The transformation of the heart of bone was not instantaneous. It spread like an infection or perhaps like truth through lies, inevitable once started but requiring time to permeate completely. Selena felt it happening through the flame still embedded in the heart, felt the ancient organ's pattern unraveling thread by thread, its predetermined purpose giving way to something wilder, more chaotic, more fundamentally free.
And with each thread that unraveled, silver flame began to spread.
It wasn't like any fire they'd created before. Not the celestial grace Selena had been born with, not the ancient queen's transformative burning, not even the eternal storm-flame they'd become together. This was bonefire—flame that consumed the very substance of cosmic order itself, that burned through marrow and decree and predetermined pattern with cold silver intensity.
