The Brightest Night (Origin #3) - Jennifer L. Armentrout Page 0,213

us, and the lack of humanity, the absence of him, in those cold, scattered eyes sent a bolt of pure fear down my spine.

How could the Daedalus create something like this and hope to control it?

Nothing could.

He zeroed in on me with those frightening, churning eyes, sensing out the uttermost threat. His head tilted once more. I saw the Source pulse around both Daemon and Grayson, and I knew they would try to contain Luc once they realized he wasn’t right. They would die.

“Run,” I told the others as the strands of hair lifted off my shoulders. Luc’s eyes shifted toward Daemon, and I knew neither he nor Grayson could move nearly quickly enough.

Unleashing what was left of the Source, I let it wash over me, and I let it out. The blast of power roared faster than either Daemon or Grayson could respond to, sweeping them off their feet and carrying them away as far as I could get them before the Source sputtered to nothing. Their landings would be hard. It would hurt, but they would be alive.

At least for the time being.

Luc still stood. He hadn’t even moved a centimeter. Only a single lock of wavy hair had moved, and it slowly drifted back to lay against his forehead. His lips—lips that had kissed mine, lips that had spoken words of love—twisted in a facsimile of a smile, perfect and empty.

Silvery light appeared around his open hands, and I knew I wouldn’t survive this. I wouldn’t live. I was empty, virtually human. There was no escape. All I could hope was that Daemon and Grayson recovered quickly enough to warn the others, to get as many people as possible out of Luc’s path. That they had a chance to hide, because the biggest threat was no longer the Daedalus or their flu or even their hybrids.

It was what stood in front of me.

The Source grew around his hands as the icy burn of power ramped up all around me. The wind roared through the trees. Tears blinded me as I thought what would happen to Luc if he did come back from this and he remembered what he was about to do, and what was left of my heart withered.

He continued to stare at me, brows lowered and those eyes …

He glided forward, and I wasn’t even sure if his feet touched the ground. Then he was right in front of me. My skin erupted in tiny goose bumps as he stared down at me.

“Luc?” I whispered, eyes widening as I watched him lift a hand to my cheek. The silvery Source danced around his fingertips. I didn’t move. I couldn’t. He held me there in place with just his stare. Not a single muscle could twitch. The fingers hovered near my cheek, and I had no idea what it would do when it touched me, because I no longer knew what the will behind the Source would be.

And as he stared down at me, I knew that whatever I was about to say would most likely be the last thing I ever said.

“I love you,” I whispered, body shaking as the wind caught my clothing. “I will always love you. I love you, Luc. I love—”

His fingertips grazed my cheek, and icy heat drenched my body as the Source whipped out from him.

Outside of me, the world groaned and screamed. It shook and then fell to pieces. Cement broke apart and crumbled. Buildings as tall as mountains fell in a shower of fine dust. Roofs peeled off and shattered. Trees shuddered into themselves, and metal crunched and gave way as abandoned cars crumbled. Flames erupted from old reserves of gas or propane, the fire spitting into the sky like geysers. The air turned thick with debris as the shock wave rolled and rolled and rolled out from all around us for what felt like an eternity.

Inside of me, a different storm raged. It started in the recesses of my mind, where it was dark and cloudy, a rumbling and rattling of a locked door. The silvery light ripping through steel and cement then pierced straight through me, obliterating all the shadows in a blinding rush of pain that was a shock to the system as it raced down my spine, firing along nerves. It was so consuming, so powerful that I couldn’t scream around it, couldn’t even breathe as images flashed where the dark clouds had me. Faces and events and words and emotions that all