POV EMMA BELLE
The air around the North gate of the Obsidian Spire didn't just feel cold; it felt dead. The stench of necrotic magic was so thick I could taste it on my tongue, a bitter, ashen flavor that made my wolf snarl in disgust. But as I rounded the final corner, the sight before me turned my blood into molten lead.
Damon was on one knee, his massive double-headed axe embedded in the chest of a High Guard, but three more were closing in, their silver pikes glowing with a sickly violet light. Nathaniel was a few yards away, his face deathly pale, blood leaking from his ears as he held a shimmering silver dome of energy over himself and a wounded Vincent. They were being overwhelmed. The Council hadn't just sent warriors; they had sent executioners.
"Félix, right flank!" I roared, the sound echoing through the stone courtyard like a clap of thunder.
I didn't wait for a response. I didn't need to. I could feel him—a golden spark in the periphery of my soul. The bond we had just solidified in the ravine wasn't just a feeling; it was a physical conduit. I could feel his muscles tensing, his heart racing in sync with mine.
I launched myself into the fray.
I wasn't the girl who stumbled in the mud anymore. I was a storm of white and violet light. I hit the first High Guard like a kinetic hammer, the force of my impact shattering his silver armor and sending him hurtling fifty feet into the obsidian wall.
"Emma!" Damon's voice was a ragged growl of relief and warning. "Get back! Their pikes are tipped with soul-poison!"
"Let them try," I snapped.
I reached out, and for the first time, I didn't just push the energy away. I pulled. I reached into the very stone of the Spire, feeling the dark magic that held it together, and I twisted it.
The ground beneath the High Guards erupted. Shards of obsidian flew upward like shrapnel, guided by my will. Two of the guards were shredded instantly, their dark souls escaping in a hiss of black smoke.
But I wasn't alone in this dance of death.
Félix was a blur of lethal precision. He didn't have my raw, explosive power, but he had something else—the wind. He moved so fast the High Guards couldn't even track him. He was a shadow with blonde hair and emerald eyes, his daggers finding the gaps in their armor with surgical accuracy.
Every time he struck, I felt a jolt of exhilaration. Every time he dodged, I felt a rush of pride. We were a circuit, a feedback loop of power and instinct. My light fed his speed; his courage fed my fire.
"Lixie, duck!" I screamed.
He didn't hesitate. He dropped to his stomach as I swept my arm in a wide arc, a blade of pure lunar energy slicing through the air. It decapitated the three guards who had been closing in on his position.
He looked up at me from the ground, a wild, blood-stained grin on his face. "Nice aim, Little Bird!"
But the victory was short-lived.
The massive obsidian doors of the Spire's inner sanctum creaked open, and a figure stepped out that made the air itself seem to recoil. He was tall, dressed in robes of human skin, and carried a staff topped with a weeping eye.
The Arch-Inquisitor.
"Enough of this petulance," he hissed, his voice a thousand whispers of the damned. He raised his staff, and a wave of absolute darkness rolled toward us, extinguishing the torches and even dampening my light.
I felt the connection to the others flicker. Damon let out a cry of agony as the darkness touched his skin. Nathaniel's dome shattered, and he collapsed.
"Emma!" Félix was at my side in a heartbeat, his hand finding mine. His touch was the only thing that kept me from being swallowed by the void.
"He's eating the light," Félix whispered, his voice trembling with the effort to stay upright. "He's a vacuum, Emma. You can't fight him with force."
He was right. The more power I threw at the darkness, the stronger it became. I felt the hunger in my blood again—the need for Félix—but it was different now. It was a desperate, survivalist urge.
The core, my wolf whispered. Not the light. The soul.
I looked at Félix. His eyes were wide, filled with a terrifying realization. He knew what I had to do. To defeat the Arch-Inquisitor, I couldn't just use the power I shared with the kings. I had to use the power that was uniquely mine—the power of the White Queen's sacrifice.
"Lixie, I need you to hold me," I said, my voice barely a whisper against the roaring of the dark wind.
"Always," he replied, his arms wrapping around me from behind, pulling me flush against his chest.
I closed my eyes and stopped fighting the darkness. I let it in. I felt the cold, oily tendrils of the Arch-Inquisitor's magic enter my veins, searching for my heart. It hurt—a jagged, soul-deep pain—but I didn't scream.
I focused on the man holding me. I focused on the way his heart beat against my spine. I focused on the memory of his lips on mine, the taste of pine and freedom.
I turned the darkness into a mirror.
When the Arch-Inquisitor's magic reached my core, it didn't find a helpless Omega. It found a reflection of its own emptiness, amplified by the pure, unyielding love of the White Queen and her Rebel King.
The reaction was instantaneous.
A pillar of pearlescent light exploded from my chest, so bright it turned the night into noon. It didn't push the darkness; it purified it. The Arch-Inquisitor shrieked, his robes of skin bursting into flames, his bone staff shattering into dust.
"Impossible!" he screamed as he was consumed by the very light he had tried to eat. "The lineage was broken!"
"The lineage was waiting," I replied, my voice booming with the authority of a thousand ancestors.
The explosion cleared the courtyard. The High Guards were gone. The Arch-Inquisitor was a pile of ash. The Obsidian Spire itself began to groan, the dark magic that held its stones together having been neutralized.
I felt my strength give out. The "over-clocking" Nathaniel had warned about was finally taking its toll. My vision blurred, and the world began to tilt.
But I didn't hit the ground.
Félix caught me, his arms a familiar, scorching sanctuary. He lowered us both to the snow, his face inches from mine. He was pale, his eyes bloodshot, but he was smiling—that beautiful, crooked smile with the dimples that made my heart ache.
"We did it, Little Bird," he whispered, his forehead resting against mine. "The kids are safe. The Spire is falling."
"Lixie..." I reached up, my fingers trembling as I touched his cheek. "I'm so... tired."
"I know," he murmured, his thumb grazing my lower lip. "Just sleep. I've got you. I'm never letting go."
Damon and Nathaniel approached, limping but alive. They stood over us, their expressions a mix of awe and a deep, simmering jealousy that they couldn't quite hide. They saw the way Félix was holding me, the way our souls were still huming in the same frequency.
"We need to move," Damon said, his voice unusually soft. "The Council will send a legion when they realize the Inquisitor is dead."
"Let them send the world," Félix growled, not looking up from me. "They aren't getting her back."
Nathaniel knelt beside us, checking my pulse. "She's stable, but the bond... it's shifted. She's anchored to Félix now. It's going to make the other three bonds harder to complete."
"Good," Félix muttered.
Damon let out a low, warning growl, but he didn't move to pull me away. He knew that without Félix, I would have been lost to the darkness.
As they prepared to carry me back to the mountains, I felt one last surge of awareness. I looked at the crumbling Obsidian Spire, then at the four kings who had risked everything for me.
The war had truly begun. I had humiliated Caleb, destroyed a Council stronghold, and awakened a power that hadn't been seen in a century.
But as Félix kissed my temple and whispered my name in the dark, I knew that the biggest battle wasn't with the Council or the Eclipse Pack.
It was the battle for my own heart, and I had a feeling the boy with the green eyes and the freckled skin had already won it.