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For one impossible second, I am trapped on that balcony with my wrists bound, the square beneath me, Arlo below, Kylian gone from my side and moving too fast for anyone to stop. The helplessness is so complete that I am ten years old beneath the porch again, watching fire climb around my mother while Sable shakes against me and the world screams its anguish.

That’s when I realize the magic inside the cuffs is hers.

My mother’s magic. That’s why it feels so familiar, only now her power isn’t cloaking us, it’s extinguishing mine.

The pattern in the metal is her hand, the same patterns she used to draw on my skin with her blood when I started showing signs of power too early.

The rhythm beneath the cold is her heartbeat pulsing out as if she is still alive.

She did not shape this spell to destroy power.

It was shaped to muffle it. To protect me, not to make me helpless.

Kylian appears in the square, already turning toward him, one hand raised, fury moving through him so violently that even from the balcony, I can feel the bond burn.

No!

The word does not leave my mouth.

It leaves my bones.

The cuffs blaze gold.

Every torch in the square dies at once, and the few building lights explode.

Every light in every window around the town square goes out at once, and the entire crowd screams as darkness swallows everything.

For one heartbeat, there is nothing.

No sound besides the crack of my own heart.

Then my magic wakes.

It does not burst through the collar.

It turns it inside out.

The markings flare white, burning with my mother’s hidden spell, as the metal heats around my neck and wrists. Instead of holding my power down, all of the shackles spring open like a door being thrown wide. Because my mother’s magic was both the lock and the key, and my mother’s magic lives inside of me.

The cuffs shatter. The collar clanks against the ground.

And my magic floods free.

The balcony floor cracks beneath my feet just as the dead torches flare back to life, but the flames are no longer orange.

They burn gold. The crowd below falls into terrified silence. The world folds. I do not cast a spell. I do not think of distance, shape, or air.

I think only of Arlo’s throat beneath Kylian’s hand and the look in Kylian’s eyes as his rage takes hold.

The balcony vanishes.

Cold air tears around me.

The ground rises, drops, bends, and then I am no longer above the square. I’m standing between Kylian and Arlo at the exact moment Kylian’s hand closes around the throat he means to crush. Except it is not Arlo’s throat.

It is mine.

Pain explodes across my neck. His fingers lock around me with fury before recognition reaches him, cutting off my air so fast that white light bursts behind my eyes.