Page 162 of Scarlet Wars
“Emma, don’t you fucking d?—”
I didn’t get to finish.
She. Let. Go.
A dark red haze erupted from her like a godsdamn explosion, swallowing the forest in an instant.
And in that moment, Iknewshe was going to die.
I roared, straining against the bodies holding me down, thrashing with everything I had left, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t stop her. Couldn’t reach her. I could only watch as she unleashed something massive, something raw and impossible, something that would consume her before she even had the chance to realize it.
I had seen her survive before. Had seen her claw her way back from the impossible. But this…
This was different. This wassuicide.
Someone yelled something from behind me, but all I could hear was the roaring hum of Emma’s energy as she erased everyone and everything in her path.
I would lose her.
I had never felt helpless before. Not like this.
“Please!”
The word never left my lips, but it pulsed through every inch of me, a desperate thrum beneath my skin.
I had never pleaded for anything in my life.
But right now, I fuckingbegged.
I begged for her life.
I begged forher.
For a moment, there was nothing. No shouting. No boots slamming against the dirt. No fists driving into my ribs. No weight crushing my chest.
And then the bodies were gone.
One second, they were there, the next, they simply weren’t. Erased. As if they’d never existed.
As I staggered upright, I realized the men who had nearly killed us had all been reduced to dust.
And Emma…
Myqueenwas standing in the middle of it all, calm, whole, completely fine.
I blinked once, then jumped to my feet and reached her in seconds, my hands locking around her arms like I could hold her here, keep her from slipping any further away from me.
“Emma…” My voice cracked, rough with adrenaline.
I scanned her face, frantic, searching for pain, for blood, for the slightest indication that she was about to crash.
Nothing.
Her pulse was steady beneath my fingers. Her breathing was even.
She was simply…standing there.
As if wiping out fifty men under a bubble was nothing.
