Elana had come close to destroying him.
With my demise, she would complete the job. I felt it to the very core of my being. Because breaking our bond would distract him long enough for her to finish the job. And then she’d go after Cyrus. My other mates. The entire Academy. Everyone in the Elemental Fae Realm.
I sensed her plans in the dark power wrapping around me.
Her malevolent intentions to take everyone down who might stand in her way.
She’d gone mad with her vengeance. What had begun as a simple desire to protect herself—to not allow others to find out about her Midnight Fae half—had blossomed into this need for destruction.
With every soul she absorbed, she’d eaten at her own spirit. Diminishing it to dust beneath her craving for more power.
I almost felt bad for her. This couldn’t have been her original intention, but now it consumed her.
Hatred.
Violence.
A desire to kill.
It all swam around her in inky waves, her heart no longer that of an Elemental Fae, but of a being overrun by her own dark energy.
Whoever Elana once was, she no longer resembled that woman now. She merely wore the facade on the outside, her mind a constant game of chess as she devised her next play.
Calculated.
Cunning.
Cruel.
Not an ounce of remorse inside her, not even for the lives she would take today. For the very academy she ran for all these years. A means to an end.
How I ever saw sympathy in her eyes was a miracle. A concept her savage spirit had crafted to lend to her plans. Which all led to the ruination of Elemental Fae kind.
I saw it all unfolding in the blink of an eye. Her devastating schemes. The way she used the death fields as a source of unbending power. The way she fed those fields with more souls—souls she’d taken through the use of death magic.
It sent a shiver down my spine.
“How can you even live with yourself?” I wondered out loud, shaking my head. “All those fae… you’ve taken them all.” I saw with clarity what had happened to Ignis and her friends, how Elana had controlled them like she’d done with Mortus, forcing the girls to frame me for elemental
crimes against their will. And then their resulting screams as Elana tossed them into the Spirit Kingdom, allowing the fields to swallow them whole. All the while absorbing their magic for herself—a magic Exos had bound, and then released upon being knocked out by Mortus.
Everything played out in full detail.
Unraveling all the moves I hadn’t seen her make.
Setting my mother’s decrepit soul in the mess of the others, allowing her to lie in wait, knowing full well that Cyrus would take me there. Elana’s resulting laughter as Ophelia latched onto me as a source of life, our bloodlines calling to one another by instinct. My former mentor had reveled in that moment, enjoying the way I suffered at the spirit of my own mother, the manner in which I almost died.
However, I survived, a fact that intrigued Elana even more.
Mated Cyrus—a move she hadn’t anticipated, but adored.
Meanwhile, Exos provided a challenge, one she tried to break by putting Ophelia in the cell beside his. Allowing her to feed on me through my connection to Exos. Only, the stubborn male cut me off, a fact Elana had respected and hated at the same time.
My head spun with the truth of it all, the explanations none of us had seen.
I blinked up at the devil incarnate in absolute horror, words lining up on my tongue that were meant to scathe. Only, she gazed at me with blank eyes, her entire form frozen, her magic a stagnant energy in the air.
It dissipated in a second, her rage coloring her cheeks in a putrid red shade. “You dare enter my mind?” she demanded, lashing out at me with a whip of power that scalded my insides.