Chapter 5
FIVE
Aria
The impact didn't just shake the mountain; it tried to unmake it.
Kaelen drummed into the Sentinel with the force of a falling star, a collision of dragon fire and golden light that sent a shockwave expanding outward in a perfect, terrifying ring.
It flattened the remaining rubble into dust. The sound wasn't a crash; it was a shriek, the high-pitched scream of physics protesting the violence being done to reality.
I instinctively crouched behind Thane, throwing my arms up to shield my eyes against the blinding white flash.
The Bear Prince stood immovable, a living bulwark against the apocalypse.
His feet sank inches into the granite bedrock as he absorbed the blast wave that would have pulverized my ribs and liquefied my organs.
Yet, he didn't flinch. Somehow I doubted he even blinked.
He just radiated a dense, earthy gravity that kept us anchored while the world tried to blow away.
"Watch the right flank!" Elias’s voice cut through the roar. It was unnervingly calm, melodic and precise, as if he were critiquing the brushstrokes of a painting rather than orchestrating a battle to the death. "He favors the spear-arm. The rotator cuff is stiff."
A blur of motion whipped past us, disturbing the settling dust. Flynn. He moved faster than my mortal eyes could truly track, a streak of tawny skin and bared teeth. He didn't run; he flowed, liquid and lethal, a predator finally released into a world full of prey.
The Sentinel staggered back, the glowing white spear swinging wide.
It tried to bring the massive weapon to bear on Kaelen, who was relentless, hammering fists wreathed in black flame against the golden breastplate.
The metal hissed, glowing a sickly cherry-red where Kaelen struck, but it held.
This was a Sentinel of Olympus, I was sure that at the very least its armor was crafted in the fires of Hephaestus’ forge; I couldn't imagine that it would melt easily, no matter how hot the dragon’s rage burned.
"Wolf, the knee!" Kaelen roared, the sound vibrating in my chest. He ducked under a swung spear that decapitated a stone pillar behind him as if it were made of dry twigs.
Flynn materialized at the Sentinel's joint, moving from stillness to violence in a fraction of a second.
He didn't have a weapon. He didn't need one.
Flynn drove his fingers into the microscopic gap of the greaves, his nails lengthening, darkening, and hardening into claws that sparked against the divine alloy.
With a snarl that sounded like tearing metal, he yanked.
Metal shrieked in agony. The Sentinel buckled, its mechanical perfection compromised by savage, directed force.
"Now, Kaelen," Elias sang out, lifting a graceful hand to point at the exposed throat guard. "The gorget is loose. You have three seconds before it realigns."
Kaelen didn't hesitate. He launched himself off the Sentinel's buckling knee, spinning in the air with terrifying grace. His hand clamped onto the throat of the helmet, his fingers biting into the gold.
"Burn," Kaelen snarled.
He didn't just summon flames. He dumped the entire torrential heat of his dragon fire directly into the armor, a concentrated injection of fire and heat.
The air in the crater vanished, sucked instantly into the vacuum of the combustion. The Sentinel didn't scream, but it made a sound like a kettle whistling on the stove before exploding under pressure.
White light erupted from the visor, from the welded seams, from the articulated joints. The metal turned liquid, then vapor.
Kaelen yanked off the melting chest plate, flipping backward to land in a crouch beside Flynn as the Sentinel collapsed into a pile of slag and steam, no longer recognizable as anything that had once been shaped by gods.
Silence crashed back into the crater, heavy, ringing, and absolute.
I gasped, my lungs fighting for oxygen in the super-heated, ozone-rich air.
My connection to them, the mystical bond that had nearly killed me moments ago when I opened, or rather became, the Gate, was wide open.
I had no mental shields left. Kaelen's savage triumph was hot and metallic, tasting of sulfur as it ran through the bond.
A moment later Flynn's adrenaline, sharp and electric, twitching in his muscles like a live wire was replacing it, followed by the cool, detached calculation of Elias, who was already scanning the fractured sky for the next threat, seeing patterns in the chaos.
Thane turned to me, his massive frame blocking the sight of the smoking ruin. He offered a hand the size of a shovel head, calloused and steady. "Are you injured, little one? The shockwave was... severe."
"I'm fine," I lied, my voice shaking so hard the words almost fractured. I stared at his hand for a second before taking it. His skin was rough, warm, and undeniably real. He hauled me to my feet as if I weighed no more than a feather.
