Page 16 of Dawn of Chaos and Fury
Luka took a step towards her, lips parting as if he was going to say more, but Cienna started reciting something in an old tongue. Tristyn joined her, and the moment was lost. Luka’s lips pressed into a thin line, but she couldn’t focus on him. Not as she felt her power rush to the surface, that thing inside of her screaming with excitement. Not as she felt power surround her, her magic stretching and yanking to greet it.
She heard Tristyn falter, but Cienna snapped, “We keep going, Tris. We don’t even know if she can leave this world with the enchantment in place. Do not stop.”
Tessa’s head tilted as she watched the siblings, both eyes glowing a soft sage, his with russet undertones, hers with violet. They resumed their incantations, and her eyes fluttered closed as she felt the push and pull and call of what she was.
It swirled around her, and she gasped, her eyes flying open. Lightanddark flared at her fingertips, wound up her arms. Sparks of gold and embers of silver fluttered among it all. Her feet lifted off the ground, and her hair fanned out around her asif caught in a windstorm. Maybe she was because rain and snow were falling around her, andgods. She hadn’t been worried, but thishurt. As if the magic of every world was trying to rip her apart to get at the power she held. It wanted to take and take and take. It was that same feral craving she always fell into when she let her magic have its way. They’d warned her. Told her it would take everything from her if she let it, and this?—
This is what they’d meant.
Tessa!
Her name echoed in her mind. Maybe Luka had yelled it. Maybe the emotion was strong enough to filter through a splintered and fractured bond.
It didn’t matter.
When she opened her mouth, a scream erupted from her.
The scream of her magic.
The scream of her pain.
The scream of chaos and fury.
A fierce roar mingled with her cries, but she couldn’t focus on anything as power wrapped her up in a whirlwind of Chaos. She thrashed among it, trying to find a way out, a way to free herself, but the power gripped her tighter. As if the enchantment had been doing more than just keeping her from portaling and Traveling. As if the enchantment had somehow caged her power too, and now it was angry. It was taking what it wanted, and she would be the cost.
She screamed again. Her knees cracked against the stone floor of the Pantheon chamber.
And she fell into Chaos.
It was like watching the mirror as worlds and stars swirled around her, held together by the Chaos it all came from. No order. No structure. No balance.
She couldn’t breathe, but she also didn’t know that she needed to in this space. She didn’t think it was the After. Maybe it was the Beginning.
Maybe it was nothing and everything at once.
She was tossed around, and yet…
Despite the Chaos, she felt calm.
How odd.
She stopped struggling. Stopped flailing and just let herself be.
She watched.
She listened.
She learned everything she could.
And then she was standing in an opulent room. Gold and white, black and silver. Marks she knew and symbols she didn’t glittered on the walls, the floor, the ceiling. In the center of the floor was a vast chasm that seemed to swallow the light yet illuminate the room all at once.
“Thank the… Well, not the gods. Because frankly, fuck them and their failures. The Fates? But that would be awkward, right? Considering?—”
“There is not time for this,” a male voice interrupted the female.
Tessa had spun at the voices, and it had taken her several seconds to find the female figure slinking through the shadows.All in black, she wore a cloak, the hood up, but an ashy-blonde braid was snaking out and down her chest. And by the gods, she had so many weapons strapped to her body, Tessa wasn’t sure how she could even move.
More movement had her attention shifting to the male. Tall and broad with deeply tanned skin, he had the arched ears of the Fae and Legacy. His black hair was tied up atop his head, eyes the color of a thunderstorm fixed on her. But it was the brown feathered wings that arched over his shoulders that had Tessa’s eyes narrowing.
