Pleasure ripples through my veins at the sight of his tortured expression, and a small smile tips my lips as I launch into the sky, my wings snapping out and sweeping the air in long, powerful strokes as I propel us up past the cloud line.

“What are you doing?” Slaine screams, his head whipping side to side wildly. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Kill me or put me down!”

“No.” I continue flying higher, stopping only when we’re at the level of the horde. My wings beat the air, keeping us aloft as I turn Slaine around in my arms, forcing him to look on toward the approaching army.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he seethes, watching with wide eyes as the bloodthirsty horde nears by the second.

“I’m going to make you watch while I take every last thing you have,” I whisper, my claws digging deep into the flesh of his shoulders, causing him to cry out. “I’m going to destroy them. All of them. The last thing you see, the last thought in your mind, will be of your failure.”

“Idiot!” Slaine cries, struggling frantically in my grip. “You can’t use that much power! You’ll be ripped apart, too!”

“I know,” I say, a smile tipping my mouth. “But it’s worth it. It’s for her.”

Power surges through my veins, filling my body with wild, pulsing waves of energy that pool in the tips of my fingers and toes, exploding from my pores in a fantastic, blinding golden light.

My head falls back in a silent scream that threatens to cleave the skies as I force every last ounce of my magic out, letting it fill the air, guiding it toward the horde of soldiers, promising it tears and pain and bloodshed. It tears through the skies with a thunderous roar, consuming sight and sound and matter as it devastates every living being in its path.

That same power pulsing out of me ricochets back, seeping between the spaces in my soul and sucking the flesh from my bones. It rips at the threads of my soul, weaves icy tendrils into my mind, and tears it apart piece by piece, shattering my very being—broken apart by the same wild energy that created me.

In spite of the pain and agony, I keep pushing, forcing every last ounce of magic I possess into the surrounding atmosphere, weaving a deadly path of destruction through the skies. It flares and screams and scorches everything it touches with the heat of the sun, filling the air with a cacophony of anguished shrieks and howls of death.