Chapter 145
Read Taming Darkness By Jessica Hall Book 3 Chapter 20 – Darius
The surrounding air was all I could hear, the whooshing loud, like I stepped inside a hurricane. Yet her
final words travelled to me regardless, almost as if carried on the wind she created. I witnessed the
destructive determination on her face, as seconds slipped by me, before I truly understood the intention
behind the look Aleera gave me, I raced toward her, tried to shield her power, absorb it..
Yet the moment my magic touched her, she siphoned me for every drop, red energy zapped toward the
tower, stealing my breath as I knew I would be powerless within the barrier, when she hit me with so
much strength I could no longer hold onto the miniscule piece of power I had left.
A panicked scream ripped out of me the moment her power sted me into the damned portal. They
rebounded off the crystal tower, and echoed inside the portal as I was vacuumed back to Astrid Castle,
back home and far from her reach. My heart beat harder as I hit the ground, hand outstretched, as if my
sheer will alone could stop the portal closing. I couldn’t hold it in.
Why had she done it? None of it made sense, and try as I might, I couldn’t fathom why Aleera just
handed herself over to them like she was a gift on a silver tter.
Meeting death while fighting beside her would have been far better than being forced back home. I tried
to keep the portal open, so I could return to her or even just fight to make it bend to my will, but all of my
power was gone. Aleera hadpletely sucked it away, so she could overthrow us and throw us back
home through the portal.
Home? This ce could no longer bebeled that, not without her. Not for me at least, and I was pretty
sure it would be the same for our mates.
“No!” Kalen gasped. He fell to his knees at first, then sprang up, flinging his hand out, trying to scrounge
up enough power to conjure a portal back to her. But just like with my magic, his had been siphoned too.
All of us were powerless. She’d stripped each of us of any real chance we had to get back to her side.
Despite knowing that, Kalen, frantically, continued to pull on any bit of magic he could muster. He
seeded in opening a portal up for half a second.
“Maybe we can drive?” Tobias suggested. There was a dark haunted look in Kalen’s eyes that hadn’t
been there before this whole mess. A look I hadn’t seen in ages, not since Aleera’s Phoenixes brought
him back to us.
The city was way too far, we all knew it. He was grasping onto anything he could think of that had even
the slightest chance of working. By the time we got there, they would already be long gone. There was
no way the wannabe Queen Bitch would give us enough time to get to Aleera and fight for her. She
never yed fair.
I still couldn’t believe Aleera just tossed us aside as if we were unworthy of fighting by her side. She
abandoned us, knowing full well what her mother was capable of.
Kalen mmed his fist into the hard ground. “She promised!” his scream echoed through the room
bouncing off the walls, angry tears streamed down his cheeks. He mmed his other fist down again.
“She lied!” Anger was getting the best of him, but I couldn’t me him. We’d been prepared toy our
lives down to protect her, and she’d shoved us all to the side.
I understood why, though I didn’t want to acknowledge it. Kalen hissed as he grabbed onto his own hair,
fisting his hands in it, as he pulled until the strands were tense in his grip. He jerked his head up to the
sky and screamed in anger, frustration and the heartache we all felt.
When Kalen had calmed down, I’d exin her reasoning to him. Aleera had sent us away on purpose, it
hadn’t been ast minute decision, her actions were calcted. We would find out the reason for her
actions, I was sure of it. She tossed us away, but I knew it was only to save us.
I paced the room, mind focused. Had she given us any hints in thest words she’d said to us? I thought
about ourst encounter, reying every detail. She’d given herself up to save us, herst words, saying
she forgave me and I needed to forgive myself, left me no clues as to what she was thinking. Unless she
wasn’t sure if she had signed her own death sentence.
Kalen groaned, the sound of a man breaking. “I’m not running this time. I would never run from you,” she
had told him, and the words left my lips in a whisper before I could stop myself from repeating her.
She understood how off the rails Kalen would get without her, how the shadows woulde and haunt
him.
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She had lied about that too,e to think of it. It was a flicker of a memory, something buried deep by
this point, but I recalled her words, that if she ever ran away from us, she would take Kalen with her.
Did that mean she had just fed us all these lies? Or was there something else going on that I hadn’t
understood? A reason for her actions? What had been going through her head in those moments? Her
Phoenixes had still been around at that point, she could have ordered a full-on attack, she had more than
just my magic, more than what those crystals could hold power over.
Everything snapped into ce in an instant, the puzzle solving itself as I finally understood. Aleera hadn’t
been captured, she’d surrendered, and that changed everything. Now the question was, why had she
done it? What was her n, or was it ast -second decision? Maybe one made out of desperation?