Chapter 179 Luna Rising pt 3
Seren
My power shifted, strengthened, built until it was bigger than me, bigger than my bond with my twin, with my mate. It pulsed out of me, bright silver light meeting the dark.
The screaming changed. Pain turned into clarity, and fear became breath. The black veins snaking from me flickered once, then twice, before dimming.
Mikhail’s smile faltered. “What are you doing?” He looked around, eyes wild. Sweat beaded on Meredith’s temples as she watched.
I lifted my head, feeling the slow slide of his hold slipping away. “I’m not fighting you,” I said quietly. Light erupted from my chest—not fire, not lightning, but a silver burst. It flowed outward through the black veins, washing away the darkness.
Hybrids gasped as if surfacing from underwater. Black drained from their eyes. Chains of blood magic shattered like glass. Meredith flinched as the spell collapsed.
Elaine took the opening, her coven chanting with her as she pushed her power out, bringing her sister to her knees. She held her there, her power flowing from her hands like a rope. Meredith’s hands shook, fatigue clear on her face, in the slump of her shoulders. Like the spell had been holding her upright more than her own body had. When Elaine’s power wrapped around her, Meredith didn’t fight like a witch with centuries of training. She fought like someone clinging to a borrowed strength that was suddenly being taken back.
Elaine walked up to face her. “You are beyond redemption.” Sorrow laced the words. She drew a dagger from its sheath and plunged the blade into Meredith’s heart.
Mikhail staggered back. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “It can’t be.”
The network he ruled recoiled, then began collapsing inward. At first, he didn’t understand. His hands flexed, fingers twitching as if pulling invisible strings. The black veins threading the battlefield pulsed weakly once, then flickered.
“Stand,” he snapped. No one moved.
He twisted his wrist sharply, the same gesture that had sent hundreds of bodies stomping in unison mere minutes ago. The motion cut through the air. No one answered.
The hybrids nearest him blinked, confusion dawning in eyes that were no longer black. One staggered back. Another looked down at his own hands as if seeing them for the first time.
Mikhail’s jaw tightened. He tried again—harder. Power surged visibly beneath his skin, veins flaring bright and angry, but the web did not respond. The threads he had woven through blood and bone were no longer taut. They were ash. “No,” he said, softer now.
He turned in a slow circle, searching the battlefield for obedience, for fear, for anything that would confirm his dominance.
Hybrids stepped away from him. His soldiers were rising to their feet without waiting for command. There was silence where once there had been synchronization, and the absence hit him harder than any blow.
“You belong to me,” he insisted, though no one had challenged him. “I built you. I perfected you. If you don’t belong to me,” he whispered, almost pleading, “then what am I?”
A young hybrid—no older than seventeen—met his gaze. There was no reverence there. Only horror.
The last of the black veins disintegrated at his feet, dissolving into nothing more than gray dust carried away by the rain.
The dark glow beneath his skin dimmed, not extinguished but thinning, like ink diluted in water. Without the web to feed him, to circulate stolen strength through him, his shoulders sagged almost imperceptibly.
“You were never strong,” I said quietly.
“You think this makes you better?” he asked, but there was a fracture in the question. A hairline crack running through certainty. “You’ve undone decades,” he continued, voice tightening. “You’ve dismantled evolution.”
“No,” I said. “I dismantled control.”
For the first time in years, he had nothing to command. No chorus to amplify him. No network to hide within. Just himself. And himself was not enough.
“This isn’t…” he whispered, voice unraveling. “This isn’t how it was supposed to end.”
I met his gaze once more. “Light always overcomes darkness.”
Duncan stepped up beside me. Silently, he lifted his hand, and the sky answered him like it had been waiting. Lightning descended with intent. The first bolt split the air so violently the rain evaporated around it. It didn’t hit Mikhail. It encircled him.
Gideon stepped forward next. The ground rose, forming a ring of stone that closed like a fist around the corrupted prince. Cora stood beside her mate and called water, creating a perimeter from which there was no escape.
I called the fire forward. The flames didn’t roar. They spiraled, wrapping around Mikhail like a tightening coil. The elements aligned as if they had been waiting for this moment of harmony.
His eyes wild with desperation, Mikhail tried to move. The earth did not allow it. He tried to command. No one answered.
Only then did the ice fall. It speared through his chest, the final verdict on his reign of terror.
When Mikhail finally fell, the ground erupted in a shockwave that tore across the battlefield, wind screaming outward in a final, apocalyptic blast. When the fire died down, rain still lashed the field. Lightning still forked above. The storm still raged.
Duncan stood trembling, power crackling violently across his skin. Gideon’s power hummed, steady and reassuring. My skin glowed faintly, purification still radiating outward.
I reached through the bond to Gideon and Duncan. ‘It’s over.’
For a long moment, no one moved. The rain softened first, then the wind. Then even the thunder rolled farther away, retreating into the mountains like something dismissed.
A hybrid near me sank to his knees and sobbed. Another whispered her own name over and over, as if reacquainting herself with it. Across the field, someone began laughing—hysterical, disbelieving, alive. The silence that followed wasn’t emptiness. It was hope.
As the clouds cleared and sunlight broke through, a bright rainbow arced above the trees.