We are one force.
One breathless, bound thing, stitched together by love and fire and the gods-damned pain of it all.Bare flesh against flesh draws us only closer together.
He blinks at me, his eyes dark and shocked. “Aura?” he whispers.
“I’m still here,” I breathe. “You are too.”
Talon shudders. A sound leaves him—part sob, part growl—as if his very soul is breaking open under the weight of what we’ve become.
Then the light inside himerupts.
His breath catches. His spine arcs beneath my hands. Fire pulses beneath his skin, thenpushes outward, blazing brighter with every heartbeat. Magic snarls to life, ancient and untamed, and it no longer fights me. Itliftsme.
His eyes snap open, molten gold and wild wonder. “I can feel you,” he rasps, voice barely human. “Everywhere.”
“I know,” I whisper, stunned. “Me too.”
His scales bloom back to life—not in patches, but in a radiant, unstoppable wave. Fissures blaze along his skin like magma veins, lighting up the dusk. The earth seems totremblebeneath him as his body begins to change.
I don’t let go.
For the first time, Idon’t have to.
Bones stretch. Wings unfurl. A tail arcs behind him, carving wind. Fire roars through the grass as his true form rises. Not a man, not a monster,a god on wings.
And I’m stilltouching him. Arms around his neck, cheek pressed to scales that once would have seared me into ash. Now they hum with power—butthey are mine to hold.
His Dragon is massive, obsidian and flame, crowned in horn and fury, but none of it frightens me. I seehim. My Talon. Lit from within. Alive. Whole.Mine.
He roars once, an echo that cleaves the sky.
We launch.
The worlddropsaway.
Wind lashes my face. Fire curls around his wings. The night swallows us whole as Talon surges upward, higher, faster,free, and I ride him without fear.
My thighs grip him. My fingers curl into his neck. The heat of him sears through my clothes, but not my skin. I feel it all, every beat of his massive heart, every rise and fall of his wings, every gust of air that breaks against my body as we climb past the treetops and into the stars.
We don’t speak.
Weburn.
Together.
Bound by something deeper than magic.Fated. Made. Claimed.
And for the first time in our cursed, star-crossed, barely-lived lives…
We fly.
Chapter 41
Back to Where We Started
TALON
Iland soft enough that our feet barely leave a dent in the grass, but my arms don’t loosen. I keep Aurora wrapped up in them like she might vanish if I let go. I don’t intend to let go. Not now. Not ever.
