Beloved Beast

Chapter Forty-Three

            The night exploded with color and heat, bright flames sweeping her field of vision, wresting a piercing scream from Elle's throat as the force of the blaze flung her backward. Nauseating pain spiked through her slack arm as she landed hard; her stomach muscles clenching with the urge to vomit.

As pandemonium erupted, she lost focus on Don's silhouette, her cries swallowed up in the roar of the fire as it danced a fiery waltz around them, trapping her and the sisters in the midst of its shuffling heat. It burned in a wild and concentrated manner, surging perilously close, the hem of her cloak nearly catching fire as its intensity grazed her chilled skin.

A gust of icy wind threatened to lengthen the blaze as thunder rumbled from the weeping heavens. From below, the angry sea heaved monstrously, the tumultuous waves reaching alarming, ginormous heights, hammering the face of the rock.

Yet, the fire flourished despite Veda's onslaught of incessant rain and the spitting sea.

The battling elements battered Elle in tandem. With hot flames prancing near, heavy rain bucketing down and seawater pouring in from all sides, the fear of drowning or burning alive became a real possibility, immobilizing her with terror.

With her pulse thumping in her ears, her panicked eyes flit from one de Ceville to the other, neither sister appearing at all affected by the synchronized chaos, nor willing to back down from the prospect of killing the other. And she was caught in the fray of it all, drenched and frozen, with no way out.

This is it. Elle thought dejectedly, dragging in a stuttering breath. This is how I die.

If the fire did not consume her first, then the sea would claim her, provided she survived the sisters.

Veda stepped closer to Sera, her expression stone-cold as her slender hands eddied like the waves she mastered, conveying an unspoken language that her element readily obeyed. It was captivating and frightening to watch. With every twist and turn of her lean fingers, the sky spewed impossibly harder, and the ocean churned angrier, working together to smother Sera's flames.

"I do not wish to kill you," the older mage shouted over the howling wind, emerging like an ethereal specter in all of the moonless gloom.

"Right," Sera snickered, "You've come all this way to save me." Her discolored eyes oozed with venomous hatred, the unsightly emotion so intense that it shocked Elle to find Veda seemingly undaunted by the malevolence burning in that soulless stare, and for her sibling no less. "You couldn't kill me if you tried," the younger snarled, adding, "You look like death warmed up."

Gruff shouts rang out and Elle stiffened, her chest constricting with dread as her wide eyes frantically searched through the flames, desperate to find him, knowing that Don was fighting for his life somewhere on the other side of that scorching wall.

Fighting to get to her.

Sera stepped to her right as Veda shifted to her left. "An extraction spell is needed in order to draw out your element. It's quite painful for the recipient – like peeling flesh from the bone." Her mouth twisted cruelly, her malicious stare cutting. "I'll make sure to weed yours out slowly so that you may feel every bit of the pain."

Veda raised her chin, a silent challenge flaring in her white-hot gaze. "Mother would turn over in her grave to learn what you have become. You use your power to harm and to feed your insatiable greed. You steal and trifle with dark magic. You bring disorder to nature and ancestral energy. All of the things Mother warned us against. Greed and arrogance are the ruin of many, Sera. She taught us that most of all."