothing compared to eternity. You'll watch him grow old, grow weak, and eventually die while you remain young and vital. Is that the future you truly want?"
The image he showed her was devastating in its cruel accuracy. Lucien with silver threading through his dark hair, lines etching his handsome features, his powerful frame slowly succumbing to the relentless march of time. And herself, unchanged, watching the man she loved fade away while she remained trapped in a body that would outlive everyone she cared about.
"But with my gifts," Malphas continued, "you could grant him immortality as well. Both of you, eternal and powerful, ruling a world where love doesn't have to end in loss."
The temptation was almost overwhelming. Eternal life with Lucien. The power to protect not just Hollow Oak but every supernatural community on Earth. The respect and recognition she'd craved since childhood, magnified beyond her wildest dreams.
"All you have to do," Malphas whispered, "is stop the banishment ritual. Let me complete my emergence into this realm, and I will teach you everything Seraphina was too weak to learn."
Moira felt her magical output wavering as the possibilities crashed over her like ocean waves. Through their increasingly tenuous mate bond, she could sense Lucien's growing desperation, his panther clawing frantically at the barriers that kept him from rushing to her side.
But it was that connection, fragile as it had become, that provided the clarity she needed.
The mate bond didn't feel like limitation or weakness. It felt like coming home. It felt like having someone who loved her not for her power or her potential, but for the woman she was in quiet moments when magic wasn't involved. Someone who'd seen her at her most vulnerable and chosen to stay anyway.
"You're afraid," she said suddenly, the realization cutting through Malphas's psychological manipulation like a blade. "Allthis talk about transcendence and evolution, but you're terrified of being alone again."
The fae lord's perfect composure cracked for just an instant, revealing something desperate and hungry beneath the cultured facade. "I offer you partnership, child. Equality in power and purpose."
"You offer me corruption disguised as enlightenment," Moira replied, her voice growing stronger as understanding crystallized. "Just like you offered my ancestor. And when I become like you, twisted and hungry and convinced that my will should supersede everyone else's, who's going to stop me from becoming exactly what you are now?"
"You think too small," Malphas snarled, his seductive mask finally slipping to reveal the predator beneath. "You could be a goddess, and instead you choose to remain a provincial witch protecting a handful of mountain folk."
"I choose to remain myself," Moira said firmly, and with those words, she felt their mate bond surge back to life. Lucien's steady presence filled the spaces in her mind that Malphas had been trying to corrupt, reminding her of who she really was beneath the temptation and fear.
"Then you choose death," the fae lord spat, his form beginning to destabilize as her renewed focus strengthened the banishment ritual. "The power required to send me beyond the Void will consume you entirely. You'll die for these people who will never truly understand what you've sacrificed."
"Maybe," Moira admitted, pouring everything she had into the dimensional breach that would banish him permanently. "But I'd rather die as myself than live forever as a monster."
The banishment ritual required her to reverse everything her bloodline had spent centuries maintaining. Where Seraphina had woven binding spells to contain, Moira had to unravel those same patterns while simultaneously creating a dimensionalbreach powerful enough to pull an entity beyond the reach of any realm.
She began by drawing on the deepest wells of her magical inheritance, calling forth power that had been accumulating in her bloodline for generations. The golden energy that emerged felt different this time—heavier, more substantial, carrying the weight of ancestral sacrifice and inherited responsibility.
"The first layer," she whispered, her hands weaving intricate patterns that made the air shimmer around Malphas's form. The binding spells that had held him for centuries began to dissolve like sugar in rain, each severed thread releasing waves of corrupted magic that made her teeth ache.
Malphas's expression shifted from confident seduction to genuine alarm as he felt his prison weakening. "Wait, child. You don't understand what you're attempting. The dimensional barriers exist for a reason."
"I understand perfectly," Moira replied, her voice steady despite the growing strain. She moved to the second layer of the ritual, this one requiring her to reach beyond the physical realm and touch the spaces between worlds. The sensation was like plunging her hands into ice water that burned with cold fire.
The fabric of reality began to bend around her will, and she felt the first stirrings of the power that would be required to complete the working. It was vast, hungry, demanding more of her life force with each passing moment.
"Now for the breach itself," she said, and began the most dangerous part of the ritual.
The dimensional walls between realms were not meant to be torn by mortal magic. They existed as fundamental barriers that kept chaotic energies from bleeding into structured reality. But Shadowheart blood magic had always specialized in the impossible, and Moira called on every technique her ancestors had died to preserve.
Power erupted from her core in waves that made the ground crack beneath her feet. The golden energy took on silver edges as it touched the spaces between dimensions, creating a spiral of light that grew larger and more violent with each rotation.
The magical cost was unlike anything she'd ever experienced. It felt like someone was slowly draining her life through a thousand tiny cuts, each pulse of power taking a piece of her essence and feeding it to the hungry void she was creating. Her vision blurred as her magical reserves plummeted, but she held on to the ritual pattern with desperate determination.
Behind Malphas, reality began to tear.
The dimensional breach started as a pinprick of absolute darkness, but it expanded rapidly as Moira fed more power into its creation. Soon it was a swirling vortex of nothing that hurt to look at directly, a wound in the world that led to spaces where existence itself became meaningless.
