Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
Kaelen
The bond didn't just transfer information; it transferred impact.
When Elias had kissed her, it felt like a current of electricity, a bright, shocking realignment of the air in the room.
It was cerebral, dazzling, a connection of breath and spirit.
I had hated it, despised the way her relief tasted on my own tongue, but I had understood it. It was healing. It was necessary.
This was different.
I was sitting against the cold stone of the cavern wall, my sword across my knees, staring into the dying embers of the fire, when it hit me. It wasn't a spark. It was a shifting of tectonic plates. It was the heavy, undeniable settling of a foundation stone.
I felt the press of Thane’s mouth against hers as if it were my own, but wrong.
It was too gentle, too hesitant, lacking the consuming fire that defined us.
But then she responded, climbing into his lap, pressing herself against him, and the sensation shifted from hesitancy to a deep, resonant thrum that vibrated in the marrow of my bones.
It felt like safety. It felt like being held by the earth itself.
A low, guttural sound ripped from my throat before I could stop it. The temperature in the cavern spiked instantly, drying out the damp air and crackling with static heat. The embers in the fire pit flared from dull red to blinding white.
"Easy, lizard," Flynn drawled from the shadows.
He was sharpening his dagger again, the rhythmic shrrk-shrrk sound grating on my nerves like sand in a wound. He didn't look up, but I saw the corner of his mouth twitch. "You're going to singe the moss."
"She is kissing him," I snarled, my hands gripping the scabbard of my sword until the leather groaned under the pressure.
The dragon inside me was pacing, thrashing its tail, raking claws against the inside of my ribs.
It wanted to fly, to roar. The beast inside me wanted to find the Bear and remind him who had found her first.
"We know," Flynn said, testing the edge of his blade against his thumb. A bead of blood welled up, bright and red. He licked it away with a casual, predatory grace. "We can all feel it, Kaelen. It feels heavy. Grounded. Good for her."
"Good for her?" I stood up, the movement abrupt and violent. The stone scraped beneath my boots. "He is my brother. He knows... he knows."
"He knows she needs balance," Elias said softly.
The Phoenix was standing by the water’s edge, gazing into the black depths of the pool where the Skal lurked. He turned to face me, his expression serene, though his eyes swirled with that unnerving mixture of past and future.
"You are fire, Kaelen," Elias continued, his voice melodic and maddeningly calm. "Fire consumes. It warms, yes, but it also burns. Thane is the hearth. You cannot have a fire without a hearth to contain it, or you will simply burn the house down."
"I am not burning the house down," I snapped, pacing the small perimeter of our camp. "I am the one holding the roof up while everyone else plays house."
"You are jealous," Flynn corrected, sheathing his dagger with a sharp click. He leaned back against the rock, crossing his ankles. "It’s ugly on you. Makes your scales show."
I glared at him, and for a second, I felt the phantom itch of scales ripple along my jawline. I forced them back, willing my skin to remain human.
"It isn't jealousy," I lied, the taste of sulfur heavy on my tongue. "It’s concern. We’re in the middle of a war zone. We’re being hunted by a goddess. And they are canoodling on a cliff edge."
"Canoodling?" Flynn let out a sharp bark of laughter. "You sound like an old man. They aren't canoodling, brother. She climbed into his lap and told him she wanted him. I felt it. The want. It was honest."
Possessive rage flared hot and bright, blinding me for a second. Honest. Yes. That was the worst part. When she had kissed me in the Sanctorum, it had been desperate, a choice made at the edge of oblivion. When she had kissed Elias, it had been a transaction of healing that turned into passion.
But this? This quiet moment on the mountain? Aria had asked for it, had sought him out. She found peace in him that I apparently couldn't give her.
"She feels safe with him," I whispered, the admission hurting more than the physical drain of the magic. "Safer than with me."
"Because you are terrifying," Flynn pointed out, not unkindly. He stood up and walked over to me, clapping a hand on my shoulder. His grip was firm, grounding. "You’re the Dragon Prince, intensity personified. Thane is... Thane. He’s the one who remembers to ask if you've eaten, who carries the heavy things so you don't have to. "
"I would carry anything for her," I argued, my voice rough.
