Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
Elias
The growl of Aria's stomach disrupted the heavy, suffocating silence of the cavern like a thunderclap in a library.
It wasn't a polite rumble; it was the sound of a biological engine running on fumes, protesting the indignity of starvation while trying to rewrite the laws of physics.
She flinched, her hand flying to her midsection, her cheeks flushing a dark rose color that was visible even in the dim bioluminescence of the moss.
"Subtle," Flynn muttered from where he was pretending to sleep, one eye cranking open. "I think you just woke the bats in the upper gallery."
Aria glared at him, but the fire in her amethyst eyes was dim, banked by exhaustion. "I haven't eaten a full meal in... I don't actually know how long. And the last thing I ate, I threw up because we were discussing my reproductive organs."
"Valid," Flynn conceded, sitting up and stretching. His spine popped, a sound like dry branches breaking. "I could go check the stream again. See if those blind fish have friends."
"I will go," Kaelen said, rising from his vigil against the stalagmite. His movements were stiff, the cold of the void still lingering in his joints despite his dragon fire. He reached for his sword. "I need to move. The air here is stagnant."
I watched them, the Wolf and the Dragon, vibrating with kinetic energy they had no outlet for.
They were men of action trapped in a waiting room, and their restlessness was muddying the waters.
I needed clarity. I needed to see the threads of the future, but right now, the cavern was a tangled knot of anxiety, hunger, and testosterone.
And I needed to be close to her. Alone.
"Go together," I said, my voice soft, threading through the tension.
Kaelen frowned, looking down at me. "One of us should stay. To guard."
"Thane is here," I pointed out, gesturing to the massive shadow by the tunnel entrance. "And the beast. But I have looked into the currents, brother. The pattern... it fractures if we operate as individuals right now. The probability of capture increases exponentially if you hunt alone."
It was a lie. A beautiful, silky fabrication. The future was currently a wall of grey static, opaque and terrifyingly silent. I couldn't see five seconds ahead, let alone calculate capture probabilities. But I knew Kaelen. He respected strategy.
Kaelen hesitated, his golden eyes flicking to Aria, then to the dark tunnel. "Are you certain?"
"The tapestry does not lie," I said, keeping my face smooth, the mask of the Phoenix firmly in place. "Together, you are a phalanx. Apart, you are targets."
Flynn stood up, rolling his shoulders. "Works for me. I hate fishing alone anyway. No one to appreciate my technique." He looked at Kaelen. "Coming, Your Highness? Or do you need a written invitation?"
Kaelen grunted, sheathing his sword. He walked over to Aria, pressing a brief, searing kiss to her forehead. "We will be back. Do not leave the cavern."
"I'm not going anywhere," she murmured, leaning into his touch for a second before pulling back. "Just... bring back something that isn't slime-based."
The two of them disappeared into the tunnel, their footsteps fading quickly.
I waited for a few moments, then looked toward the entrance. Thane was watching me. The Bear Prince didn't say a word, but his brown eyes were heavy with knowing. He knew I was lying. He knew I was manipulating the board.
But he probably also knew why.
Thane pushed himself off the wall, grunting with the effort. He whistled low, and the Skal, Steve, lifted its armored head.
"Come, beast," Thane rumbled. "Let us check the perimeter. Far perimeter."
The Skal chittered happily and scuttled after him. Thane paused at the edge of the light, giving me a single, slow nod before vanishing into the gloom.
Silence reclaimed the cavern, but it felt lighter now. Less crowded.
I turned my gaze to Aria.
She was sitting by the dying embers of the fire, her knees pulled to her chest, her arms wrapped around her shins. She looked impossibly small. The shadows under her eyes were dark bruises against her pale skin.
I needed to see. The veil that had fallen over my sight when she woke from her "bad dream" was maddening.
It was as if someone had thrown a heavy blanket over a mirror; I could see the shapes moving beneath, but no details.
No color. If I could just touch her mind, if I could synchronize our rhythms.. . perhaps the static would clear.
I drifted toward her, gliding silently over the stone. I sat down across the fire from her, folding my legs beneath me in a meditative pose.
"They are gone," I said softly.
Aria didn't look up. She was staring into the red coals as if reading a language written in heat. "You lied to them."
"I adjusted the narrative," I corrected. "Kaelen needs a mission. Flynn needs movement. And we... we need quiet."
