For a second, I forgot how to breathe.
The circle’s light shot up around us, a cage of pale fire. Corren’s grip on my waist went iron-hard—and then something invisible hooked into him, too.
His power flared, instinctive and brutal. The air shook with it. Under my trapped palm, the earth answered, a deep, painful thrum that vibrated in my bones.
“Liora—” His voice was a raw scrape. “Let… go.”
“If you think I haven’t tried,” I hissed through my teeth.
The rune-light climbed my arm, cool and numbing, like my skin was being turned to stone. My resonance screamed, trying to recoil. Couldn’t. The circle had me by the roots.
And now it had him.
I felt it the moment the magic latched onto Corren fully: a second hook driven into the knot of power that was our not-supposed-to-exist bond. The
