36. Ash

Chapter Thirty-Six

Ash

T he world was filled with magic and rage. It was pitch dark outside, darker than it was supposed to be. I couldn’t see if it was day or night—the sun, the moon, the stars were all gone, and the vale huddled in a thick cloud of blackness. A strange, sharp smell filled the air. “It’s about time you show your face, asshole,” a man said to me, leaning against a tree to the side. “I thought you were going to be a pussy and hide out forever.”

I blinked at him. “Who are you?”

The guy snorted. “It doesn’t fucking matter, does it? All that matters is that you’re just about done. I can take it from here.” He looked over my shoulder at Lorraine, who had come into the vale with me. I cursed her in that moment for not staying in my tree where it was safe. In there, the magic couldn’t get to her. I needed her somewhere safe and out of the way of anything that could go wrong out here where the darkness ran rampant and whoever this son of a bitch was couldn’t get to her. “Time to go,” he said to her. “I’m not going anywhere with you.” Her words were clipped. “You screwed up everything we ever had when you sold me.”

I saw red. This was the piece of shit who sold her, who started all this hell for her in the first place? Oscar. “I’ve been wanting to meet you,” I growled, and I marched forward, grabbing the good-for-nothing piece of shit around his neck. “I hope you got your affairs in order because you’re about to die.”

I slammed him into the ground. Lorraine screamed behind me. When Oscar’s body hit the ground, a black wave of magic rippled outward like I’d slammed him into a pool, and the wave of magic knocked my feet out from underneath me. I grunted as my head hit the ground, and I saw stars. Next to me, Lorraine moaned. I turned my head and saw her on the ground, too. “Get out of here,” I told her. “Now.”

“I’m not leaving you,” she said, getting up. “You don’t know what he’s capable of.”

“Aww, so sweet,” Oscar said in a slimy voice. “Looks like you two lovebirds really care about each other. Pity that I’m going to have to fuck that up for you.”

Oscar kicked me as I lay on the ground, and dark magic pulsed into me. It pushed the air out of my lungs and rocked my body like a shockwave. Where the hell had he gotten this much power? He was supposed to be human, wasn’t he? Oscar laughed, and the sound was sickening. He enjoyed the destruction this caused. “Oh, you’re in for it, buddy,” he said. “You think you can just step in and steal my woman? She belongs to me.”

He slammed his fist down, aiming for my head so that he could crush me, but the wave of magic that preceded the blow warned me, and I rolled out of the way. That much power was dangerous, but every upside had at least one downside. No matter how small. At least I’d been able to feel him coming. Oscar’s hand slammed into the ground, and the Earth rippled as if it were water. Oscar looked up at me with a deadly glare, his lips pulled back from his teeth. “She doesn’t belong to anyone,” I told Oscar. “She gets to choose for herself who she wants to be with, and why.”

“Ash, be careful,” Lorraine warned me.

I knew what she was talking about—I could feel the magic building again, getting stronger as Oscar wound himself up to do something to me. I wasn’t sure what it would be, but I trusted my instincts that I would be able to counter it or duck away from it—whatever it would be. When he threw a blast of darkness at me, I threw myself to the ground, and the blackness danced between the trees, rocking outward further and further. The sound of thunder rolled with it as the magic broke through the very atmosphere around us and rolled outward further and further, until the thunder faded away into the distance. “Dolus didn’t mention you’d be this much of a challenge,” Oscar snarled. “In fact, he didn’t tell me you would be in the way at all.”

Dolus. My mind spun when he said that word. Everything came together—Dolus had buttered me up to give up my memories, acting like he gave a shit about who I was and what I went through, but it had all been so that I wouldn’t want to fight for Lorraine. “What do you want with her?” I asked. “What is she to you?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Oscar said, and he threw more magic at me. This time, I couldn’t get away from it, but I braced myself and threw my own magic back at it. It created a wall that the darkness slammed into. I grunted as pain rocked through my body, an aftershock when the blow hit me, but I stayed standing. Pain was temporary. It could fade with time. At least, physical pain did. Emotional pain didn’t, and I couldn’t run from that. I’d learned that the hard way. Oscar threw more magic at me, but I was getting angrier and angrier. Not just at him for wanting to lay claim to my woman, but at Dolus, too. He’d tricked me, deceived me, and he’d made me give up the one thing I cared about, the one thing that was the most important in the world to me. He’d convinced me to give up Lorraine. “He wants my soul,” Lorraine said from behind me. “He wants to use me for something. More power, I think, but I don’t know. He’s been working with Dolus for a while. I think that’s why he sold me in the first place, and how he got here. It’s how a lot of things went wrong the past while.”

