fire canopy was flung over us.
“What?” I gasped out.
Frenzied movement right outside the original fire barricade caught my eye. Then, I gasped again.
Phanes and Ian were locked in battle, blipping in and out of my vision as Phanes tried to teleport away, and Ian kept forcing him back. Oh. My. Gods. Phanes must have defrosted when Vlad heated up this area, and I hadn’t even noticed!
“Hit Morana with everything you’ve got,” I shouted to Vlad. “If she blasts Ian with another freeze bomb now, Phanes could get away and take Morana with him!”
Another blast hit me like a full-body punch. At first, I thought it came from Vlad, because, from the deluge of explosions outside, he was taking my advice seriously. Then, my heart seized up when I realized the source of the incredible bursts.
They were coming from Ian. He was using the cursed fruit power to fight Phanes, at levels that I’d never felt before.
“Ian, don’t!” I screamed.
He either didn’t hear me, or he didn’t care. His power grew, until even the flames making up Vlad’s barricade seemed to shrink back in fear from it. Then, Phanes and Ian fell out of the sky, hitting the ground hard enough to make it shake.
Phanes roared in rage as they rolled over the terrain, pummeling each other, making sounds more akin to rocks smashing together than fists meeting flesh.
“Fool!” Phanes shouted. “You cannot best an immortal!”
“Can’t I?” I didn’t even recognize Ian’s tone for its new savageness. “Let’s find out.”
Another blast of power rocked us back. I grabbed the nets, trying to right them so I could see what was happening. Even when we stopped rolling, it was hard to make out because Ian moved so fast. I caught a glimpse of a brutal, twisting shape, and then Phanes screamed, a high-pitched, agonized sound.
Ian jumped back from him, and my jaw dropped. Ian was now holding up one of Phanes’s large, golden, severed wings.
He threw it aside as if it were garbage. Phanes spun and fell as he tried to retrieve it. Ian was on him in a flash, ripping off Phanes’s remaining wing while more power boiled out of him. Even after he threw that aside, he didn’t stop tearing into Phanes, who was now nearly limp on the ground beneath him.
“He has to stop,” Ashael breathed out. “He’s using too much power. It will kill him.”
It absolutely would. I could see it in the new scars that ripped over Ian’s body like the ground opening up from a violent earthquake. His body was dying even as the power swelled to such astonishing levels that it stripped the bark off the nearby trees.
“Ian, stop, please!” I screamed.
He didn’t turn his head. Maybe he didn’t even hear me. From the look on his face, I doubted he could hear anything at all. He seemed utterly lost to the power as he tore at Phanes, trying to rip him limb from limb.
“If you want to live, take the source of his power from him!” Ashael shouted to Phanes, and stretched out his hand.
A red glow appeared below Ian’s ribs, no bigger than a peach pit. Phanes’s gaze fastened on it as if it were a diamond.
“There it is. Take it! He’s becoming too powerful, and he’ll kill us all!” Ashael continued in a hoarse shout.
Hope crashed through me. Ian was too lost to the power to stop, but Phanes could tear off any spell from someone. He’d proved that the first time he met Ian, and the cursed fruit was, in essence, no more than a very powerful spell.
“Don’t, Ashael!” I yelled, while hoping that Phanes would do exactly what Ashael said. “If Phanes rips that power out and keeps it, he’ll use it to heal his wings!”
That galvanized Phanes into flipping over and grabbing at the red glow beneath Ian’s sternum. All the while, firebombs continued to go off, and trees crashed to the ground as Vlad and Mencheres aimed their combined, fearsome abilities at Morana, keeping her from ending this battle with another freeze bomb.
Ian grabbed Phanes, power spilling out of him so fiercely, Phanes’s skin began hyper-extending away from his frame. I sucked in a horrified breath. Ian was going to kill him, and killing an immortal would make his power go supernova, taking both of them out at the same time.
“Ian!”
All my hope, fear, and love came out as a scream that made his head tick ever so slightly in my direction.
“Ian, please, if you love me, don’t