Maddox lunges, fury incarnate, his fist connecting with Maylo’s jaw in a crack that cuts through all the shouting. Maylo’s head snaps sideways, smile still ghosting across his mouth even as he staggers.
But I’m already reaching.
The vial spins toward me—light flashing off its surface, Maddox’s blood streaking red across gold. My breath locks. The room tilts. My hands shoot up—Too fast. Too desperate.Too late.
Glass meets my palm with a sickening, brittle music.
The vial explodes in my grip.
Shards bite deep, hot and precise, embedding like teeth. The ruined liquid spills across my skin before gravity can claim it, running between my fingers, down my wrist. A sting blossoms, sharp and electric. Blood—Maddox’s and mine—mixes in the cracks of my hand, dripping to the floorin red-gold drops.
Something jars inside me as I begin to glow.
Heat floods my ribs. My knees nearly give. It’s not slow or gentle.
It is a collision.
Maddox’s attention snaps to me as he stumbles in a similar way.
A hot, magnetic pull yanks tight between us, threading from the base of my spine straight toward him, stronger than the thread from before. The air between us turns charged, violent, inevitable.
The proximity bond ignites. The power working to complete the bond between us and anchor us together forever.
The bond doesn’t ask. It claims. Loudly. Violently.
The surrounding chamber dissolves—guards shouting, Councilor Blaise is still screaming instructions to the transporter as Councilor Willshire is trying to stop him.
Atticus’s hand is shaking against my shoulder. None of it reaches me.
The transporter’s magic prickles over my skin—first like static, then like a thousand pins of light finding every inch of me. The air around my ankles warps. Someone shouts my name. Someone else curses. The chamber folds in on itself, the sound turning watery, distant.
I should be terrified. I know that. Exile is the end of everything.
But a strange calm anchors itself in my chest, heavy and certain. Bond or not, powers or not, I know who I am.
Arwen Davies.
Sinless.
Worthy.
Loyal.
Unbreakable.
The words don’t feel like something I’m telling myself—they rise like truths carved into bone, finally surfacing. For the first time, they fit.
Heat surges through my ribs, blooming outward. It tastes metallic on my tongue. The power of the bond magic and the transporters magic both pulling at me. I'm frozen as pain ripples through me but I'm filled with silent confidence.
The torchlight fractures into halos, every flame bending toward me as if dragged by gravity. Stone beneath my feet sweats silver, lines of light racing across it like veins waking up.
The transporter’s pull tightens.
And still—still—I’m not afraid.
My vision blurs. My heart slams into something that feels like recognition—raw and primal. Like I’ve been walking around with a missing limb and suddenly it’s slid into me, completing me like a puzzle. The proximity bond seals as I feel Maddox's presence inside me. And suddenly I know with bone deep clarity:I'll never be alone again.
Then the world lurches. The shattered glass at my feet, the ruined mixture soaking into the stone—it was never meant to save me.