The men who’d come for her and the power they’d wielded, how Lorraine had ended up in the vale in the first place, and everything that had happened in between. Nothing was just because she’d stumbled upon this place and she’d been sold off by her asshole boyfriend. I should have known that there was something bigger at play, that this had to do with magic more than anything else. “You planned this from the start,” I said. Oscar laughed, the sound menacing. “Well, yeah. Not the part where you came in, of course, but the world has to have some fucking bleeding heart in it. Even if it’s a different world than the human one.” He spat on the ground with a scowl. “Fucking pathetic, that’s what it is.”

He attacked again, but this time, I was ready and I threw magic at him before his magic got to me. The two forces of power clashed against each other between us, and the blast was so powerful it threw me and Lorraine backward on our side, and Oscar toward the other side. That was interesting to know. If I could use his own power against him, maybe I could stop this. He was stronger than he was supposed to be, but Dolus had made sure that he had enough power to take care of business.

If Dolus wasn’t a god, I would have hunted him down and killed him for doing this to me and to Lorraine after I took care of Oscar, but of course, that wasn’t going to happen. Dolus was something I had to deal with at another time. Right now, we just had to end this bullshit once and for all. When Oscar attacked again, I kept his magic in mind, and I threw more magic at him than I’d ever used before. My magic wasn’t just the magic I’d been born into in my role as a drus. My magic was fueled by anger that he’d tried to hurt my woman, and that meant it was fueled by something that went much, much deeper than anything I’d had before. It was fueled by love. Our powers clashed against each other again, but just as I’d been ready for it, anticipating the blow that would follow, Oscar did the same. When the magic rocked outward, letting the trees dance and tug at their roots around us and the mulch and dried leaves blow up in a giant wave of debris, we both held our ground without being blown away. Lorraine cried out and grabbed onto my tree, holding on tightly so that she didn’t blow away. She wasn’t used to this amount of magic, but she would grow used to it. After this, I would do whatever it took to have her in my life. I would do whatever was needed to be with her, no matter what that meant. I would never let her slip through my fingers again. Oscar let out a loud cry that sounded almost like a roar, and it burst through the thundering sound of our magic clashing. He attacked me to the ground, riding me down until my head and shoulder hit the earth beneath me. He punched me in the face, power propelling his fists forward with every blow, and he hammered me into the ground. “No!” I heard Lorraine shout, but her voice was distant. My ears rang, and I couldn’t see straight anymore. Bursts of pain rocked through my face and into my body as Oscar hit me again and again and again. Lorraine tried to stop him, grabbing onto his shoulders, his arms, trying to wrench him off me, but he swatted her away like a fly. She fell backward, and her head slammed into a tree. Her body went limp. That did it. When I saw her body lying there, unmoving, my rage took over. My power rose like a tidal wave, and I threw Oscar off me with a brilliant cry. He flew through the air, his body hitting a tree a couple of feet away, and he fell to the ground with a grunt. I ran to Lorraine, but before I could reach her, Oscar grabbed me from behind, and I turned around and attacked him. I tackled him to the ground, and we rolled around in the mulch between the trees, kicking and punching wherever we could. Every blow and every kick had power behind it, and we fucked each other up with everything we had. I threw as much magic behind my punches as I could, and Oscar countered with the same. He would never, ever touch my woman again. Lorraine was mine. I pinned him down, my hands around his throat, pouring magic into him like I was an open faucet. Oscar’s eyes widened as the magic ran into him, pouring more and more. He was going to explode if he kept drinking it in, but he couldn’t seem to stop, and I didn’t care. I squeezed harder and harder. If I killed him, so be it. The asshole deserved to die.