The words land like a stone as my heart skips. This wasn’t part of the plan…
The room stutters around me. A hush spreads thick and heavy.
Warmth rushes up my neck. The bond flaring so hard it steals my breath.
My throat closes up.He actually said it.For the first time my bond is admitted out loud.
Atticus meets his father’s eyes and doesn’t look away — not even for a second. “If she goes, I go.”
Atticus's father goes motionless, eyes narrowing a breath too slow. Confusion flickers- brief, but there. The whole room seems to lean into the moment, waiting to see which way he'll snap.
A haunting tune echoes from the stairs. Whistling. And everyone's head turn as Maylo saunters in, looking like he's just stepping outside for a walk. The tension breaks like glass.
Maylo’s not alone. He’s followed — from the shadows Maddox steps into the torchlight, and my chest does something stupid and traitorous.
"Maddox? Why aren't you in Feastwell?" His father shouts in confusion.
Maddox pulls something out of his jacket, and my eyes flick to the pale golden liquid. He’s holding a vial. His promise. He did it. He came after me. My heart fills with gratitude.
Sound explodes. Councilors shout; a half dozen aristocratic voices triple into a single, ugly roar.
The room detonates into chaos.
Councilor Blaise’s voice cracks across the chamber, sharp as a whip, yelling at the transporter: “None of this makes a difference. Begin the exile protocol—now!”
Councilor Willshire steps forward, teeth bared. “Stop—stop, damn it—” His shout ricochets off the marble walls, but no one listens. Guards from the shadowy sides of the room run forward and trip over themselves, shoving past one another to defend their own Councilor.
A hand clamps onto my shoulder—Atticus. His fingers dig in, not hard, but with the desperation of someone trying to hold lightning still. “Arwen—stay with me—”
I barely hear him.
Everything else sucks inward, narrowing to a single point across the room.
Maddox.
He breaks through the chaos.
Bodies shove and shout around him—Councilors barking orders, the Dean trying to restore order—but the noise folds away from him as if something in the room recognizes who holds its center of gravity now. His coat cuts the haze in a clean sweep, each step measured, mechanical, relentless. Boot heels strike the metal with the rhythm of a countdown.
His jaw is a line drawn in stone, fury sculpted into restraint. His eyes hold mine—locking, pinning. The rest of the chamber blurs, but he sees me with a precision that makes the air in my lungs hitch. It feels like a cable snaps taut between us, pulling him forward, pulling me upright as a golden thread from his chest reaches me. Nobody else seems to see it.A proximity bond.
Around him, the world is fracturing—Blaise’s voice cracking in outrage—but his hands stay steady. Not a twitch. Not a breath out of place.
In that grip, the vial burns with its own heartbeat. Light swells inside the glass—gold, alive, desperate to be used.
Maylo steps into my frame of vision beside him.
Where Maddox is tension and steel, Maylo is the opposite—loose, smiling, wearing a grin far too calm for the chaos. Something off-kilter shines in his eyes, a glitter of mischief sharpened into danger.
Before I can decipher it, he moves.
A dagger flashes—silver caught in the chamber’s fractured light. He catches Maddox’s wrist, drags the blade across his palm in one practiced, brutal line.
Maddox jerks, fury snapping through his expression, but Maylo is already moving—already rolling Maddox’s blood between his fingers, already smearing the glowing vial with it, quick and unhesitating, as if he’s rehearsed this moment alone in the dark.
“Catch,” he mouths at me.
He winks—sharp, wicked, almost affectionate—before the vial leaves his fingers in a bright arc through the air.
