Because I Love You✔️

Chapter 70: Removing the Mark

Visibly flustered, Ella took off her clothes and covered her chest with one arm, using the other to hide her lower regions.

Zelphira examined the horrid scars stretching across the left side of her slender body, then she looked at Xaphile, who was covering his groin.

"Both of you, lie flat on the altar, side by side..." the faery commanded, gesturing towards the stone. "Vadil... this will be hard on your back, I'm afraid, but it must be done." 

Xaphile swallowed and slowly stepped forward, turning around and lying flat. Ella, eyes averted and face flushed, hesitantly did the same.

They lay side by side, heads turned away from each other, as Zelphira stepped around the stone until she was standing behind their heads.

Leaning down, she pressed one hand across Xaphile's mouth, and the other across the bite scar on Ella's neck.

"I will ask only once more," she murmured, voice vibrating the air. "Are you certain about having the mark you placed on this woman removed?"

 "Yes," Xaphile mumbled past her hand. "Just do it already."

Zelphira smiled warmly and closed her eyes, entire body being suffused with yellow light.

His eyes widened a little when sparkling tendrils began trailing around her, moving in swirling streams that seemed to shift like mist, and the clearing was suddenly filled with a blinding glow.

The woman's silver blonde hair began to lift towards the sky as the glittering rivers of luminescence slowly encircled the hand being pressed against his mouth neck.

Then... burning agony erupted within in the mark on Ella's throat, shooting across their link and scalding his own in a powerful phantom pain. Xaphile flinched in agony and Ella choked on a screech, letting go of herself to claw at her neck.

Eyes bugging out of his head, Xaphile fought to breathe as the soothing iciness within Ella's body was dragged from every corner of her limbs, instantly being replaced with a burning heat that lit her muscles on fire.

He could feel it strongly.

Then it began to fade.

Ella flailed, then squeezed her eyes shut, kicking her legs as the glow around Zelphira's hands turned dark blue and began to radiate ice crystals.

The azure color began to wind up the woman's arm when she started singing a tuneless melody, voice rising and falling in waves... and as it did so, the blue energy stretched down towards Xaphile.

His huge eyes locked on the light as it continued stretching towards his face and he suddenly had a feeling that this was not going to be pleasant.

He was right.

He involuntarily choked when the glowing light suddenly surged forward with a fiercely cold wind that shredded deep into his mouth and stole his breath.

It roared down his throat like a cube of ice, scalding him so badly that his back arched. He flailed as spurts of frigid pain seared throughout his veins, vision clouding over with a blue haze that nearly blinded him.

Then it stopped.

He went limp, since the pain ebbed and the magic entering his body meshed into a gap he hadn't even noticed was there.