I looked at them. Really looked at them.
They stood amidst the ruins of my life. The courtyard of the Citadel was shattered, the place where I had trained since I was a child was nothing more than rubble.
They were there, though, dusty, bloodied, and magnificent.
Flynn was wiping soot from his face, grinning like a lunatic, completely unbothered by his nakedness.
He radiated a raw, animal comfort in his own skin.
Elias was inspecting a burn on his forearm with mild curiosity, the wound already knitting together with faint sparks of phoenix light, smelling of cinnamon and ash.
And Kaelen.
He stood over the remains of the Sentinel, his broad chest heaving.
His skin was mapped with scars and fresh soot.
Faint iridescent scales shimmered along his forearms before fading back into skin.
He looked up, his golden eyes burning with intelligence and rage, finding mine across the crater.
The intensity of his gaze hit me harder than the shockwave had.
He marched toward me, kicking aside a piece of glowing armor without breaking stride. Flynn and Elias fell into step behind him, a phalanx of liberated gods.
"You," Kaelen growled, stopping inches from me. He reached out, cupping my face with hands that were still hot to the touch, smelling of smoke and molten gold. "You insanity-driven, reckless, beautiful disaster."
"I saved you," I whispered, my knees trembling as the adrenaline finally began to drain away, leaving me hollow. "I saved all of you."
"You died," he accused, his voice dropping to a rough whisper. His thumbs stroked my cheekbones, frantic, as if checking I was solid. "I felt you die, Aria. For a second, between the breath and the pull of the mechanism, you ceased to exist. The tether snapped."
"I came back."
"Don't do it again." He leaned his forehead against mine, his breathing ragged, his presence overwhelming my senses. "I spent a thousand years in the dark, plotting, raging. I will not spend a single second in the light burying you."
"Touching moment," Flynn drawled from somewhere to my left, his voice rasping with lingering growls.
"Really. Top tier. Even I'm feeling a bit misty.
But we are currently standing naked in a hole, surrounded by the wreckage of our prison, and the sky is bleeding.
Perhaps we should relocate before the neighbors complain? "
Elias looked up at the rift above us, his turquoise eyes narrowing. "He's right. The death of a Sentinel rings a loud bell in the firmament. Others will come. And they will bring heavier artillery than a mere foot soldier."
"The archives," I said, forcing my brain to work through the haze of exhaustion.
I pulled away from Kaelen's mesmerizing heat, though my body screamed at the loss of contact. I pointed toward the shadowed tunnel mouth half-buried in rubble, the servant’s entrance we had been aiming for.
"There are clothes there. Old ceremonial robes unused for decades.
Weapons. And a path down the mountain that skips the main roads. "
Kaelen straightened, the general taking over the lover. "Lead the way."
We ran.
Or tried to.
My body was off. Something felt fundamentally different; my center of gravity shifted, and I couldn't coordinate my movements. My legs felt like lead, and the ground seemed to tilt with every step. I stumbled over a loose cobblestone.
"Allow me," a smooth voice said from entirely too close.
I didn't have a chance to respond before Flynn had me up in his arms. He adjusted my weight effortlessly against his chest and began running over the treacherous ground like it was the flattest, smoothest pathway possible.
He moved with a wiry, devastating grace, leaping over rubble and sidestepping fissures that would have broken a human ankle.
I smelled the forest floor and musk on him, overpowering the scent of the burning Sentinel.
"I'll teach you later, if you like. How to run without thinking," Flynn winked at me, his amber eyes dancing as we scrambled over the ruins of the Sanctorum walls, slipping into the cool darkness of the archive tunnels. "Provided we survive what comes next, of course."
The silence of the underground was a blessing after the roar of battle.
The air here was cool, smelling of dry paper and stone, a stark contrast to the destruction outside.
I directed them deeper, my enhanced sight, a gift from the Gate, I realized, picking out the path in the gloom where pitch darkness should have been.
I stopped at a supply cache Master Theron had shown me years ago, hidden behind a false section of wainscoting. I tore open the chests, coughing as dust motes danced in the gloom, and tossed bundles of wool and leather to the princes.
Flynn set me down reluctantly and pulled on a pair of breeches, grimacing at the rough fabric. "It scratches. I miss being a wolf. No seams."