The tentacle tightened around his wrist one last time, not with the crushing force of a predator, but with the desperate, heavy pressure of a hand grasping a lifeline in a storm. It was a fleeting moment of profound intimacy amidst the carnage, a silent transfer of will.
Then, with a violent whip of motion, Octavia released him, her silhouette blurring as she surged back into the fray. She moved with a new, terrifying ferocity, the renewed purpose of a woman who had just been handed a future and intended to tear it from the jaws of death to protect it.
"Try not to die!" she shouted over the roar of a mana explosion, her voice cutting through the din with the razor-sharp clarity she reserved for the things she meant most seriously. "I want that future with you!"
"Don't you dare leave me without it!"
