“I said I’d cooperate,” Lyra says, her voice cold as the ice around us. “I didn’t say I’d make it easy.”
She turns to the guard holding her, floods it with the same overload technique she used before. Then she’s running—not away from me, but toward the barrier between us.
Her hands press against the metal, and I understand. She needs my magic to break through.
I drag myself upright, forcing my failing leopard form to hold together. Stumble to the barrier, press my remaining strength against it. Our magic meets through the metal—storm and ice recognizing each other, merging despite the obstacle.
The barrier doesn’t shatter. It freezes, then explodes as Lyra’s lightning channeled through my ice creates thermal shock the alloy can’t withstand.
She’s through in seconds, hands already on me, healing light blazing as she chases the toxin again. But there’s too much this time, and she’s already depleted from before. I can feel her pulling from reserves that are nearly empty.
“Can’t,” I gasp. “Too much... toxin...”
“Shut up,” she says fiercely. “You don’t get to die. I won’t allow it.”
Behind her, Crane is rising. The three Broken are closing in. More guards are emerging from side passages. We’re trapped, outnumbered, and I’m dying despite everything she’s trying.
This is it. The moment from her visions. The blood on snow, the failed healing, the ending she saw coming.
But we’re not in snow. We’re in a laboratory carved from blue ice, surrounded by evidence of Crane’s atrocities. And Lyra isn’t giving up.
“The bond-bridge worked before,” she says, voice shaking but determined. “It’ll work again. We’re mates, Magnus. Our magic resonates. So resonate with me. Help me save you.”
She positions herself over me—protective, intimate, desperate. Her healing light pours into me, but this time she’s pulling differently. Not just giving her power, but demanding mine in return. Creating the circuit, the loop that makes bond-bridges possible.
I open to her completely, letting what’s left of my ice magic rise to meet her storm. The fusion creates that same crystalline healing we made before, burning through toxin, freezing corruption, healing tissue.
It’s working. Slowly, painfully, but working.
Until Crane’s shadow falls over us both.
“How touching,” he snarls, one malformed hand reaching for Lyra’s throat. “But ultimately futile.”
The corrupted snow leopard—the mockery of me—lunges simultaneously, claws extended toward Lyra’s exposed back. Multiple attacks, coordinated, designed to overwhelm our merged defense.
This is the moment. The death she foresaw. Both of us vulnerable, the healing incomplete, no way to defend against simultaneous threats.
I should be terrified. Should be rage-filled. Should be something other than what I feel:
Certain.
So instead of trying to shift, to fight, to defend physically—I push deeper into the bond-bridge. Give Lyra not just my ice magic, but everything. My strength. My will. My absolute certainty that she can do this.
Our merged magic explodes outward in a wave that makes the first bond-bridge look like a candle compared to a star.
Crane’s hand stops inches from Lyra’s throat, frozen solid. The corrupted snow leopard freezes mid-leap, its malformed body turned into a crystalline statue. Every Broken in the laboratory stops moving, their stolen forms unable to process the level of power we’re radiating.
And I feel my body transform.
Not just healing. Transforming.
The toxin burns away completely, leaving my shifting pathways not just clean but changed. Lyra’s storm-touched heritage flows through our connection, offering itself freely the way she offers everything—with her whole heart, no reservations.
My leopard form shifts, and I feel new limbs forming. Wings—storm-eagle wings, silver-white like my fur, growing from my shoulders in perfect proportion. The transformation doesn’t hurt. Doesn’t feel wrong. It feels like completion, like my body was always meant to have these, was just waiting for the right catalyst.
For her.
The bond-bridge holds for a moment longer, then releases as I finish healing. Lyra clings to my chest—exhausted but triumphant. And I sit up, still in leopard form but now with wings that respond to my will as naturally as my paws.
