Chapter 63 Isadora Planned All This

Chapter 63 Isadora Planned All This
Brea's POV

Tears blurred my vision as Rayne suddenly let out a dry, choking cough. Blood spilled from the corner of his mouth and ran down his jaw.

He was still pinned flat against the cracked earth by Adrian’s energy beam as the golden power flickered weakly around his body as he struggled against the crushing pressure.

His arms trembled with the effort of even trying to lift them.
“Rayne…” My voice shook. I stood only a few feet away, close enough to see every strain in his muscles, yet the beam kept him locked in place like a specimen under glass. I stared at him helplessly, my own body locked in place by fear and exhaustion.

“Look at him, Brea,” Adrian taunted, voice carrying easily across the open ground.

“You can walk over to my side right now so we can fix Project Orphan together… or you can stay over there and watch me burn him to ash.”

He paused, watching me with that sickening smile. “I won’t hesitate. Think wisely.”

I took a shaky step back. My knees threatened to give out completely. The power inside my chest felt terrifyingly heavy.

Surrendering to Adrian made cold, logical sense. It could stop the slaughter. It could keep Rayne breathing. But the thought of turning my back on him..of leaving him pinned and bleeding while I walked toward the man who had just tried to kill him made something in me rebel hard.

I balled my fists as a dozen desperate ideas crashed through my mind.

I looked down at Rayne again. His golden eyes were fixed entirely on me, not on the weapons still pointed at his skull.

His bloodied fingers clawed blindly into the dirt, trying to drag his broken body even half an inch closer to where I stood.

“Don’t look at him, Brea,” Rayne managed, voice strained under the pressure of the beam. “Stay behind me. I’ll protect you. No matter what.”

“Rayne…” My throat closed. Hot tears spilled down my cheeks. “You’re already dying and you’re still… you’re still thinking of me.”

“Brea.” He spat blood with his golden eyes never leaving mine. “I won’t let him take you.”

A tight lump formed in my throat. He wasn’t thinking about his own survival at all. Even crushed under Adrian’s technology, even with blood running from his mouth, his only focus was me.

The hesitation burned away into pure, furious heat. I was done watching the people I cared about bleed for my safety.

“Have it your way then,” Adrian sneered as I broke into a sudden sprint toward Rayne’s pinned body.

He shifted his glowing forearm and fired a devastating blast straight at my heart.

“Raynnnnnnne—!” The scream tore out of me before I could stop it. Instinct took over. The Anchor inside me woke like something deep and starving.

I felt it stretch outward in every direction at once, searching, reaching, grasping. First it brushed against the dark, cold dread-energy swirling around Drake somewhere to my right. Then it found the sharp, bright current of Elias’s magic crackling near the edge of the field.

A second later it latched onto the violent blue surge still pouring from Adrian’s suit. And finally—desperately...it sank into the flickering golden power still fighting inside my broken body.

I didn’t understand what I was doing. I only knew I couldn’t let any of it go.

The four forces resisted at first, pulling against each other like wild animals on the same leash.

I felt them straining, thrashing, trying to tear free of my control. Pain lanced through my chest and down my arms as I forced them closer together, weaving them into one unstable current.

Then, in the middle of that chaos, something else happened.
For a fraction of a second I was inside Rayne’s head.

I felt his terror of losing me to the humans. At the same time he felt mine: the pure, choking fear of watching him die right in front of me. Our emotions collided and fused. The shared force ignited everything I was holding.

A massive wave of light erupted from my body.

The sound was deafening as the shockwave shattered Adrian’s beam, hurled his heavy mercury suit thirty yards across the dirt, and forced Seraphine several steps backward.

Soldiers on both sides were knocked flat. Dust and debris exploded outward in a wide ring.

My legs gave out completely as I hit the ground hard with my vision darkening at the edges. Every muscle felt like it was on fire from channeling so much unrefined power at once.

Strong, warm arms scooped me up before I could sink into the dirt.

Rayne was trembling uncontrollably. His hands hovered over my face for a second before he pulled me tight against his chest as the beam was gone and i was relieved he was free.

“Brea, open your eyes,” he pleaded with his voice cracking. “Please don’t leave me.”

He looked completely wrecked..covered in soot and blood, but he held me like I was the only solid thing left in the world.

“I’m right here,” I choked out, weakly gripping the torn edge of his shirt.

He pressed his forehead against mine. He had risked everything for me. I had almost pulled the sky down to save him.

I was about to let out a broken, breathless sound that might have been a laugh when a cold voice cut through the sudden quiet.

Seraphine stood near the edge of the blast crater, smiling with disgusting triumph. She pointed a thin finger at the ground beneath our feet.

I looked down and gasped as the loose dirt had been blown away, revealing dark lines glowing through the cracked bedrock.

The violent power I had just released wasn’t fading into the air. It was soaking directly into complex ritual symbols carved deep into the stone long before any of us arrived...symbols that had been waiting, empty, for exactly this kind of surge.

“Thank you, little Anchor,” Seraphine purred, dark eyes glinting. “I could never have fed the array enough power on my own.”

Rayne’s body went completely rigid against mine. He stared at the glowing runes, arms tightening around my waist as the ground began to shake.

“What did she do?” I whispered. “Rayne… what is that?”

“She planned this shit—the markings were already here. Waiting for your power.”
I shook my head, refusing to believe it.

Seraphine took a slow step forward, laughter echoing over the terrified soldiers surrounding the crater.

“You thought you were saving him, child. Instead you just handed me the key to everything.”

Drake tried to move. He stepped toward us and channeled his black energy into the ground, but the glowing lines pulsed violently and flung him aside like a rag doll.

Elias raised both hands with the red light flaring as he attempted a counter-spell. The array swallowed it whole.

Thirty yards away, Adrian was slowly pulling himself up from the dirt. A disgusted, satisfied smile spread across his dirt-stained face. The entire battlefield was already trapped in the ritual’s grip.

I looked down at my hands still trembling, still stained with dust and Rayne’s blood as the realization hit like a physical blow.

My choice to save him had given Seraphine exactly the power source she needed.

“Rayne…” I choked out, terror squeezing my throat as the glowing lines expanded outward, swallowing more of the field.

“I’ve got you,” Rayne promised, voice low and absolute against my hair. “No matter what comes next, Brea… I’m not letting go.”