"We know," Flynn said. "But you would make it look like a crusade. Thane makes it look like a hug."
I pulled away from him, pacing toward the water. The Skal, Steve, lifted its armored head from the mud, its eyes tracking me warily. It let out a low, subservient chitter, sensing the violence rolling off me in waves.
Danger? the creature projected, a wet, nervous thought. Burn?
"No," I growled at it. "Go back to sleep, squid."
The creature lowered its head, but kept one eye open. Smart monster.
I looked at Elias. "Why does it bother me so much? We agreed. I know we have to share her."
"Agreeing with the mind and accepting with the heart are two different countries," Elias said, drifting closer. "And you have always struggled to share, Kaelen. Even before the chains. You hoard. It’s your nature."
"Pandora," I murmured, the name slipping out like a curse.
The atmosphere in the cavern shifted instantly. Flynn went still. Elias stopped moving. The name hung in the damp air, heavy with a thousand years of resentment and pain.
"She picked you," Flynn said quietly, his voice losing its playful edge. "In the end. Before the betrayal. She picked you."
"And look where that got us," I spat, turning to face them. "Chained in the dark for a millennium. Because I let myself believe that her choice meant loyalty. I let myself believe that love was stronger than politics."
I looked up at the ceiling, imagining them up there on the ledge, outlined by stars I hadn't seen in centuries.
"Aria is different," Elias said. "You know she is different."
"Is she?" I asked, the doubt uncoiling in my gut like a cold serpent. "She has Pandora’s blood. She almost has Pandora’s face. And she may as well have Pandora’s heart, divided among us."
"She is more than Pandora ever was," Elias said, his voice gaining that harmonic resonance again. "Pandora was a victim of her time. A woman trapped between gods and men, trying to please everyone. Aria broke the Gate. She enslaved a monster of the deep. Pandora wept for us; Aria bleeds for us."
"And yet," I said, gesturing vaguely toward the ceiling, "she seeks comfort in the arms of the one brother who stood neutral when the betrayal happened. The one who didn't fight back."
"That is low, Kaelen," Flynn warned, a growl threading through his voice. "Thane carries more guilt than all of us combined. Don't use his nature as a weapon."
"I am not using it," I said, scrubbing a hand over my face. "I am analyzing it. Why him? Why now?"
"Because she is tired, you idiot," Flynn snapped.
"She is carrying a magical weapon of mass destruction in her blood, she has a goddess hunting her, and she just wants to close her eyes and not feel like she has to lead an army for five minutes.
Thane lets her rest. You... you make her want to conquer. "
I stared at him. Was that true? Did I push her? I thought I was protecting her. I thought I was empowering her. But maybe Flynn was right. Maybe my version of love felt too much like war.
I closed my eyes and reached for the bond again. I needed to feel her. Not just the echo of the kiss, but her.
The connection was there, a golden thread humming in the dark. But as I touched it, as I let my doubt and my fear bleed into the line, the thread flickered.
It didn't break. It didn't snap. But it dimmed. It faltered, like a candle flame caught in a draft.
My heart hammered a warning rhythm.
Did she feel that?
If she felt my distrust, my comparison of her to the woman who had destroyed us.
.. it would poison the well. We needed absolute trust to perform the binding.
We needed her to open herself completely.
If she sensed that I was waiting for the knife in the back, she would close off. She would build walls.
And then we would all die.
"I am damaging it," I whispered, opening my eyes. The realization was colder than the void. "My doubt... it’s fraying the line."
"Then stop doubting," Flynn said, as if it were that simple.
"It isn't a switch I can flip, Wolf," I snarled. "It is a thousand years of muscle memory. I expect betrayal. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. It is how I survived."
"But we aren't surviving anymore," Elias said, stepping into my personal space. He placed a cool hand on my arm. "We are trying to live. Survival keeps you alive in a cage, Kaelen. Living requires you to step out of it."
He squeezed my arm.
"Look at the pattern," Elias urged. "Aria saved you from the frost and pulled you through the breach. She came back to the Sanctorum when she could have run. Does that look like betrayal to you?"
