Mira's POV
I feel it in the road beneath my feet before I understand what it is, a ripple moving through ground that has no business rippling, and for one long, disorienting moment, I stand very still, waiting to see if the sensation passes.
It doesn't pass. It settles into me instead, low and unmistakable, the particular resonance of old bloodline magic completing something it's been straining toward for weeks. I've felt smaller versions of this before—the charm's activation, the temple's tremors reported secondhand through Rurik before his capture—but nothing this total, this final.
I understand what it means before I let myself fully admit it.
The bond has completed. Not merely rooted, not merely visible in flashes the way the guardian trial apparently forced it to be. Completed, fu
