Page 15

All of it, every suppressed tear, every swallowed scream, every moment of fear I’ve refused to show, I pour into the invisible threads binding Sacha. My muscles tighten with the effort, teeth grinding as I channel rage into the magic that never asked my permission before rewriting my life.

The air around us sharpens, temperature plummeting so fast my next breath stings. Cold pours through our joined hands like liquid nitrogen, spreading outward from our palms in waves. Something crackles, the sound brittle, like ice forming across a frozen lake.

When I open my eyes, I gasp. Tendrils of frost bloom in the air between us, delicate crystalline patterns hovering for a heartbeat before dissolving into mist. Beautiful and terrible at once.

“It’s working.” His voice is tight. “Keep going. Don’t stop now. ”

I push harder, rage churning through me, trapped, torn from my world, caught in something I never chose.

The energy building between our hands intensifies, climbing my arm, flooding my chest. My skin prickles, cold needles of ice forming and vanishing with each heartbeat.

The room narrows around us, shrinking to this moment, this connection , this silent battle against forces I can barely comprehend.

And then …

Something snaps.

There’s no warning. It breaks all at once—a rupture, violent and absolute. The sound cracks through the chamber. The floor bucks beneath us, stone heaving like it’s alive.

Sacha’s grip turns crushing. A strangled sound escapes him—half gasp, half something worse—as his whole body seizes.

His head jerks back, tendons straining along his neck, jaw clenched so tight I think he might shatter it.

His eyes fly wide, then roll back, whites exposed.

It’s not just pain I’m witnessing, it’s agony beyond expression, beyond sound.

The pulse of energy stutters, then surges again, blue light blazing so bright it sears the air.

For one breathless second, I see it—the binding, alive and glowing, wrapped around every inch of him like superheated wire.

Then it detonates outward, showering blue-white sparks that vanish before they hit the ground.

Sacha staggers backward, as if struck, tearing his hand from mine.

He catches himself against his desk, knuckles white where they grip the edge.

His chest heaves, breaths ragged and shallow.

Sweat beads across his forehead, sliding down temples gone pale as death.

His eyes, always so sharp and controlled, are wild now, unfocused, pupils blown wide with shock.

For the first time since I met him, the mask has shattered completely. This isn’t the sharp-tongued prisoner, or the cold strategist. This is Sacha without armor—exposed, stripped bare by something even he didn’t see coming.

“Are you okay?” My hand is still half-raised, fingers curled in air that no longer holds his.

He straightens slowly. His eyes find mine and hold, disbelief written across every line of his face.

“The binding.” His voice is barely audible, hollowed out and hoarse. He stares down at his hands. “It’s … changed.”

“Changed how? Is it broken?” My voice shakes. Adrenaline is still surging through me, the ghost-sensation of that terrible snap still vibrating in my bones.

“Not broken. Altered. I can feel it loosening.”

Disbelief wars with a wild, desperate hope, both fighting for dominance across his face. He steps toward the archway leading to the staircase, each movement cautious, like he’s bracing for the world to snap back into place.

This threshold has been his prison’s edge since before I arrived. The invisible line he couldn’t cross without my touch.

He extends his hand through the doorway with excruciating slowness. His fingers tremble slightly, the first physical sign of uncertainty I’ve seen from him. They pass through where the barrier should be. No resistance stops him. No invisible force pushes him back .

He takes one step across the threshold. Then a second. His movements are tentative at first, like someone expecting pain with each breath. Then his back straightens, shoulders squaring as realization dawns. Freedom, at least within the tower, is suddenly, unexpectedly his.

“It worked,” he breathes, turning back to me.

For one unguarded moment, emotion transforms his face—wonder, stunned relief, and something that might almost be gratitude. It’s gone in an instant, but I’ve seen it now, a glimpse of the man beneath the controlled exterior.

“The binding has changed. I can leave this chamber.”

“But we’re still trapped in the tower.” I hate myself a little for saying it, for dimming that rare moment of triumph with reality.

“Maybe not.” His expression changes back to that familiar focus, but not fully.

Underneath it, there’s a spark, a fire long banked but now rekindled.

“If we can alter the binding, we might affect the tower itself. They’re connected, the same magic that holds me holds this place apart from the world. ”

He moves toward the staircase with new purpose in his stride. “The lower chamber where you entered. That’s where we should try to break through.” He pauses, and looks back at me. “That’s where you changed everything the first time.”

I follow him down the stairs, watching the way he moves with his newfound freedom.

His strides are fluid now. Unchecked. It’s unsettling how different he already seems to be.

More dangerous. The careful movements I’d thought were natural grace were just another cage.

Without it, he moves like a predator, economical and precise, every gesture loaded with purpose and power.

The lower chamber appears unchanged, a circular room with smooth, featureless walls. No sign of the door I entered through. The blue light is dimmer here, casting everything in murky shadows. The air feels different too, more charged, a little like how it feels after a storm.

