The mark did not simply drop to zero.
It detonated.
White-gold light erupted from my wrist with a sound like the sky tearing. The force threw both of us backward through the mud, our bodies tumbling across the wet earth like rag dolls. I landed hard, my shoulder screaming, my vision swimming. Darius crashed beside me, his wounds lighting from the inside as if the same fire that lived in the curse had poured into his blood. I felt every cut, every broken place in him as if it belonged to my own body, the gash across his ribs, the spear wound in his thigh, the arrow still buried in his shoulder. The bond between us stretched to a single, screaming thread, taut and burning and somehow still holding.
Kane's wolves broke from the tree line in a black wave of steel and teeth. Torches bobbed.
