Chapter 170. Queen’s Power

Xerina’s POV

The world spun in a haze of darkness and light, flickers of energy dancing across the wreckage of the courtyard. I collapsed to my knees, panting, my chest heaving with the force of the power that had erupted from me. It felt like I had ripped the very fabric of existence apart, but the satisfaction of Valeria’s downfall was fleeting, swallowed by the black hole of grief gnawing at my heart.

Papa’s lifeless body lay crumpled in the dirt, his neck twisted at an unnatural angle, his face frozen in that last moment of terror.

“No… no…” I crawled to him, my hands trembling as I reached out, trying to touch his face, to pull him back, to undo what I had just witnessed. The raw, unrelenting sorrow gnawed at my insides, threatening to tear me apart.

The power inside me, the one I had barely grasped, still crackled in the air around me, surging under my skin like a wild re out of control. My heart screamed for vengeance, for life, for something mo