Her eyes filled with horror. “Gennady?”
Gennady felt his head spin. She’d recognised him? She knew who he was? And she’d still married someone else? He tried to tell himself she probably hadn’t had a choice—she would hardly be the first women to be married against her will—but he couldn’t believe it. A surge of anger rose up with him, a wave of magic making Primrose take a step back. She’d betrayed him! How dare she?
“Primrose?” Another voice. A very familiar voice. “Who’s that?”
Gennady stepped forward, his sheer presence pushing Primrose back. Hogarth stood inside the cottage, looking just as Gennady remembered. Fear washed through him, fear and panic and rage. Blind rage. Hogarth stumbled back, too late. Gennady cast the spell. He’d meant to turn Hogarth into a slug and step on him, but the spell was massively overpowered. Hogarth was ripped apart, chunks of flesh and blood suddenly painting the walls. Primrose screamed. Gennady rounded on her. How could she marry someone else?
His knife was in his hand before he quite knew what he was doing. Primrose gasped, one hand tugging at her smock as if she intended to offer herself to him. It had no attraction for Gennady now. He yanked her forward, stabbing the knife into her heart. Power washed around him, surging into his wards. It felt different, but ... it felt good. And yet ... the surge of impressions was different. Primrose had never loved him. She’d felt sorry for him, but ... she’d never loved him. He couldn’t take it anymore.
He threw back his head and screamed. Rage—and fire—burned through him. The fire became real, a wall of flame consuming the cottage and blasting on to destroy the village. He sensed people screaming, begging for mercy from gods he’d never believed in, as their entire lives were swept up and destroyed. He knew, at some level, that he’d just condemned his mother and most of his siblings to death, but it didn’t bother him. His family had betrayed him. They deserved to die. They all deserved to die. He stood in the middle of the storm, untouched as the wave of fire scorched both the farms and the tiny fields to ash. It felt as if he was finally putting his childhood behind him.
They’d be coming for him, he knew. The sorcerers and magicians and aristocrats who’d fear what he’d become. He giggled at the thought, knowing it was too late. He was already too powerful to be stopped easily. And he no longer had the weaknesses of the human form. He couldn’t remember, now, why he’d wanted Primrose, why he’d found Lyndred attractive. It no longer mattered. All he wanted—and needed—was power. He drew in his magic, smiling as it rushed through him. His childhood was gone. Gennady was gone.
“Gennady is dead,” he said, quietly. The flames abated. The shadows pooling at the edge of the village waited for him. It was time to go. “My name is Shadye.”
Continued in Schooled in Magic