Jocelynn Drake - Dawnbreaker

Frowning, I opened my eyes again to find Aurora watching me closely. She realized now that something was off, and I smiled back at her. I wished I had more time to experiment with this new power, but there simply wouldn’t be time to become an earth magic expert. Fire Starter was going to have to do.

“Can you hear her?” I asked, cocking my head to the side as if listening to a whispering voice. “She is pissed. And I mean royally pissed.”

“Of course she’s angry!” Aurora screamed, taking a step toward me for the first time. The guards followed beside her, while the one with the sword pressed to the back of my head shifted the edge of his weapon so it dug into the back of my neck. We were all balanced on a knife, and I was about to throw us off.

“She’s no longer looking for a great protector, Aurora,” I murmured, pressing my right hand flat against the earth. I closed my eyes at the same time I pressed my left hand against my chest, over the wound the Cynnia had made just the other night, essentially closing the flow through my body, forcing the energy to once again well up within me. “She’s looking for an executioner. A weapon. And that is what I do best.”

Get everyone out of here! was the only warning I had time to send to both Danaus and Jabari.

Rolling onto my side, out of the reach of the naturi that had been guarding me, I immediately set him on fire. The orange and yellow flamed enveloped him. He swung his sword blindly in my direction twice before falling dead. I tried to set more fires, but Aurora was there in an instant, putting them out again. Frustrated, I picked up the sword of a fallen naturi, determined to take out my opponents one by one. But we were outnumbered fifty to one.

Danaus, I need your energy! I cried out to him as I was surrounded by four naturi, each trying to decide who would attack me first.

It didn’t work last time, he countered, sounding just as harried as me.

Push the earth energy out of me first. Just like at Crete.

The first naturi attacked, and I deflected the blow while dodging the second. I slashed at a third, cutting him across the stomach, succeeding in getting him to back off a step.

And then it hit me. The warm energy of the earth was flushed out of my body in a rush, followed by Danaus’s own bone-crushing energy. I fell to my knees again as pain ripped through my body at an alarming rate. I screamed, letting the sword fall from my limp fingers. There wasn’t time for thought or focus. I could feel the bori in Danaus, recognize it after our earlier encounter, and it was starving. His power consumed me and then flowed out across the field. I watched as the four naturi around me were instantly reduced to ash as we destroyed their souls in the blink of an eye. Twisting around, I located Danaus and Jabari several feet away from me, surrounded by naturi. A second later those naturi also went up in a puff of gray and white ash.

“Kill them! Kill them all!” Aurora screamed at the naturi that surrounded us.

“No!” Cynnia screamed at the same time. She tried to run toward me, but Nyx grabbed her arms, holding her back. “It’s not supposed to be this way! You weren’t supposed to destroy us all!”

I knew what she meant. She had expected me to destroy Aurora and the rest of the naturi nation that would follow her. She had not expected me to wipe out so many of her kind in order to get to her beloved sister.

And in truth, I knew that I was wasting time and Danaus’s energy by killing all those naturi that surrounded us. Aurora was my goal. She always had been. Gathering up as much of the hunter’s energy as I could, I turned my attention to the queen, who stood with her back to the wall, surrounded by a wall of naturi. Her beautiful face was twisted with rage as she shouted orders at her people to kill me. Yet after the display of power that Danaus and I had already shown, they now hesitated to approach us.

I let my eyes narrow and my senses reach out to the find the soul of the queen of the naturi. It wasn’t hard to find. It was a great beacon of light in the center of all the darkness that filled that valley. The souls of the other naturi were just thin wisps of smoke in comparison to the light that emanated from her. With Danaus’s energy balled up inside of me, I attacked the beacon of light. But nothing happened. I poured everything I had into crushing her soul, incinerating her from the inside out, but it didn’t make a dent.

Behind me, I heard Danaus cry out, and at the same time his energy instantly left me. Before me, Aurora’s laughter rang out across the mountain. She knew I couldn’t kill her as I had killed so many of her own people. She was pure earth energy and couldn’t be killed by something that was half bori and half whatever I was now.

“Kill her, Mira!” Jabari snarled from behind me. “You are the weapon of the Coven. I command you to kill her!”

“Kill me? You can’t touch me, little nightwalker,” Aurora mocked. “I am the queen of the naturi, protector of the earth. You cannot harm me.”

Pushing to my feet, I swayed once and raised my head to look at the golden-haired woman that would be the scourge of my people. I mentally reached out for Danaus but could no longer sense him. A ripple of pain screamed through my chest and rage bubbled in my veins. The bori I had at my disposal that could have defeated her was no more. I had to turn to the other power I had at my fingertips and pray that it would be enough to destroy her. Maybe Cynnia was right, that I had been chosen by the earth to be her newest weapon—replacing Aurora. I could only hope so.

Drawing in a deep breath, I reached out to the earth energy I felt swirling around me, pushing against my skin and threading its fingers through my hair. I pulled it into my body, allowing it to fill in the places where Danaus’s energy had once been. It pulled it in and mentally closed the hole that Cynnia had left in my chest, holding the energy within me so it filled my cells and poured into the marrow of my bones. The energy filled me until my soul was screaming and the monster that lurked inside of me cried out in pain. I felt as if I was killing myself with blinding sunlight.

With a sweep of my hand, the naturi that surrounded Aurora exploded in a roar of flames like a set of Roman candles. The queen screamed in frustration and surprise. I could feel her exerting her own energy to put them out, but I wouldn’t allow it. I pulled more energy into my body and surrounded Aurora and myself with a wall of blue flames much as I had at the Sanctuary Lodge, setting up a perimeter. The flames reached more than ten feet into the air and separated her from the rest of her people. Around me, I could feel both Aurora and other members of the light clan fighting to put out the flames, but I was drawing the energy directly from the earth, fueling it with her anger. The flames never wavered.

“You will not touch me!” Aurora cried when I slowly closed the distance between us. She stood straight and tall, her back pressed against the nearby wall, her chin held high. “You cannot burn me.”

Overhead, wind naturi had taken to the skies and were attempting to fly over the flames, but I stopped them with another wave of my hand. Their wings of feather and leather instantly went up in flames, sending them plummeting back down to the earth. No one was going to save Aurora.

Within me, I could feel the energy from the earth gathering, preparing for a final strike against the queen of the naturi. I smirked, briefly wondering if the earth wanted her dead as badly as I did. Yet, at the same time, I could feel the energy rising within Aurora. She was ready to protect herself.

A smile lifted my lips, exposing my white fangs in the flickering firelight. I closed the distance between us in a flash, plunging the dagger I had pulled from my side deep into her stomach. She had been expecting a magical attack, leaving her completely vulnerable to a physical attack. But then, I had always been more hands-on. I wanted to feel her warm flesh in my hands, her blood flowing over my hand as I slowly pulled the knife up from her stomach toward her heart.