The transition didn't happen with a roar. It happened with a wet, heavy drop of blood that hit the snow between my feet.
Then another.
My vision began to strobe—white, gray, then a sickening, pulsing red. The power I had siphoned from Finn and the loyalists wasn't sitting quietly in my veins; it was trying to claw its way out. Every nerve ending felt like it was being scraped by a rusted blade.
"Elara, your ears..." Silas’s voice was a frantic ghost of a sound.
I reached up. My fingers came away slick and hot. I wasn't just "stronger"; I was overcharged, a vessel designed for a gallon trying to hold an ocean. My knees buckled, and for a second, the gray mist around us flickered and died.
That was the moment they had been waiting for.
The Council hadn't just appeared. They had been ci