I thought of her face in the Sanctorum, soot-stained and fierce, screaming at the Sentinel. I thought of her hand in mine, guiding the Skal. I thought of the way she had looked at me when I fed her, trusting and open.
"No," I admitted, the anger draining out of me, leaving me hollow. "It looks like hope."
"Then hold on to that," Elias said. "Let Thane be the earth. Let Flynn be the wind. You are the fire, Kaelen. But be the fire that warms, not the fire that destroys."
I took a deep breath, trying to center myself. I tried to push the jealousy down, to lock the dragon back in its cave. Focusing on the bond again, I intended to send a wave of apology, of reassurance.
But before I could form the thought, the bond didn't just flicker. It screamed.
It wasn't a sound. It was a sensation. A sudden, violent spike of pure adrenaline and terror that tore through the connection like a physical blow.
It came from both of them. Aria and Thane.
Startled panic. The instinct to flee. The recognition of a threat so old and so deep it turned the blood to ice.
"Something's wrong," I said, my hand flying to my sword.
Flynn was already moving, his head snapping toward the tunnel entrance. "I felt it. Fear. Sharp."
"They are running," Elias said, his eyes going distant and white. "They are sliding. Down. Fast."
"The Citadel," I realized, the memory of the Sentinel’s spear flashing in my mind. "They found them."
"No," Elias whispered. "Not the Citadel. Something else. A light. A beacon."
I didn't wait for clarification. I didn't wait for a plan. The jealousy evaporated, burned away instantly by a protective fury that was a thousand times hotter.
The dragon didn't just surface; it breached.
I didn't shift form; the cavern was too small, and the magic too costly, but the essence of it flooded my limbs.
My skin hardened, phantom scales shimmering in the surrounding air.
My eyes burned with a light that illuminated the entire cavern, casting long, monstrous shadows against the walls.
Heat rolled off me in waves, drying the damp stone instantly.
"Move," I roared.
We sprinted for the tunnel.
I didn't care about stealth or potential traps. The only thing I cared about was up there, exposed to the sky, and something had terrified the Bear Prince.
We tore through the narrow passages Thane had shaped, Flynn taking the lead with his superior senses, me right on his heels, a living torch. Elias trailed behind, moving with unnerving speed.
We met them halfway down the chimney.
Thane was sliding down the rock face, using his body as a brake, with Aria clutched tight against his chest. He hit the floor of the junction with a heavy thud, dust billowing around him.
Aria looked pale, her eyes wide and dark in the gloom. She was clutching Thane’s tunic, shivering.
"Kaelen," she gasped as soon as she saw me.
I was there in a heartbeat, reaching for her. Thane passed her to me without hesitation, and I pulled her into my arms, burying my face in her wind-tousled hair. She smelled of the night air, of Thane’s earth, and of cold, sour fear.
"I’ve got you," I growled, my voice vibrating against her skull. "I’ve got you."
"A light," she stammered, pressing her face into my chest. "From the Astronomy Tower. Teal. Sickly."
"Sorcery," Thane rumbled, straightening up and dusting himself off. His face was grim, carved from granite. "Abyssal magic. It wasn't a signal fire. It was a hunting beacon."
"Marissa," I said, the name a curse.
"She’s scanning," Elias said, arriving behind us. "Like a lighthouse. If that light touched you..."
"We hid," Thane said. "But it was close. Too close. She knows we are still in the mountain."
"She is turning the realm into a hunting ground," Aria whispered. "We have to go back to the Cradle. We have to hide."
"No," I said, pulling back to look at her. I brushed a strand of hair from her face, my hand trembling with the force of the rage I was holding back. "We’re done hiding."
The fear in her eyes was a physical pain to me. I hated it. I hated the thing that put it there. "We go to the Cradle," I said, addressing the group. "We perform the binding. Tonight. Right now."
"Kaelen," Flynn started, "she’s exhausted, she—"
"She is being hunted by a goddess who wants to wear her skin!" I roared, the sound echoing down the tunnels. "We do not have time for rest! We do not have time for hesitation! If we stay here, we die in a hole. If we bind, we might die, but we die on our feet, with weapons in our hands!"