Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
Aria
I stood up, wincing as my muscles protested. The magical exhaustion was still there, a hollow ache in my marrow, but the food and the rest had given me enough fuel to keep moving. I shoved the journal into the waistband of my breeches, tightening the belt.
"Everyone ready?" I asked, looking at my pack.
Flynn flipped his dagger, catching it by the hilt. "Always."
Thane hefted his rock. "Ready."
Elias smoothed his robe, looking serene. "The currents are chaotic, but the path is clear."
Kaelen stepped up to me. He reached out, his hand cupping my cheek. His thumb brushed over my lower lip, his golden eyes searching mine. The jealousy regarding Thane was still there, a simmering heat in the bond, but he had leashed it. He had channeled it into focus.
"Stay behind me, fireheart," he commanded softly. "When the fighting starts, do not be a hero."
"I'll be whatever I need to be," I promised.
He leaned in, stealing a quick, hard kiss that tasted of smoke and possessiveness. "Let's go."
We moved out.
The tunnel leading back to the excavation site felt tighter than before, the air thicker.
We moved in a formation born of necessity, Flynn scouting point, silent as a ghost; Kaelen and me in the center; Elias and Thane watching the rear; Steve the Skal scuttling along the ceiling like a horrific chandelier decoration.
As we walked, the silence stretched, heavy with unspoken things. I could feel the bond humming between us, a four-part harmony of anxiety and resolve.
"Kaelen," I whispered, the darkness giving me courage.
"Yes?" He didn't look back, but his pace slowed just a fraction.
"About Thane," I said. "On the mountain."
His shoulders stiffened. "We do not need to discuss it."
"We do," I said. "Because I can feel your teeth grinding from here. And Flynn was right. If we go into this with you waiting for a betrayal..."
He stopped. We were in a narrow stretch of the tunnel, the walls pressing in. He turned to face me, his golden eyes luminescent in the dark.
"I do not expect betrayal from him," Kaelen said, his voice low. "Thane is the best of us. He carries burdens that would crush me."
"Then what is it?"
Kaelen looked away, staring at a patch of lichen on the wall.
"When you were with him you were quiet. Your soul was quiet.
With me, you burn. With Flynn, you run. With Elias, you fracture.
" He looked back at me, and the vulnerability in his expression stole my breath.
"I am afraid that what you really want, what you really need, is peace.
And I am simply not capable of giving you that. I am a sword, Aria. I am not a shield."
I stepped closer, taking his hand. His skin was scorching. "I don't want peace, Kaelen. Peace is what the Council offered me. Peace was the silence of the Sanctorum while I bled safely into a cup. I want life. And life burns."
I squeezed his hand. "Thane grounds me so I can stand the fire. He doesn't replace it."
Kaelen stared at me for a long beat. "You are dangerous for my ego, little fireheart."
"Good. Your ego is big enough to be a target."
A corner of his mouth quirked up. "Come on. The Wolf is getting impatient."
We caught up to Flynn and found him crouched by a bend in the tunnel, sniffing the air. The faint, rhythmic chanting was audible again, louder than before.
Dissonance, the Skal projected from the ceiling, its thoughts sharp with irritation. Bad noise.
"They're still at it," Flynn whispered. "They haven't stopped."
"Marissa is efficient," Elias muttered. "She is stabilizing the vessel."
"We need a breach strategy," Kaelen said. "Thane?"
Thane moved to the front. "The wall here is softer. Sandstone and shale. I can bring it down, but it will be loud."
"Loud is fine," I said. "Loud is a distraction." I looked up at the Skal. "Steve. You know what to do?"
Chaos, Steve gurgled happily. Disrupt. Bite. Feed.
"Exactly."
"On my mark," Kaelen said, his sword igniting with dragon fire. The sudden light threw our shadows against the walls, monstrous and elongated.
Thane placed his massive hands against the tunnel wall. A deep, grinding vibration shook the floor.
"Three," Kaelen counted. "Two. One."
Thane shoved.
The wall didn't just crumble; it exploded outward into the excavation chamber. A shower of rock and dust blasted into the room, creating an instant fog of war.
"Now!" Kaelen roared.
Steve dropped from the ceiling, landing in the middle of the dust cloud with a screech that sounded like tearing metal. He didn't wait for orders. He spun, some of his tentacles whipping out, smashing a table of alchemical supplies. Glass shattered. Cultists screamed. Marissa cursed.
We surged through the breach.
The scene was a nightmare bathed in that strange stasis light. The air was thick with the smell of old blood and ozone.
Dozens of cultists and traitor Keepers turned toward us, their chanting cut off by shock.
And in the center, standing calm amidst the sudden storm within her circle of glowing jars, was Marissa.
She looked... wrong.
Her white robes were pristine, still untouched by the dirt of the cave, just as I had seen them before. Her skin seemed to glow with a pearlescent sheen. And her eyes were solid white, burning with a cold, divine fury.
"You are late," she said. Her voice wasn't a shout, but it cut through the noise of the Skal’s rampage like a bell. "I expected you to return hours ago."
