Gavriel tried to push himself up anyway.
Pure instinct. Pure panic. His brain had already left the library and was back in the lake, back in the dark, back with the tentacles and the teeth and the woman whose terror was still echoing through a matebond that stretched across whatever distance the cuff had thrown him. His arm buckled beneath him on the first attempt, elbow cracking against stone, and he dropped with a ragged gasp that sprayed red across the rune.
His body was done. His body could go fuck itself.
A portal rippled open beside them, the air splitting with the clean, bright frequency of Hyran's magic, and four people stepped through with the coordinated urgency of a team that had done this before and hated every repetition.
Hyran. Maelor. Alaric. Aeron.
