“Stay close,” he said.
Then his hand was at my hip.
Not tentative. Not asking. His grip was firm, thumb pressing into bone as lightning flared gold along his arm. His scent sharp and familiar, cedar and smoke, rain threaded through it.
The street vanished.
Stormlight cracked open, the air ripping with the sharp, electric snap of an arc pulled hard and fast. My breath punched out of me as the city folded away.
Then we were there.
The outer lines slammed into place beneath our feet, wards humming low, stormglass veins glowing faintly through thestone. Wind tore across the open space, rain striking harder here.
His hand lingered at my hip only releasing me when the ground steadied.
“We’re late,” he said.
The storm answered before I could.
The rain shifting again.
Drops truck the stone around us, but not the space directly ahead. Water curved in thin, unnatural arcs, splitting as though something stood there already.
The air tightened. Pressure built until my ears rang and silver flared sharp beneath my ribs.
The wards flared once, wind tore across the line, rain driving sideways, thunder cracking close enough to feel like impact rather than sound.
All at once, the pressure snapped.
Space folded inward with a violent, breath stealing lurch. The air tearing open like fabric ripped by force. A figure broke through the distortion in a rush of collapsing magic. Momentum aimed straight for me.
No warning.
No hesitation.
Lightning exploded gold, blinding and violent, the force of it slamming into the attacker and the sone beneath us at the same time. The impact cracked the ground, rain blasting outward in a white-hot ring as thunder detonated overhead.
He had the man by the throat before the echo finished rolling.
Lightning crawled over Atlas’s hand, biting deep, precise and merciless. There was a sharp final crack, lightning discharging straight through flesh and bone and then his body went slack.
Atlas released him.
The man’s body hit the stone hard, already lifeless as the rain claimed him, washing dark across the ground.
Then the storm broke.
Wind screamed across the outer line, rain lashing down in sheets, lightning tearing the sky open again and again.
I stared at the body.
At the place Atlas had chosen to stand.
At how little it cost him to kill.
He turned back to me, rain streaming down his face, eyes glowing, lightning flashing across his skin.
“This,” he said over the roar of the storm, “is the price of being mine to protect.”
