Void(88)

My paragons watched from the other side of the barrier, their expressions solemn, and the headmaster stood with them, his face betraying his keen interest. Banner was also there, and as soon as the judge gave the order for me to begin, the neutralizer slipped over the magical line, coming onto my side of the room. He stepped in front of me, taking my hands in his. Immediately, his cool magic washed over me, calming my frayed Void that was punching me from the inside, wanting to destroy whatever was causing me this anxiety.

“You can do this, Miss Cainson,” he told me quietly, his tone sure and steady. I looked into his dark eyes, trying to ground myself. “You’ve learned control. Remember what I said. You control your power.”

“My power doesn’t control me,” I finished the mantra, my voice barely above a murmur. I heard a low growl, and my eyes distractedly flickered over to Gritt, who was being held back by Render and Quade. Territorial asshole.

Banner nodded and stepped back, drawing me back to him. Our hands dropped, and I started anxiously massaging my wrists. “You can do this,” he assured me, his eyes lingering on my twitchy movements. His words didn’t make me feel any more sure of myself.

Turning back to face the prisoners, I gave them an apologetic look as my hand came up to my amulet. “I’m so sorry.”

The fire elemental strained against his chains. “Wait a fucking minute—”

I dropped my amulet to the ground, and smoke streamed out of me. I controlled it, ignoring the shouts and the curses and the threats that were thrown my way. I couldn’t look at the female shifter’s wide, frightened eyes. I couldn’t listen to the elemental threatening to kill me. All I could do was focus on my smoke and direct it toward them by staying in control.

When I had it wrapped around the fire and water elemental, I stepped closer toward the two males. The air elemental was older, with gray hair and sallow cheeks. He watched it all silently, his arms straining against the cuffs and chains. My smoke enveloped him like a churning storm cloud while it did the same thing to the fire elemental. I stepped between them and pressed my fingers against their hands to have better control. Both of them jumped at the contact, but my black smoke blocked their view of me.

“What are you doing? Don’t fucking touch me, Void!” the fire elemental screamed.

I clenched my jaw and kept my focus, pushing his yells out of my mind. I felt my Void feeding, sucking their powers into me. It was painful, and entered me like shards of sharp ice instead of smooth, sweet honey like when I fed from my paragons. My Void didn’t like it. It didn’t want to feed. But I had no choice.

As I kept taking in their powers, I felt them growing weak, and I knew that I had to figure out how to recreate the switching that I’d done before. Closing my eyes, I focused on the endless pit of my power, trying to remember how it had felt with the shifter and the vampire from the council. When my power stumbled slightly, my eyes flew open, and I saw the black smoke flickering with the shades of blue like before.

It was working!

My heart leapt, and I tried to push. Tried to pull. Tried to take one in and then filter it back out. I tried and tried and fucking tried. My hands shook. Sweat rivulets ran down my temples and soaked my shirt at the back. Black dots filtered in my vision.

But the blue smoke flickered some more, and then I felt it—felt myself failing.

The sensation slipped away, but I scrambled for purchase on my power, trying to redirect it. I controlled my power, I reminded myself. I pushed it out once more, grabbing hold of the elemental powers again. It felt like trying to peel an old sticker off; it was stubborn and stuck, not wanting to separate. I ripped through the power with force, and pain racked through my entire body.

Black dots appeared in my vision, blocking out the blue, misty smoke around me. With my whole body shaking, I funnelled the powers through me and fed it back into the prisoners I touched. It was like fire blazing through dry land, consuming, burning, hurting. Their screams filled my ears, joining with my own. We were a trio of pain and screams inside the blue darkness until I couldn’t hold it anymore.

I fell the rest of the way down, breaking contact with the elementals. A vacuum of nullity grabbed me by the neck and pulled me down, forcing me into bleak unconsciousness. The last thought I had as my head hit the hard floor was this fucking sucks.





Chapter 22





“She’s not waking up!” a voice growled to my right. I wanted to open my eyes, but it felt like I was stuck behind a wall, clawing at brick and getting nowhere.

“Strip her down, she needs skin-on-skin contact, now,” another voice rang out. It sounded urgent, like knives against my soul. My awareness was like a rock dropped in water, sinking with no end in sight. I tried to move just a millimeter, focusing on my pinky finger, but I couldn’t even feel that. It was like I didn’t even have a body. I knew my heavy limbs were shaking and flailing as my clothes were stripped from my body, but it was an out-of-body sensation. “Get the fuck out of here before I snap your neck, neutralizer. She needs to feed.”

“I don’t think it’s safe in her conditi—” a door slammed shut like thunder, cutting off Banner’s voice.

I moaned, and all the commotion in the room went stagnant. I was surprised the sound even escaped my cage of a chest.

“Devicka?” Gritt’s voice asked.