Chapter 266

Agnes

Fire burst from my palm with more intensity than I’d ever managed before. The heat was incredible, searing through my hand and up my arm. My palm burned furiously, the skin already blistering and cracking, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop.

Every instinct in my body was screaming at me to pull back, to protect myself from the agony spreading through my arm like acid in my veins.

But the stone’s silent plea echoed in my mind, urging me on. Release me. Destroy me. End this.

And so I pushed harder, channeling even more of my power into the flames. The fire grew hotter, brighter, burning blue-white at its core. Sweat poured down my face, and my vision blurred from the effort, but I kept my focus locked on the stone.

But nothing happened.

The stone continued to pulse with its eerie blue light, completely unaffected by my assault. If anything, it seemed to be absorbing my fire, growing stronger from it rather than weaker.

Fuck. This wasn’t working.

My stepmother’s laugh cut through the chaos. When I managed to tear my gaze away from the stone for a split second, I saw her sneering at me.

“Did you really think it would be that easy?” she laughed. “The Lunaris Stone has survived for centuries. It can’t be destroyed by a novice elemental with barely any control.”

She snapped her fingers, and one of the guards stepped forward with his weapon raised. My heart lurched as I realized they were going to kill me in front of Thea, make my daughter watch as they cut me down.

But then another guard suddenly surged forward, tackling the first guard to the ground. The mask slipped from his face in the struggle, revealing Elijah’s face.

He had infiltrated the ceremony, disguised as one of the guards. And he wasn’t alone. All around the room, others were revealing themselves, attacking my stepmother’s men. Richard’s warriors, all of them, creating a protective barrier around Thea and me.

I felt a surge of hope. The chaos would buy us time, but we still needed to destroy the stone. My fire alone wasn’t enough.

I glanced at Lena, wondering if she had abandoned the plan. But she was still there, visibly steeling herself as she moved toward the stone. She tilted her palms skyward beside her, her lips moving faintly as she began to murmur something under her breath.

And then her eyes rolled back, showing only whites, and blood began to trickle from her nose.

At first, I thought she was injured, but then I saw something impossible. The blood wasn’t just flowing down her face—it was moving of its own accord, defying gravity as it streamed through the air toward the stone.

It hit me with sickening clarity. Lena wasn’t just risking her powers. She was sacrificing herself, draining her own blood to destroy the stone. She wasn’t going to survive this.

But there was no time to dwell on that realization. I had to keep going, had to match her sacrifice with everything I had. So I pushed harder, ignoring the screaming pain in my palm, the way my skin cracked and peeled from the intensity of the flames.

“Agnes!” Elijah’s voice cut through the cacophony in my mind. “Keep going! It’s working!”

He was right. Where my fire touched Lena’s blood, the stone’s blue light flickered, its perfect surface beginning to show the faintest of cracks. The wild energy inside of it was stirring, responding to our combined assault.

The stone was rejoicing.

But my stepmother saw it, too. With a scream of pure rage, she lunged toward us. But before she could reach us, another figure intercepted her—my father. He grabbed her arms, wrestling her back from the stone.

“Do it!” he shouted at me, struggling to hold her. “Do it now, Agnes!”

I didn’t need to be told twice. With a final surge of effort, I poured everything I had into the flames. The pain was excruciating now, a white-hot agony that was more painful than anything I’d ever experienced, even more painful than childbirth, but I pushed through it. I clutched Thea tighter to my side with my free arm and let out a guttural scream as I forced more heat into the other.

My scream was lost in the noise. The room around us had descended into utter chaos. Guards fought against Richard’s warriors, scientists fled in terror, and in the center of it all, Lena and I continued our assault on the stone.

Lena’s face had gone deathly pale, the blood flowing from not just her nose now but her eyes and ears as well. Her power was killing her from the inside out, but she didn’t falter, didn’t hesitate. The stream of blood grew thicker, wrapping around the stone like crimson tentacles, seeping into the cracks that were beginning to spread across its surface.

The stone’s pulse had become erratic, its blue light flickering wildly. I could feel the wild energy inside of it—ancient, powerful, untamed—finally beginning to break free from its prison. The cracks in the stone’s surface widened, spreading like a spiderweb across its milky surface.

My stepmother’s screams grew more desperate as she struggled against my father’s hold. “Stop them!” she shrieked at her guards. “Kill them! Kill them all!”

But it was too late.

With a sound like shattering glass magnified a thousand times, the first piece of the stone broke free, flying across the room with impossible speed. Then another. And another.

“Get down!” Elijah’s mind-voice screamed in my head.

I dropped to the floor, pulling Thea with me, covering her small body with my own as best I could. Around us, others were doing the same, diving for whatever cover they could find as the stone continued to fracture.

Only Lena remained standing, her arms outstretched, blood flowing from every orifice now as she directed her power into the heart of the stone. Her lips moved in what might have been a prayer or a curse, impossible to hear over the deafening crack of the stone breaking apart.

And then, with a final, terrible screech, the stone shattered completely.

A blinding white light filled the room, so bright it burned through my closed eyelids. I felt rather than heard Thea’s scream against my chest as I held her tighter, trying to shield her from whatever was coming.

The wild energy that had been contained within the stone for centuries exploded outward in a wave of pure, unfiltered power. It slammed into us with the force of a shockwave, enough to lift us off the ground and fling us backward like we weighed nothing at all.

I managed to keep my grip on Thea, turning mid-air so that I would take the brunt of the impact when we landed. The collision with the stone floor knocked the wind from my lungs and sent a shock of pain through my spine.

My head hit the stones next, hard enough that my vision sparkled with black dots and my ears filled with a high-pitched ringing.

The last thing I saw before the darkness took me was Lena, still standing at the altar, her body dissolving into a mist of blood that was rapidly being consumed by the light.

Her eyes met mine across the chaos, and I could have sworn I saw the faintest smile on her lips before she evaporated into a red mist.