"We need a plan," she whispered, her voice rough. "Not quiet."
"Plans require foresight," I said. "And right now, Aria, I am blind. Since you woke, since the dream you do not remember, the future has become a fog."
She flinched. It was small, a tightening of the muscles around her eyes, but to me, it was a shout.
"I told you," she said, her voice tight. "It was just a nightmare."
"Nightmares do not erase timelines," I pressed gently. "You are the center of the web now. If you are clouded, I am clouded. I need to know what you felt. What you saw. If we connect—"
"No."
The word was sharp, a barrier slammer down. She looked up at me then, and the fear in her eyes wasn't for the future; it was for me. For what I might see.
"I don't want to know," she said, her voice trembling. "I don't want you to look at me and see... glass jars. Or monsters. Or a future where I'm just a vessel for someone else's legacy."
I flinched this time. The memory of my earlier vision, the pregnancy, the wrongness of it, hung between us like toxic smoke. I had hurt her with that truth. I had taken her body, which she had just reclaimed from the Council, and told her it was still a battlefield.
"I apologize," I said, the words heavy with my own centuries of regret. "I act as a lens, Aria. Sometimes I forget that the light I refract can burn."
She looked away, picking at a loose thread.
"It's not your fault. It's just…” She let out a large breath before rushing onward, “I can't handle any more destiny right now, Elias.
I'm full. I'm overflowing with destiny. If you tell me one more thing about what the Fates have in store for me, I think I'll scream until the roof comes down again. "
I watched her. I saw the way her hand trembled. I saw the way she favored her left side, where the phantom pain of Ellie's knife likely still lingered. I saw the bruises on her wrists from Kaelen's grip when he froze, the scrapes on her cheek from the tunnel collapse.
She was in ruins. Beautiful, defiant ruins. And I was trying to read the graffiti on the walls instead of shoring up the foundation.
"Very well," I said, shifting my approach. "No futures, no prophecies, and no grand designs."
"Then what?" she asked warily.
"Healing," I said.
I moved around the fire, closing the distance between us. She tensed, but she didn't scramble away. I stopped a foot from her, close enough to smell the salt and stale air clinging to her skin, close enough to feel the fever-heat radiating from her exhaustion.
"You are in pain," I observed. "Your body is knitting itself back together, but the process is slow. The residue of the magic... It’s acidic. It eats at the nerves."
"I'm fine," she lied automatically.
"You are holding your breath to keep your ribs from aching," I countered. "Your hands are shaking because your nervous system is misfiring. You channeled the power of four demigods, Aria. You’re bruised in places that do not have names."
She slumped slightly; the fight drained out of her. "It hurts," she admitted, a whisper so quiet I almost missed it. "Everything hurts. My bones feel like they're too big for my skin."
"I can help," I said. "The Phoenix isn't just about rebirth from ashes. It is about the restoration of the form. I can burn the pain away. I can knit the fraying edges of your spirit."
She looked at me, skepticism warring with desperate need. "Like when you healed my shoulder? In the tower?"
"Deeper," I said. "That was emergency triage. This... this would be restoration."
"What's the catch?" she asked.
I smiled, a sad, small thing. She was learning. "There is always a price for magic. You know this. Energy cannot be created, only transferred."
"So what do you need?" she asked. "My blood? My shadow?"
"Tears," I said softly.
She blinked. "Tears?"
"Phoenix healing requires a catalyst of pure emotion," I explained, my voice dropping into the cadence of an old song I couldn't quite remember the lyrics to. "Water from the source of grief or joy. The legends say a phoenix's tears can cure any wound, even death."
"So you just... cry on me?" She sounded dubious.
I looked down at my hands, pale and slender against the dark stone. "I cannot."
"You can't what?"
"I cannot cry," I said, the confession tasting like ash.
"I haven't shed a tear in... I do not know.
Centuries? Millennia? The fire inside me?
It consumes the water. I feel the grief, Aria.
I feel it as a weight that could crush a star.
But my eyes are dry deserts. I burned my tears away a thousand lifetimes ago. "
She looked at me, and the wariness in her expression softened into something resembling pity. "That sounds lonely."
"It is arid," I agreed. "But there is another way. Another exchange of breath and moisture and life."
Her eyes widened slightly. She knew where this was going.
"I would have to kiss you," I said.
It wasn't a demand, nor was it a seduction. It was a statement of magical fact.