31 AURORA
“FUCK!”
I slam my fist against the LandRover's dashboard, the vintage plastic almost cracking beneath the impact.
“Gods, lady!” Basil yells, pressing his small frame back into the driver's seat. “What the hell is wrong with you? Is that what you call laying low?”
I can’t answer him. I can’t breathe.
FUCK.
The word didn't just come from my mouth; it ripped straight through the bonds, into my lungs and poured out of my throat. Somewhere out there in the freezing downpour, Tally and London’s absolute hopelessness hit my chest like a physical blow.
Through Tally’s thread, I taste the bitter, suffocating panic of a predator running out of time, his wolf instincts screaming, but I don’t understand why.
Through London, his erratic mind spirals and spikes. He’s unmoored again. Fully.
Are they giving up? Are they hurt?
No.
A fierce, white-hot fury ignites deep inside me, so deep it feels like it’s in a part of my body I never knew existed.
They need help.
For seventeen years, my life has been defined by walls. Caged at Drakeward Manor. Locked in the Quo cells. Kept weak, untrained, and helpless by design. I am so fucking done with being the princess who needs a shield.
Let me be the weapon.
The final fuse hits the powder keg.
An explosion of pure, blinding heat erupts from my core. My heart stumbles.
And stumbles, and stumbles.
Wump-ppp.
Fuck, don’t fail me now. I can feel it.
I can feel the fucking ability to shift.
Wump-ppp.
Wump-ppp.
Wump-ppp.
And then.
It’s almost like the dead tissue, that stupid patchy fibrosis, morphs into something else. Something not exactly human.
The cold, scarred muscle in my chest thaws, expanding into a living reservoir of raw energy. My lungs don't burn for oxygen anymore—they drink in the storm. Every single cell in my body is unspooling, dissolving, then reassembling.
The final lock breaks, flooding every single vein with a rushing, roaring torrent of innate power.
My blood isn't liquid anymore; it's static and starlight. I can feel my bones and organs turn into pure, weightless light.
No disgusting crack of my spine. No agonizing stretching of flesh.
Just fucking beautiful light.
I’m on my knees.
On my knees in the mud and rain.
Basil pushes me away. “Holy shit.”
I look up to see him throwing an arm over his face, shielding himself. “Rory, your eyes! Your skin!”
I try to stand, but the solid earth ceases to be of interest to my body.
Mother.
Fucker.
I’m floating.
A translucent, diaphanous, shimmering shroud wraps around me as my bones turn weightless, hollow. I don’t understand what I am, but whatever it is?
It’s right.
Me.
Dragons can go fuck themselves.
I swoop my right arm through the air. It leaves a trail of sparkling vapor, the inertia moving me in that direction. So I can fly!
I extend a leg, a perfect extension—with absolutely no strain, no aching muscles.
Just grace.
It’s as though I’m an air-dancer. A ballerina who belongs to the wind. I twist and turn, allowing myself not to fight the process. My skin gleams and shifts and I realize I’m no longer a solid form.
With a phantom push of my toes, I launch upward towards the clouds. I soar, leaving Basil open-mouthed below me.
Everything is new, everything.
Everything except the bonds.
They are stronger than ever. I follow them, flying straight over the high perimeter fence.
Trees? An entire thick forest?
Not a problem. I’m a tempest of silver mist.
My body whooshes past massive oaks like fast-moving water around a boulder. Natural, fluid, perfect.
I am the wind.
But I cannot allow myself to give fully to this…this whatever it is. Tally and London need my help. Sky needs my help.
Francois?
He’s close, ready to be whatever I wish.
I drop low, turning myself into a rushing, low-hanging fog that skims over the gorse bushes and rotting logs until I see them. Except ‘see’ isn’t the right way to explain it.
My consciousness knows they are there. Whirling like a shimmering dust devil, I enter a muddy glade.
OK, so now I have to turn—
The silver mist condenses instantly. Oh! Shit! That was easy.
London and Tally run toward my human form as I stagger into the mud, trying to regain my balance.
Motherfuck. Gravity feels like a physical insult!
My bones are suddenly so clumsy. Tally’s warm hands catch my shoulders before my knees can buckle, his gold-eyes wide and wild. “Fucking stunning,” he breathes.
“Kitten!” London pushes into me, throwing his arms around my waist. “A lady-tornado. The whirl in my wind.”
“No time,” I gasp, one hand clawing into Tally’s plaid flannel shirt, the other knotted in the curls on London’s chest. “I felt your panic detonate. Tell me what’s happening. Where’s Sky?”
Taliesin stills completely. “Out here somewhere, Rory. She’s been buried alive in these woods, and could be anywhere.”
The horror hits me like an icicle to the chest.
Buried alive.
London puts a hand on my face, twisting me towards him. “Magic eyes can see what we can’t, and yours? Yours are glowing like the only stars in the night sky. You can find her.”
Yes. I know I can.
“She’s running out of air, Rory,” Tally gasps.
“Then try and keep up,” I tell them.
Whoosh.
The transition is effortless.
The solid world dissolves, and I launch myself, a silver mist, into the dark, cold woods.