19. Ezra

Chapter 19

Ezra

A ny struggle against the electricity holding me to the wall was futile and left a burning imprint on my skin, for which the pain was only intensifying with the panic I felt. I pushed aside that pain to try and focus on Nova. The marks around my wrists were nothing, the spasms from the electricity were nothing, and the pain came from watching Nova break when she couldn’t hold the screams any longer. Blood dripped down her back, and she hung her head as Rowan circled her. I had promised I wouldn’t let anything happen to her, but I failed.

She tried to find her voice but couldn’t. Her purple eyes had gone completely black. ‘I love you,’ she mouthed. At the next sting, she closed her eyes.

“Nova, please,” I begged her to hold on and be strong, praying she could hear me even if the connection was severed. With a smidge of fight left in her, her eyes snapped open, and she turned to me briefly. She could hear me. How could she hear me? “Can you hear me?” I asked. She softly nodded.

“How pathetic.” Rowan looked between us with a snicker. He crouched before her again, puckering her cheeks and forcing her to look at me instead of out the window. He moved behind her and twisted her arm behind her, contorting her body toward me as she winced and hissed at the pain of moving. “The only Manipulator in our world, supposedly the most powerful witch in decades, soft for a loser with no ability." He twisted her arm further up, and I held my breath. Her eyes pinched shut, and she bit down on her lip. "It’s witches like you who are a disgrace to our kind." Rowan let her go, and she gasped as she moved her arm normally. “Maybe I’ll tackle Little Lover Boy next.”

“Leave him out of this,” Nova weakly begged. Tears threatened my eyes.

“You’re pathetic, Nova Foster. Pathetic.”

Rowan looked directly at me as he grabbed her shoulder and landed a blow to her stomach. Nova limped forward, all breath pushed out of her as she gasped for air. Her palms hit the ground as she caught herself, gasping, trying to breathe. Her muted screams awoke every cell of my being. Everything from my fingertips to the top of my head vibrated with anger and determination as Rowan wrapped his hand around her throat, forcing her to stand. She tried to fight it, but he held her steady.

Nova was the love of my life. She was the best part of this universe, and I wouldn’t allow Rowan to take her from us. She was willing to risk her life to make sure nothing happened to anyone else, but everyone in the room was paralyzed by fear. Growing up, everyone preached about how we should follow and live by our grandfather’s legacy of peace and bravery, yet in the moment that mattered, not a single creature was fighting back. All of our grandfathers would be extremely disappointed in every single person here.

The anger within me roared. Watching Rowan put his hands on Nova pained me, but seeing him raise her feet off the ground by the throat as she struggled to reach for his glasses forced an all-consuming feeling to rage through me.

“LET. HER. GO!” My voice boomed as I ripped through the electric cuffs.

My wrists burned as a gust of force knocked Rowan off balance and tore him away from Nova. He dropped her, and she limply hit the ground. A soft gasp assured me she was still breathing before she writhed in pain from impact. Rowan’s glasses clattered on the ground next to Nova.

“What the—” Rowan’s eyes snapped to me, and I heard his thoughts. He was shaken, questioning how I ripped through the cuffs. My wrists stung, but it was nothing compared to what he had just put Nova through. I was in his mind, and with one movement of my burned arm, Rowan flew across the room.

I looked at my hands, unable to comprehend what I had done with any degree of certainty. Maybe Nova had caught his eyes and moved him away, but she was still on her back, eyes closed as she tried to breathe through the pain. Everyone watching gasped as the realization rippled through the room. Elias, Eva, and my parents stared at me like I had grown a second head. Rowan’s henchmen ran to him as I rushed to Nova. She groaned on the ground. Faint thumbprints of purple littered her bicep, and hand-shaped red marks stained her neck.

“Ezzy,” Nova said weakly. I gingerly picked her up. “Glasses…Break.”

With her nestled in my arms, I searched the ground for the glasses until I noted them a few feet away. The plastic frames shattered as I stepped on them, making the lenses unusable. My arms felt the warmth stemming from the burns on Nova’s back, and the smell of metal bothered me as blood dripped down my arms. Carefully, I walked her to my mom and Eva to start healing. They took her in their arms and finished ripping the back of her dress, exposing the burnt skin to establish contact.

“Help her,” I pleaded with my mom. Nova could barely keep her eyes open. “Please.”

“We’ve got this, Ezra.” Eva set her hand on my shoulder. “She’s going to be okay. Go.”

I turned and marched to where Rowan was returning to his feet. The two men helping me widened their eyes as they made eye contact with me, and I entered their minds to pin them against the wall. I couldn’t make them extinguish the fire that burned in front of the door, but they were now crowded by an angry crowd of creatures, making sure they didn’t move. Their eyes had a different kind of fear. They didn’t fear Rowan; they were fearing me.

“I wasn’t done with her!” Rowan screamed. A bolt of electricity hit my shoulder, but I ducked it, it making contact with the wall above Baron. Rowan was now a handful of feet away from me, and he wound up to swing.

“Yes, you were!” I ducked his punch as he swung at me and clocked him back.

He was done with Nova. He was done with everyone. The heat in the room, the frightened eyes that had watched idly by, and the sound of Rowan’s shuffling steps as he tried to regain his footing fueled the fury coursing through me.

His eyes were uncovered, so I was free to enter his mind again. Once his gaze had been locked on mine, I would not let him go. I forced him to his knees as everyone watched in horror. He tried to struggle against me, but his eyes widened when he realized that there was nothing he could do. I was in his head.

“You’re a Manipulator,” he muttered. Thousands of ways to inflict pain on him ran through my mind. He’d be begging me to die by the end, but he didn’t deserve the mercy of death.

Dormant abilities were not unheard of, but manipulation had never been one of them. Rowan’s body trembled, and the thoughts I was listening to in his head ran rampant with the ideas of what I could do to him. He imagined every worst-case scenario, unable to stop the runaway train of his thoughts and even berating himself for thinking of them since I could hear. I was kind of new at this torture thing, but he was giving me good ideas.

“I could torture you,” I said, stepping toward him and grinding my jaw in anger. He looked up with pleading eyes as I reached for his hand. With a swift motion, bones cracking filled the silence as I snapped the fingers of the hand he had choked Nova with. Rowan’s scream echoed through the ballroom. “I could make you endure pain a million times worse than what you made her endure.” I walked into his blind spot but forced him to keep his eyes forward. I clicked my tongue, and every click made him flinch. “I could kill you.”

“Please,” Rowan cried, no longer the brutal man he portrayed himself as. “I’m not ready to die.”

My blood boiled. “Do you think she was ready to die?!” I wrapped my hand around his neck, his eyes widening before I even applied pressure. “Do you?!”

Rowan had started to gasp lightly as my grip tightened and my abilities kept his hands pinned to his side. I would have never considered myself capable of this, but I would kill Rowan right now without a second thought and no remorse. There was nothing he could do but watch, and I squeezed the life out of him. A high-pitched squeal escaped him, and his Adam’s apple bobbed against my palm. His eyes struggled to stay open, and I watched the life slowly drain from him.

Suddenly, someone softly touched my shoulder. “Ezzy,” Nova whispered next to me. My gaze didn’t leave Rowan’s dimming eyes. “If you kill him, he has brought you down to his level.”