"I said leave. Last chance."
The cultists, clearly not understanding their danger, took another step forward.
Zephyron didn't gesture. Didn't move. The sky simply responded.
Three lightning bolts crashed down from the heavens with surgical precision. They struck the cult hunters where they stood. The thunder was deafening.
The smell hit me first. Ozone and burned meat and something acrid that made my throat close. Brother Torum, Sister Vesla, Brother Kayne—they collapsed like puppets with cut strings. Smoke rose from their bodies, thin gray curls that caught the morning light.
The crowd screamed. Stampeded. Bodies crashed against each other in their desperation to get away from the platform, away from the Storm Lord who'd just killed three people with a thought.
I stared at the smoking corpses. Brother Torum's hand was still reaching for his obsidian blade. Sister Vesla's eyes were open, unseeing. Brother Kayne had fallen on his side, his expression frozen in surprise.
"I—" My voice broke. Nothing came after it. No words. No prayers. Nothing.
Brother Torum had taught me the harvest chants when I was fifteen. Spent hours helping me memorize the ancient syllables, patient when I stumbled over the pronunciation. Sister Vesla had braided my hair before my High Priestess initiation, her fingers gentle as she worked the complex pattern that marked my rank. Brother Kayne had shared his rations during the three-day meditation fast, slipping me dried fruit when the supervisors weren't looking.
They'd hunted me. Would have dragged me back to face execution. Would have done it believing they were saving me, saving the faith, saving everything they'd dedicated their lives to.
Now they were dead.
"I didn't want this." The words came out broken. "I don't deserve—"
"Deserving has nothing to do with bonds." Zephyron's grip on my wrist was firm but not painful. Electricity danced between our joined hands, silver-blue arcs that should have hurt but only tingled. "They choose. And apparently, mine chose someone who crashes into me with cult assassins on her heels and world-ending intelligence in her head."
His other hand moved to the back of my neck again, fingers pressing gently against the tracking shards. The bond mark pulsed between us. I felt his certainty, his immediate planning, his complete lack of regret about the deaths.
"Come." He pulled me toward the towering Sky-Spire Citadel that dominated the eastern edge of the plaza. Glass and steel rose into the sky, catching the morning light in ways that made my eyes hurt. "We need to remove those shards before more hunters arrive."
My legs barely worked. The bond mark on my temple throbbed with every heartbeat, pulling me toward him like gravity. Like I was an object in orbit and he was the sun. Three days of running had destroyed my body. The bond activation had destroyed something else entirely.
Guards in silver and midnight uniforms snapped to attention as we approached the citadel steps. Their eyes went wide when they saw the bond marks.
"My Lord—" one started.
"Alert the Conclave." Zephyron didn't slow down. "Inform them that the Storm Master has bonded. Publicly. And that there's a cult assassination plot in motion that requires immediate coordination."
"The Unnamed is—"
“Not here. Not now. Wait until we’re private.”
I nodded.
"Good." His voice was calm, reassuring. "Breathe, Thalia."
How did he know my name? The bond. He'd felt it when I felt him introduce himself to the crowd. Everything we knew, we both knew now.
The thought made my skin crawl. Every ugly secret. Every terrible action. Twenty-seven dead girls. He could feel that guilt in me like a physical weight.
"You are forgiven,” he said, sensing my thoughts. “For all of it. Now. Let’s take you home.”
And with those words, he changed.
Chapter 2
Shift.
Dragons could shift.
