Page 167 of The Incendiary

“Your Highness, you need to run!” Elias’s voice was strained with panic. He gripped my shoulder, spun me around, and looked me dead in the eyes. “You can’t be at the front!”

Sure enough, the Insidions were close. Our army was in formation, ready to defend against the onslaught of swords, spears, arrows, and blades the enemy carried. We had more bodies, but they were coming too fast.

“Ary?”

I looked at Gemma, whose back was facing the approaching army.

“What?”

“Ary,” she said again, my name a weeping plea on her tongue. A tear slid down her cheek.

“What?” I pressed. “Gemma, what…”

“Ary.”

My smile fell, my chest collapsed when I saw color drain from her face. Blood was splattered over her hands and dripped onto the ground between our feet.

No.

Gemma let out a horrified cry when she looked down and saw a thick, long spear protruding from the center of her stomach.

And I… cracked.

I don’t remember reaching for Helios’s spoke in the wheel, only that I screamed, and fury in the form of flames surged out, not from fear or hatred, but from raw pain. From being lied to and starved, from losing Oliver and Phillip, from being manipulated and treated like a weapon with no agency.

Most of all, from losing him.

This was overdue. Gemma was my breaking point. There would be no coming back from this. No more hiding until I was ready. I’d been holding on to the freedom anonymity allowed, but that freedom was lost to me now.

Now, it was time to burn.

The fire rose up in me so quickly and violently that all I managed to do was shift in front of Gemma and shout to Eli, “Take her and fall back!”

I didn’t know what I looked like, but I felt heat simmer across my skin. Whatever he saw was enough to make him immediately obey.

“Fall back!” Elias echoed in a roar, his eyes wide in terror as he grabbed the collars of a soldier running past and dragged him backward, away from me. “Fall back, now!”

I managed to hold on for a few more seconds, just long enough for my own people to start running and for Elias to lift Gemma’s impaled body and move her backward safely, away from me.

The power threw my head back as I tried not to get ripped apart. I screamed so loud I thought heaven or hell might take me. As long as I was taken to wherever he was. The power paralyzed my body as it grew inside me, rising like lava inside a volcano.

I turned toward the oncoming enemy with both palms facing outward, and the flames erupted, tearing through the air and then struck, incinerating everything in their path. Every incoming Insidion, every tree, bush, and blade of grass was scorched. An entire army razed.

It lasted only seconds, but a few seconds were enough. A few staggered about screaming, still engulfed in flames, before finally succumbing to death. The trees they’d come through had been torched to mere stumps. Bushes were now piles of ash. Our side of the forest was still green and vibrant with life. The other… void of life entirely.

I killed them. I killed them all.

I couldn’t look at what I’d done. At all the death, or if I’d missed and hit any of my own people. Maybe the mourning was chiseling away at my humanity, but the threat was now eradicated. No one had survived my blast. Survived me.

I turned around to see a few hundred of my own people standing and staring at me, slack-jawed. There would be plenty of explaining to do, but right now, all I cared about was getting back to Gemma. I lunged forward and slid to my knees at her side.

“Gemma!” I reached straight for Viridian’s power. Elias had her lying with her head propped on his thigh. “Gemma, you’re going to be okay.”

“Oh, gods!” she wailed. “Oh, gods, Ary, it fucking hurts.”

“I’m going to help…” I trailed off.

When I’d healed that little boy in Tovick outside the fallen temple of the gods, I’d felt a tendril of life reaching out for me, begging to be saved.