Mag-log inKaden sees it too late. He lunges, but we are faster.I raise my hand and time stops and light pours from me in radiant waves. Lola steps forward, shadows trailing her like smoke. Light and shadow coil around us, not fighting, but circling, choosing. The air thickens, charged, every particle vibrat
The guilt is suffocating. It crawls up my throat like it wants to rip me apart from the inside.This isn’t how it was meant to be. This isn’t how it was meant to end. Kaden wasn’t supposed to win.I wipe away the tears. No! I refuse to let her die.I feel something crack open in my chest at my deter
The world shrinks into a ringing silence the moment Lola goes limp beneath me.“Xena?” My voice rips out of me, raw and feral. “Xena, look at me. Please.”Her blood is warm against my palms. It shouldn’t be outside her body; it feels wrong, clinging to my skin, under my nails, soaking into the crack
My vision blurs.“That’s why you were born twins,” he says. “You were the light. She was the dark. You were meant to stabilize her. Stabilize her darkness.”His smile sharpens. “I couldn’t allow that.”The world tilts violently.“When she was about eight,” he continues, unhurried, “I found her cryin
Everything fades. The battlefield dissolves. The screams, the fire, the clash of power, everything fades until there is nothing left but memory.I’m back to years ago.The air smells different. The kind of air that belongs to a life that hasn’t been broken yet. I’m standing in my room, smiling, ligh
My vision narrows and I snarl, "I'd like to see you try."She charges and I meet her head-on.Blades of wind scream around us as we collide again, my wings beating violently as I drive her backward inch by inch. She gathers power into her palm, a dense, pulsing sphere of red energy and hurls it at m