“Now what?” I look at the seamless metal.

“What were you doing when you got in?” He scans the chamber. “You opened the tower once before. Try again, now that the magic has been altered.”

I approach the wall, pressing my palm against the cold surface. Nothing happens, nothing changes. The wall stays solid, blank beneath my touch. I push harder, willing something to change, but the stone remains obstinately solid beneath my hand.

“It’s not working.”

“You’re not channeling your emotions into it. Try the same approach you used with the binding. Use what you’re feeling right now.”

I close my eyes, focusing on my desperate need to escape, to go home. I picture my apartment. The sound of rain against the window. The blur of headlights. The taste of coffee in the morning. The life I’ve lost. But the wall stays cold and unresponsive beneath my palm.

“It’s not enough. What were you feeling when you first found the tower? When the door opened for you?”

“I was dying. Dehydrated. Sunburned. Terrified. ”

“Survival is a powerful motivator. But there are other emotions just as strong. Fear. Rage. Desperation.”

I think about the past three days. The confusion.

The helplessness. The slow realization that I might never see my home again.

Anger builds inside me, hot and fierce. I think of Christmas, the celebrations I’m missing, and the people who might be wondering where I am .

.. or not. I think about being trapped in this tower forever with a man I don’t trust, in a world that doesn’t make sense.

And something breaks. A dam that’s held back all the panic I’ve swallowed since the desert.

“That’s it.” Sacha’s voice is soft. “Focus on that. Channel everything you’re feeling.”

I press harder against the wall, pouring everything into that one point of contact.

Rage. Fear. My absolute refusal to remain trapped here.

The wall chills under my hand. Frost forms around my fingers.

The sensation shoots up my arm like ice water in my veins, making my heart race and my breath catch.

It’s exhilarating and terrifying, this sudden connection to something larger than myself. Power flows through me, alive and untamed.

It answers emotion, not thought, and I can barely hold it.

The patterns spreading from my fingers remind me of frost on windows in winter—delicate, shifting veins that seem to breathe. But this is more than frost. It’s magic. Real and tangible. And it’s flowing out of me and into the tower itself.

The realization is dizzying. I’m doing this. Me . Not just feeling the magic, but shaping it. Commanding forces I didn’t know I could touch.

“Yes,” Sacha whispers. “It’s responding. Good.”

The cold spreads outward, spooling from my skin in fine lines that branch and link.

A shape emerges, familiar and impossible.

A doorway. The blue light pulses faster, brighter, syncing to a rhythm I can’t quite follow.

The wall beneath my palm hums with pressure, a low vibration I can feel but can’t hear.

Then the surface begins to thin, becoming less substantial. I can almost feel through it now. The heat of the desert beyond, the vast openness waiting. The barrier between here and there stretches, pulls, and weakens beneath my touch.

With a sound like cracking ice, the wall gives way.

Not all at once. Just the section under my hand, dissolving in a shimmer of frost and light. It peels back in slow ribbons, revealing brightness too sharp to look at directly, a vertical slash of open desert where smooth metal used to be.

Sunlight pours through the gap, golden and blinding. Heat crashes into me like a wave, thick and dry and real in a way nothing else here has felt.

I take a step back, breathing hard.

The tower has opened. I’ve done what I didn’t think was possible.

Behind me, Sacha’s moves. He stops beside me, and I can feel the change in him as much as see it. His gaze locks on the desert.

“You did it,” he whispers, genuine awe coloring his voice. “You actually did it.”

I stare at the opening, hardly believing what I’m seeing .

.. what I’ve done. My hand tingles where it was pressed against the wall.

The air smells different now—drier, scorched.

After three days trapped in this place, after believing I might never see the sky again, freedom stands before us, harsh and unforgiving as it may be.

The desert beyond looks just as deadly as when I first arrived—worse, maybe.

Now I understand what it can do to a body unprepared for its brutality.

What it almost did to mine. But it’s a way out.

It’s movement and change and possibility.

It’s the path to answers I desperately need, and maybe, somehow , a way home.

Sacha approaches the opening with steps that can’t quite hide their hesitation.

He pauses at the very edge, where the tower wall meets desert air.

Sunlight strikes his face for the first time since I’ve known him.

His expression stays carefully blank, but tension radiates from every line of his body, every muscle drawn tight with anticipation … or fear. Maybe both.

And maybe it’s not just fear of what’s out there, but of what’s no longer holding him back. Of what it means to stand at the edge of a cage and find the door open.

“What’s wrong?” I move closer, afraid we’ve come this far only to find another barrier. “Didn’t it work? Can’t you leave?”

His head turns, and his eyes meet mine and, for once, they don’t look through me but actually hold. See. Settle.

“Nothing is wrong.” His voice is soft. He studies the opening for a moment longer, gaze sweeping across the horizon as though committing it to memory. Then, with a deep breath, he steps through into the light.