Chapter 10
TEN
Aria
I floated back to consciousness on a tide of warmth and the savory, impossible scent of roasting meat.
It was disorienting. The last thing I remembered was the damp, crushing cold of the cavern and the metallic taste of my own exhaustion. Now, the air smelled of smoke and rendered fat, a rich, earthy aroma that made my stomach cramp with sudden, violent hunger.
I didn't open my eyes immediately. I burrowed deeper into the heat source behind me, a solid wall of muscle and steady rhythm that felt less like a pillow and more like a fortress.
My cheek rested against fabric that smelled of sulfur and ozone, not the damp wool Flynn had been wearing, but something sharper. Something incendiary.
"She’s waking," a voice rumbled through the chest pressed against my back. It was a deep baritone that vibrated right through my spine.
Kaelen.
I was in Kaelen’s arms.
The realization sent a jolt through me that wasn't fear, but a sharp, electric awareness. I peeled my eyes open. The cavern was still dim, but the darkness had been pushed back by a small fire crackling a few feet away.
"Easy," Kaelen murmured. His arm tightened around my waist, keeping me anchored against him. "Don't try to sit up yet. You're still weak from all that magic usage."
I shifted, realizing my position. I was seated between his legs, my back resting against his chest, his legs bracketing mine.
It was intimate, possessive, and overwhelmingly safe.
I looked down at his arm wrapped around me; he had discarded the tattered ceremonial robes for a simple tunic he must have scavenged from the supplies, sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms corded with muscle and faintly etched with the scars of our escape.
"Food?" I croaked, my voice a rusted hinge.
"Flynn went hunting," Kaelen said, his breath stirring the hair at my temple. "He found a subterranean stream a mile down the tunnel. Blind cave fish and something that looked like a rabbit but probably wasn't. He insisted it was edible."
"He ate the first one raw just to prove a point," Elias’s voice drifted from across the fire.
I turned my head slightly. The Phoenix sat cross-legged on the other side of the flames, looking annoyingly pristine in his grey robe.
He was staring into the fire, his turquoise eyes reflecting the dancing embers, his expression distant and unreadable.
Thane was further back, sharpening a jagged piece of obsidian against a rock, the rhythmic shhh-shhh sound providing a strange comfort.
Flynn was nowhere to be seen, likely prowling the perimeter.
"Here," Kaelen said.
He shifted, reaching toward the fire where a skewer of meat rested over the coals. He didn't use a cloth to pick it up; his bare fingers grasped the hot wood without flinching. As he pulled a strip of meat from the bone; the juices ran over his thumb.
It was steaming hot, searing enough to blister mortal skin. I hesitated, my stomach screaming yes while my instinct screamed burn.
Kaelen brought the morsel toward my lips. "Trust me."
I watched, mesmerized, as a faint golden shimmer coated the meat.
It wasn't fire; it was the absence of it.
He was pulling the heat away, drawing the thermal energy into his own skin, tempering the food with a precision that was terrifyingly delicate for a creature capable of turning a mountain to slag.
Dragon magic. The mastery of temperature.
"Open," he whispered.
I parted my lips, and he fed me.
His fingers brushed my mouth, rough calluses against soft skin, and a shiver that had nothing to do with the cave's chill raced down my neck. The meat was perfect, all warm, savory, and tender. I chewed and swallowed, nearly moaning at the sensation of food hitting an empty stomach.
"More," I whispered.
He fed me again, piece by piece. It was a slow, rhythmic dance.
He would tear a strip, cool it with that subtle flare of magic, and place it in my mouth.
Every time his skin brushed mine, whether it was his thumb grazing my lower lip or his knuckles brushing my cheek, each time the golden markings on my skin pulsed in response.
It was an intimacy that felt deeper than the kiss we’d shared in the Sanctorum.
That had been adrenaline and desperation; this was care. This was sustenance.
"You're scorching the meat, brother," Elias noted without looking up. "You run too hot when you're focused on her."
"Watch the shadows, bird," Kaelen snapped without heat, his attention entirely on me. "I’ll watch the roast."
I leaned back against him, feeling the solid thump of his heart. It was slower than a human’s, heavy and powerful, like a forge hammer. "Where did Flynn go?"
"He’s scouting the tunnels," Kaelen said, offering me another bite. "And working off energy. The wolf stands still about as well as a lightning strike."
