Despite the power gathering in my hands, Nathaniel strides toward me, unafraid and determined. He has never been fearful of me. Even when I unleashed my power on the first day we met, he leaped toward me, stepping right into the heart of my starlight to try to stop me from screaming the declaration that invoked the Law of Champions.
He halts three paces away from me, the exact space that a combatant would stop, his shoulders drawn back, his head slightly tilted as he looks me up and down from the top of my white hair to the tips of my borrowed boots.
“Who controls light but sleeps in darkness?” He repeats my question back to me as his dark eyes flash across me. “You do.”
He prowls to my right, a movement that suddenly feels dangerous to me, as if he’s about to challenge me in ways I don’t want him to.
“Who turns to dust and ash when she loses hope?” He turns and prowls in the other direction, keeping me in his sights. “That would also be you.”
He stops in front of me. “Who was determined to fight through agony to reach my side?” His voice becomes low, gentle again. “Who kept me alive and breathed life into me? Who took me home despite the fact that she would be made to suffer for it?”
His dark eyes are clear, his voice compelling me to listen. “You, Aura. Always you.”
He dares to close the gap between us. He always dares to challenge me, no matter how many defenses I raise.
“I know you’re terrified of the truths that lie in your past,” he says. “I’m here if you need to scream. I’m here if you need to cry. I can take it. All of it. But you have to face it.”
He reaches slowly for the weapon harness I’m wearing. My heart pounds inside my chest, but I don’t try to stop him when he undoes my harness and lays it on the ground. He removes the sling from around my neck, deftly untying the knot as I shiver. Undoing the clasps at the left shoulder of my suit, he gently draws it down far enough to reveal the space above my heart. The golden mark of his name becomes visible, a bright spot at the edge of my vision.
With suddenly swift movements, he reaches to his own chest, peels the stone from it, and holds it out to me. “It’s yours to take.”
The sliver of rock glitters against his palm. It’s so small but utterly terrifying because of the immense power I sense in it. A power that I’m sure will either destroy or heal me.
I asked him why I was alone, but I realize that I’m not. In the final hours of my life, I won’t be alone because Nathaniel will be with me.
My fingertips close over the stone, touching it for the first time.
Power shoots through my hand all of the way up my arm to my shoulder, a shot of energy reaching my heart and hitting it like a hammer.
I gasp and Nathaniel jolts, knocked away from me.
Starlight streaks through my veins, running up my shaking arm as I raise the stone, ready to position it below my scar just like he did.
Power flickers around the rock, shots of starlight so sharp that they bite my skin, suddenly burning me. I nearly drop the stone, but the power inside it strikes out toward my torso, streaks of starlight connecting the rock to the location of my heart.
Panic floods me.
I try to pull the rock away from myself, but it continues on its path, flying out of my hand toward my heart. Burning starlight cuts through my skin, a cut so deep and painful that I scream.
“Aura!” Nathaniel shouts as he reaches for me, but another blast of light knocks him back again.
Each stab of light from the stone tears at my skin beneath my scar, forming a new crescent—a fresh cut the precise size and shape of the stone’s edge.
The rock finally adheres to my chest, plastered against me like a brand for a split second before it turns on its side and disappears inside the cut it made.
Shock seizes me, and I drop to my knees, sensing the rock burrowing deep inside my chest. I claw at my skin, trying to stop it. The storm inside me pushes and pulls, breaking me apart and healing me at the same time.
I scream as starlight explodes inside my chest, radiating in crashing waves, the force throwing me outward and upward, just like the moment when I invoked the Law of Champions.
The force slams into Nathaniel, picking him up and hurling him across the room.
Screams tear from my throat as I stretch toward him with both of my hands, my right arm free and mobile for the first time in hours, my body pulsing with power as we fly away from each other.
Bright, white light fills the space around us. The walls vibrate and the pages of the books flip violently open, the images inside them suddenly flying upward.
The golden dragon rages across the air between Nathaniel and me. From the dark magic book, a herd of firehorses rises and races after the dragon, galloping through a swarm of silver humblebees that pours from the pages of the fae magic book.
As they chase each other full circle around the statues, I wait for a creature of the fourth magic—the old magic—to rise from the pages of that book, but only my starlight streaks across its surface. Within moments, the other creatures vanish back into the pages from which they came.
As soon as they disappear, everything stops moving, even the pages, suspended in place.
Nathaniel comes to a jarring stop, his head thrown back, his arms splayed at his sides, his bare chest glistening in my light. His lips part as his head lowers. I can’t deny the pull in his gaze as his mouth suddenly curls up into a smile that heats me all of the way to my core.
“Aura Lucidia.” He says my name as if it is new to him.
I’m not sure what he sees that makes him cast me such a dangerous smile, but when I press my hands to my now-healed chest, my skin glows.
I catch sight of my luminescent hair, glittering white strands filled with light as they float around my shoulders.
The only other times my body glowed like this was when Nathaniel touched me, when he made me glow.
Across the distance, Nathaniel looks at me the same way he did when he turned me toward the mirror in Bright and showed me who I could be. He saw the potential of my power even before I did.
Now I have no doubt that I’m glowing all over. Without seeing myself, I picture my eyes filled with emerald splashes, the dull forest green color of my pupils gone, my cheeks flushed, my lips red and full.
Only an hour ago, my energy was exhausted. Now my power feels like a limitless ocean of starlight.
A shiver of light rushes through my body all of the way from the top of my head to my toes as I meet Nathaniel’s eyes.
“My power,” I whisper. “You gave me back my power.”
Chapter 14
I float to the floor, my feet coming to rest on the stone surface. I’m conscious of the magic around me—old magic protecting the books and the room—a hundred times more aware than I was before.
Magic shimmers and ripples through the air all around us, but Nathaniel’s presence is the strongest—always the strongest—overwhelming my senses with his strength.
But now… the power that ripples through his chest, his arms, every part of him, draws my attention. Starlight—impossible starlight—glows through every fiber of his torso, threads that extend beyond his chest and up his neck.
Light flickers at his temples, pulsing in time to his heartbeat as it travels down his chest, stomach, and thighs, visible as a soft glow beneath his long pants.