"I'm going to win," I seethed, my voice a low, shaking thing. "And I'm going to do it by walking over your perfect, elite corpse."
Caelen's face, which had been a mask of raw, cracked-ice shock, went blank.
It was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen. The rage, the panic, the fear I had seen in his eyes... it all just vanished. It was wiped away, replaced by the cold, emotionless, perfect mask of the heir.
He was a statue. A beautiful, perfect, inhuman thing.
He looked at me, at my bloody leg, at my bleeding hands, at the filth I was trailing on his pristine floor.
"You," he said, his voice a dead-cold whisper. "Are an insect. You are not a ghost. You are not a threat. You are just... a mess. A mess I failed to clean up."
He dismissed me.
With one word, he dismissed my pain, my climb, my hate. He dismissed me.
And all the cold, icy rage I had been nursing, the rage that had kept me standing, the rage that had gotten me out of the chasm... it just... snapped.
It became a white-hot, nothing fire.
"I," I whispered, "am... not... an insect."
I didn't shove him. I didn't hit him.
I grabbed him.
I closed the final two feet, my wounded leg screaming, and my bloody, torn, filthy hands fisted the front of his perfect, black, high-elite uniform. I yanked him down to my level.
I was touching him.
Caelen
She touched me.
Her bloody, disgusting, filthy hands. On my uniform. On me.
The second her skin made contact with the fabric over my chest, the world ended.
This was not the Synergy. This was not the addictive, glorious, perfect high from the forest. That had been a merger. That had been completion.
This was a violation.
My Animus, my Aether, my light, my order... it recoLED in pure, absolute revulsion. It was a sun, and her touch was a black, cold nothing trying to smother it.
And her magic... her Anima... I felt it. It wasn't the bomb from the Qualifier. It wasn't the scalpel from the chasm.
It was hate. A pure, cold void of personal hate, and it was trying to unravel me.
My magic screamed.
It shrieked in my head, a sound of pure, instinctive fury. GET IT OFF. STERILIZE. INCINERATE. PURGE.
My Aether, my perfectly controlled Aether, detonated. It didn't ask. It didn't wait.
It exploded outward to destroy the parasite that was touching me.
Anya
The second I grabbed him, I knew I had made a mistake.
His magic, that arrogant, clean, perfect magic... it felt like I'd just grabbed a live, raw, Aether-conduit.
It didn't just push. It burned. A white-hot, searing pain.
And my magic, my Anima, my cold, dark void... it answered.
It didn't ask. It didn't wait. It leaped from my gut, a starving, cornered animal, pulling at the light that was trying to burn it.
His magic was pushing outward.
Mine was pulling inward.
We were a bomb of opposing forces.
For a single, agonizing, silent second, the world in that training hall squeezed.
I felt the air suck out of my lungs. I saw the light from the Aether-globes bend, stretch, and warp, their light pulling toward us.
And then... it snapped.
A sound I could not describe. A wail and a bang and a shriek, all at once.
A shockwave of pure, unmade force and detonating light tore the room apart.
The Aether-globes in the ceiling didn't just break. They exploded in a shower of white-hot fire and glass, plunging the room into a dusty, gray darkness.
The high, slitted windows imploded, the stone-frames cracking, the glass vaporizing.
The polished wooden floor splintered under our feet, a perfect, 20-foot crater of shattered, burning wood.
The massive marble column I had limped past... cracked. It didn't just crack. It exploded, showering the room in stone shrapnel.
The blast threw us.
His grip broke from mine, and I was just... flying. I flew backward like a rag-doll, slamming into the far wall with a crack that I was pretty sure was my ribs. I landed in a pile of debris from the weapon rack, my wounded leg searing with a pain so bright, I almost blacked out.
I couldn't breathe. The air was gone. It was just dust, and ozone, and the smell of ash and burning wood.
Caelen
I was thrown. My own magic had betrayed me.
I slammed into the far wall, my head cracking against the stone with a sickening thud. I fell, my perfect, controlled body collapsing in a heap of failure.
My ears were ringing. The room was dark, full of smoke and the screech of dying Aether-sparks.
And I was shaking.
My hands. My own hands. I was looking at them, and they were vibrating.
I had lost control.
I had detonated.
This wasn't her. This wasn't a merger. This was me. I had done this.
The evidence of my failure was everywhere. The shattered marble. The burning floor. The ruin.
My father... my father's first rule... Control is the only virtue. A loss of control is a loss of self.
I was lost.
And then I heard it.
The ringing in my ears was replaced.
Shouting.
Heavy, booted footsteps. Running.
"In here! The West Hall!"
"Gods, what was that?"
The heavy oak doors of the training hall burst open.
They were silhouettes in the dust.
Professor Varrick was in the lead, his scarred face livid, his eyes glowing with a faint Aether-light as he tried to see through the smoke.
And behind him...
No.
Seraphina.
She was there, her hand at her mouth, her beautiful face a mask of pure, white shock. Her eyes scanned the ruin... and they found me, on the floor.
And then... they found her.
Anya.
She was a bloody, broken heap, pushing a shattered practice shield off her chest.
Seraphina's shock... hardened. Her eyes narrowed, from me... to her. She didn't see an accident. She saw... us. She saw this.
Varrick strode into the center of the room, his boots crunching on glass and splintered wood. He looked at the crater. He looked at the shattered column.
His face was not just angry. It was impressive. And terrified.
He didn't look at me. He didn't look at her.
"What," he growled, his voice a low, dangerous rumble, "in the hell. Have you done?"
I couldn't answer. I was still shaking. I had failed.
I looked across the 20-foot, smoking crater of our making.
And Anya... she was looking at me.
She was pushing her tangled, sooty hair out of her face. She wasn't angry. She wasn't smug.
She was terrified.
Her eyes, wide and wild, were locked on mine. They weren't asking, "What did you do?"
They were asking...
What... what are we?