The food settled the tremors in my limbs. The fog in my brain receded, replaced by a sharp, crystalline awareness of exactly how precarious our position was. We were eating cave-rabbit in the dark, hunted by gods and mortals alike.
But for this moment, wrapped in dragon-warmth, I felt strangely invincible.
"Why?" Elias’s question cut through the comfortable silence like a blade.
I swallowed the last bite, looking across the fire at him. He had finally lifted his gaze from the flames. Those turquoise eyes were focused on me, swirling with a mixture of confusion and a terrifying, ancient curiosity.
"Why what?" I asked, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.
"Why did they let it happen?" Elias tilted his head, copper hair catching the firelight. "The Keepers. The Council. Why did they allow you to become the last of the Pandoros line?"
I stiffened. Behind me, I felt Kaelen's muscles tense, the relaxed embrace suddenly turning rigid as he sensed my own tension.
"Elias," Kaelen warned, his voice a low growl. "Not now."
"It matters," Elias insisted, his voice stepping up an octave into that harmonic resonance that signaled prophecy.
"It matters because the threads are tangled, Kaelen.
I am trying to unspool the future, but the past is.
.. knotted." He looked at me, intense and unblinking.
"Why are there no others? No cousins? No branches? Why just you?"
"That's right," I said slowly, the warmth of the meal beginning to sour in my gut. "Is that... strange? Lines die out." I looked anywhere and everywhere, except at Elias.
"Not when they are the only lock on a prison for gods," Elias said.
"For a thousand years, the Council maintained Pandora's bloodline with obsessive redundancy.
There were always spares. Always sisters, cousins, aunts.
A carefully pruned garden to ensure the Gate never went hungry.
And yet... your mother was an only child.
You are an only child. Two generations of a single point of failure. "
"Why are you asking me this?" I asked, my voice rising. "You're the seer. You see everything. Shouldn't you know?"
"I see time," Elias corrected softly. "I see flashes.
I see lightning strikes in the dark. I do not always see the landscape that they illuminate.
But the Council... they use wards. They hide their sins in the shadows.
And lately, when I look at your timeline, Aria, I see.
.. gaps. I want to know from you." He leaned forward, his face illuminated by the dying fire.
"I want to see it from your point of view, not what the magic is trying to show me.
Why did they risk everything on just you? "
"Enough," Kaelen snapped. His hand moved to cover my heart as if shielding me from the question. "She is tired, Elias. She doesn't need to be interrogated about the Council's breeding programs."
His words stung though. It had been exactly that at one point. A breeding program.
"It is important!" Elias pressed, his calm fracturing. He stood up, pacing a tight line back and forth. "Because I keep seeing it. Flashes. Stuttering images in the static. You, Aria. Pregnant."
The word hung in the air, heavy and suffocating.
I felt all the blood drain from my face. My hands grew cold.
"What?" Kaelen’s voice was barely a whisper, but it carried the threat of a coming storm.
"I see her with child," Elias said, looking distressed, running a hand through his copper hair. "But the image... It feels wrong. It feels forced. Like a reflection in a broken mirror. I need to know why the line thinned so dangerously. Did they stop trying?"
I wanted to vomit. The meat that had been such a delicacy a moment ago now churned in my stomach, threatening to come up. I tried to pull away from Kaelen, suddenly unable to bear the contact, but he held me fast, not trapping me, but grounding me as he stroked soothing paths up and down my arms.
"Aria?" Kaelen asked gently.
I stared at the fire, watching a log crumble into ash. The memory clawed its way up from the dark place where I had buried it five years ago.
"They didn't stop trying," I whispered.
The cavern went silent. Even Thane’s sharpening stone stopped its rhythmic scraping.
"What do you mean?" Kaelen asked, his voice careful, like he was approaching a wounded animal.
"After my mother died," I said, the words tasting like bile. "They panicked. I was an adult, but I hadn't taken a lover. I was just... raw potential. And I was alone. If I died, the Gate fell."
I closed my eyes, and I was back in the white room. The smell of antiseptic herbs. The cold stone table. The faces of the Council looking down at me not as a person, but as a failing piece of infrastructure.
"They tried to breed me," I said, my voice flat, detached.
"It wasn't... natural. It was clinical. Cold. Procedures. Rituals meant to enhance fertility mixed with alchemy. They had suggested lovers in the past, but none had appealed to me, so they had let it go. Until they didn’t, or couldn’t, let it go any longer. "