Page 114 of Obsidian and Frost
A moment later, I saw Velra step from the shadows.
Her own shadows.
Kelsana was with her, looking on with a mixture of pain and vindication as she watched Velra punishing her boyfriend.
Rennick passed out from the pain, and Velra pulled her lightning back.
As Rennick dropped in an unconscious heap on the grass, Kelsana strode forward, muttering curses at him, before sweeping indigo smoke around him, then teleporting him away. She kept the magic live as she looked out at me and Sylas in turn sadly, before telling Velra, “Thank you for your help.”
“Of course. When you get back, I’m around, all right?”
She smiled, then teleported away too.
I groaned and pushed to my feet. “How the hell are you—”
“Long story. One we can get into after we see to Sylas.”
We both rushed to him and skidded to our knees either side of him.
“My house. I have a serum. It stops the desiccation.”
“Desiccation, I—oh my God,” Velra exclaimed as she saw it all over his torso and beyond.
“I can’t risk vamp speeding him while he’s in this state,” I told Velra.
“No worries,” she assured me. “Take my hand.”
I did, and then she was sweeping us all up in a teleportation spell.
19
~Velra~
Sylas lurched up on his bed, screaming in agony.
“Hurry!” Lazriel called to me frantically, as he pushed Sylas back down, straddling him now. The more he moved at this point, the faster the desiccation spread.
“Move me… to it,” Sylas urged Lazriel, his eyes darting to the nightstand where he’d told us he kept his serum. A whole lot of serum that he’d apparently been using to stave off this sickness—this desiccation—that we hadn’t known he’d been suffering from.
The problem was, he’d locked it with necromantic magic.
Our magic could meld together in some ways, but not with the spell he’d used.
There were only two ways around it—dark magic and Celestial power.
“You’re not using your magic,” Lazriel told him. “One more fucking spark and the desiccation will reach your heart and that will be it.” He growled low in his throat, cursing him out in angry mutterings that I could see he was trying so hard not to escalate to absolute rage. “I’ll call Cassius,” Lazriel told me.
I started at his words.
The mention of Cassius was bad enough, but there was also the inference there—Lazriel had a line to him? When and how had that happened?
“No,” Sylas uttered. “We’re even… can’t owe… him. Not… again.”
“This is your life. I’ll take the debt on me. I don’t give a fuck, so long as you’re well and—”
“I’ve got it,” I cut in.
I grimaced, then pulled on the dark and dangerous aspect of my Dark Fae abilities, something that I’d actually done earlier as well. The two of them hadn’t taken that in yet with everything going on. But when Kelsana had sensed a whole lot of rage and a surge of power from Rennick, and we’d arrived on scene, witnessing Lazriel and Sylas in such a state had sparked that dangerous part of me to the surface.
