I step in on my own accord this time. Close enough for the bond to pulse between us like wildfire beneath our skin.
I tilt my chin up, forcing him tosee me.
“Say it.”
He blinks. Caught. Cornered.
“What?”
“Say it,” I snap, unrelenting. “Tell me—right now—that you don’t want this. That you don’t wantme.”
His body goes still. Then—he breaks.
A low growl tears from his chest as his hands snap to my arms, rough and desperate. Clutching me like I’m the only thing keeping him from unraveling. His eyes are storm and fire. Wrecked and wild.
“You think I don’t want this?” His voice is stripped raw. “You think I don’t—”
He chokes on the words, then sucks in a breath—sharp and ragged. Like the truth is burning on the way out. Like I’m already too close to everything he’s not ready to feel.
And then—the bond erupts. Heat. Electric. Alive. It tears through me—through him. Thane’s grip on me tightens. Hiswhole body shakes with restraint. Like if he lets go, he’s done.
I press closer to him.
“Then stop running,” I tell him, my voice low, edged with steel.
His throat bobs, eyes dropping to my mouth. And for one breath—I think he’ll break.
But the bond breaks first.
Itdetonates.
Heat slams into my chest like lightning—raw, ancient, alive—ripping through me so fast my knees nearly give. A burst of gold erupts from my hands with a sound like the sky cracking open. The air booms around us, a single deafening crack that warps everything after it. The shouts and clashing steel of the training field splinter, as if the world has been shoved underwater—every sound distorted, fractured.
I gasp, but the air tastes different—metallic, electric.
Embers whip outward, curling and spiraling like they have wills of their own. Thane stumbles back, his own fire tearing free to meet mine—red-orange, furious, a storm answering a storm. They collide midair, hissing, roaring—
—then shift.
Blue. What seems like a hundred hues of blue, dancing within the blaze, as it reaches for the sky, taller than the largest tower at the outpost.
Not his or mine, but something else. Something shared.
The world narrows to that color, that impossible flame. There’s no heat, only the sensation of standing in the heart of a whirlwind.
The bond surges—not a thread now, but acommand.
It pulses through the air, through my chest, through the ground. Energy whips around us—wild, electric, too much.
I can’t breathe.
Thane stares at his hands—like they’ve turned into somethinghe no longer controls.
“No.” He shakes his head, eyes darting back to me. “No, this isn’t—this can’t—”
The bond growls low and deep. Somethingancient. The sound is all around us as if coming from the gods themselves.
The earth beneath us vibrates. The spires groan. The sky flashes—silver, violet, tearing open.
