Page 175 of Hell Fae King
No, Ajax said, answering my question about the fiery shield.It’s coming from you.
I frowned.It’s not…I trailed off as I tracked the origin of the energy to the stone in my hand.The death stone…
It was fighting fire with fire.Just like what I’d done on those camping trips…
I swallowed, my mind torn between the present and the past, but as another sizzling wave washed over me, I was solidly grounded in this moment once more.
Typhos is detonating.
Melek’s sharp cry of pain hit me right in the heart. Because I felt it, too. The sense of loss. The understanding that Typhos was sacrificing everything to save us.
His Source.
His life.
His realm.
He was shoving it all into Vivaxia with the force of a million shooting stars, all aimed at giving her exactly what she craved—his light.
I understood his logic, saw how he thought it would overwhelm her and send her into an existence she could no longer manage.
Because she was already showing signs of having siphoned too much.
The Virtuous Fae souls, I thought.She absorbed too many of them, creating a beacon of power around her that swirled and provided energy without actually granting her true control.
Managing a Source required a heart. It required knowing how tolove.
But Vivaxia only cherished herself.
She could never truly lead.
Except, Typhos can’t sacrifice himself either,I decided, needing to do something. To stop him. Tohelphim.
He’d said I was creating a Source—a Source that hadmatedhis. It’d startled me and I’d lost focus. A ridiculous reaction, because in the next breath, I’d known it was true.
I’d been siphoning all those spells, stripping Vivaxia’s control away from the Hell Fae Realm, and channeling the power into a new form. A beacon of compassion. A renewed sense of powerthat would grant the Hell Fae and Nightmare Fae the ability to fight Vivaxia.
I’d wanted them to havefree will. And in doing so, my sphere of energy had mated with Typhos’s Source.
It’d been so natural, so right, that I hadn’t even realized what I’d been doing until he’d mentioned it.
Now, I need to do it again, I thought, my mind focusing on the fire engulfing me and Ajax first. It fizzled and cracked, the dark strands of magic trying to avoid my mental touch. I felt it wiggling, writhing, and trying futilely to escape my siphoning ability.
My jaw tightened.I will not be defeated by fire.I’d been in enough infernos to know how to fix this.
Rather than pull the energy into me, I used the death stone to amplify that thin layer of flames and blasted it outward.
Right into Vivaxia.
She drew it inside her, just like she was doing with Typhos’s power.
Free from her fiery prison, I focused on Melek’s flaming leash and sent that back to its creator as well—to Vivaxia.
Azazel was next. Only, he wasn’t engulfed in flames but trapped in a spell that had forced him into his Phoenix form. His dark eyes captured mine, and what I saw burning inside him was unadulterated ire. He was furious. And he was fighting from within. But whatever Vivaxia had done had imprisoned him.
Not for long, I thought, narrowing my gaze and unwinding the invisible ropes around him. Vivaxia accepted them back into her growing ball of energy with ease. It was as though she didn’t even realize what she was taking into her soul; all she desired waspower. And she didn’t care where it came from.
She wasn’t paying any attention to me at all.
