watch and watch until something inside her cracked open.
9
The moment Stolas felt Haven ripped from this realm, the searing heat of her light magick going cold and dead against his chest, something ancient awoke inside him. He reared back as his mind reordered the situation.
Taken.
She was taken.
He took her.
Icy rage slammed into him. Shutting his eyes, he flung his senses over the entire realm, scouring for that flicker of white-hot fire that was Haven.
Gone—she was gone. Her light hidden beneath layers and layers of shadow and murk and—
A bellow tore from his throat as he understood where Archeron had taken her. But the roar wasn’t from rage.
It was a warning.
He had only felt this way one other time. The day the Shade Queen forced him with magick to kill his mother.
Only then, he was ready for his Shadow Familiar. It took every ounce of his magick to lock it away. He had only just begun to learn to control his wolf with his mother’s help, but somehow he had pushed it deeper and deeper inside him, starving it until it withered into a wisp of shadow and magick.
Dead—he’d thought it was dead.
Now it thrashed against its cage of muscle and bone, very much alive, its power reverberating through his rib cage like boulders colliding. If he had known it was still inside him he could have erected the shields necessary to keep it caged—
Blinding pain seared his middle as claws ripped through his hastily erected walls. He tried to cry out another warning but could only manage a snarl as the last of his defenses were shredded. The pressure in his torso released, his familiar’s form shaping itself in the air.
The ground shook beneath the creature’s massive black paws. Once he had been able to control it, but now—now it was ravenous and feral and half-mad with fury, a wild animal caged for too long.
A wild animal feeding off his hatred for Archeron. Off his rage and helplessness and pain. Its mind was linked to his, and Stolas felt the creature’s focus whirl to the Solis and their light magick, so similar to Archeron’s.
No.
Focusing every bit of his vicious rage, Stolas honed it on the one thing that might interest his shadow wolf: the glorious crystals. Crystals his ancestors had carefully embedded into these walls themselves. Crystals gifted by Freya and prized by his people.
The crystals inside the hall were the rarest found on the island. Each one precious beyond words. Right before her death, his mother had used their collective magick to draw enough strength to soulspeak one last message to him.
And yet, to save Haven’s friends, he would willingly destroy them all. So he let his wolf sate its vicious fury on the hall his mother loved. The chandelier she designed and built herself. The shattering sound every glorious jewel made as it was rent in pieces burrowed into his heart.
When at last his wolf’s lust for destruction had been tempered, he found the tether that leashed the beast to himself and forced it, snarling and whining, back into its immortal cage of magick, sinew, and bone.
And when Haven reappeared right afterward, writhing and screaming atop the rubble of crystals and stone, two of the things he loved broken and twisted together, every thought, every feeling went out of Stolas.
Save one. Protect Haven.
If any of the others had tried to stop him from taking her, they would be dead. He acted on pure instinct as he rushed her through the mist and clouds to the safest place in Shadoria: his room in the sky.
He didn’t notice Nasira or Surai in the room as he settled Haven in his bed and curled his body around hers, using every bit of his powers to take away the pain festering inside her. A dull sort of terror threatened to take hold as he scented the demonic tang of the demented magick mixed with her fear.
Her eyes were open, glassy and unseeing, her flesh cold as the air outside. Her arms clawing like a wild animal. Body bucking and thrashing and emitting gurgling wails—
He was going to tear Archeron apart for this.
And he would take a long time to do it.
But first—gently, so gently, he held her still. “You’re safe, Haven. Safe. Nothing can hurt you now.”
She shred through the bedspread and then turned her nails on him. Gouging blindly. Choking and coughing as she tried to breathe through her terror. Ignoring the mindless attack, he focused on infusing his magick into