"We stopped for snacks," Flynn called out, vaulting over a pile of rubble and driving his dagger into the shoulder of a charging cultist.
"Form up!" Kaelen barked. "Get Aria to the Throat!"
We formed a wedge. Kaelen at the point, a whirlwind of fire and steel. Thane and Flynn on the flanks, brutality and speed. Elias and I in the center. We pushed forward.
The cultists threw themselves at us, but they were disjointed, terrified by the Skal that was currently eating a man who had tried to cast a lightning bolt at it.
Spicy meat! Steve projected cheerfully.
Kaelen carved a path. His sword was a blur of golden fire, severing cultists and mundane weapons alike. He didn't kill unless he had to, disabling with brutal efficiency, but the dragon was close to the surface. Every strike was accompanied by a flash of scales, a roar of heat.
We were halfway across the chamber when Marissa raised her hand.
"Enough," she said.
She didn't cast a spell. She simply exerted her will.
The gravity in the room shifted.
The air pressure multiplied. It felt like being at the bottom of the ocean. My knees buckled. Kaelen stumbled, his sword dipping. Flynn was forced to one knee, snarling. Even Steve collapsed flat against the ground, making a noise that reminded me of a dog whining.
"You think you can interrupt the Queen's work?" Marissa asked, floating inches above the ground. She drifted toward us, her white eyes locking onto me. "You think you can steal my vessel, break my toys, and then march in here with your mongrel pack?"
She flicked a finger.
Kaelen went flying backward, as if kicked by a giant. He smashed into the stone wall with a bone-jarring crunch and slid down, dazed.
"Kaelen!" I screamed, trying to move, but the air was solid around me.
"He is durable," Marissa dismissed. She stopped in front of me. The smile on her face was deeply unnatural. "But you... you are disappointing, Aria. I built you better than this."
"You didn't build me," I spat, straining against the invisible weight. "You just tortured me."
"Potay-to, potah-to," she said with an airy wave. "The point is, you are flawed. Corrupted by them." She sneered at Flynn, who was struggling to stand, his muscles trembling with effort. "Wolves. Bears. Beasts. Pandora was meant to control them, not wallow in the mud with them."
She reached out, grabbing my chin. Her fingers were freezing cold.
"But no matter," she said. "The new vessel is nearly ready. Once I harvest the Catalyst..." She looked at the golden markings on my neck. "...I can finish the making."
"Get away from her!" Thane roared.
Thane fought the gravity Hera was pumping into the room. His joints popped and his veins bulged in his neck as he stood up and raised his slab of rock.
Marissa didn't even look at him. She just gestured with her other hand.
The ground beneath Thane liquefied. He sank to his waist in stone that turned to quicksand, trapping him instantly.
"Stay," she commanded.
She turned back to me. "Now. Let's get that blood out of you before it spoils, shall we?"
She raised a silver ritual knife, the twin to the one Ellie had used to stab me in the Sanctorum.
I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. My magic was blocked by the crushing pressure of her aura.
But I remembered something Elias had said.
You let us through you. Now... you must let us bind with you.
I couldn't bind with them. They were scattered, pinned.
But I could bind with something.
I looked past Marissa, at the Titan bone looming over us. It was weeping dark energy. It was the source of the power she was using to hold us down.
And I remembered the journal. The Titan's throat.
I didn't reach for Kaelen. I didn't reach for power that I understood, or at least partly understood.
I reached for something beyond everything I could comprehend.
The bone.
Desperation clawed at me as Marissa-Hera brought the dagger closer to my neck, and I threw my consciousness wide open, bypassing my own barriers, and slammed into the resonance of the dead Titan.
SCREAM, I commanded the bone.
It wasn't a spell or logic. It was just me, Aria Pandoros, the woman who opened things she shouldn't, kicking the hinges off a dead titan's voice box.
The bone vibrated.
A sound, not audible but felt in the soul, erupted from the center of the room. It was a note of pure, unadulterated dissonance.
Marissa faltered. The knife shook in her hand. The crushing gravity wavered as the power source she was sipping from suddenly punched back.
The pressure lifted for a split second.
"Now!" I screamed.
Kaelen didn't need to be told twice. He was a blur of motion, launching himself off the wall. He didn't attack Marissa; he knew she would block it.
He tackled me.
He hit me hard, knocking me out of Marissa’s grip. His body curled around mine as we rolled across the stone floor, away from the silver knife.
"Flynn! The jars!" Kaelen shouted as we skidded to a halt.
Flynn, released from the pressure, exploded into motion. He sprinted for the table of glowing containers.
"No!" Marissa shrieked, her composure shattering. The divine mask slipped, revealing the terrified mortal woman beneath for just a second. "Do not touch them!"
She spun, throwing a bolt of white fire at Flynn.
Elias intercepted it. He stepped into the path of the bolt, catching it on a shield of turquoise light. The impact sent him sliding backward, his boots smoking, but he held.
"Break them!" Elias yelled, his face contorted with effort as the bolt still tried to break his shield.
Flynn reached the table. He didn't carefully smash them. He grabbed the edge of the heavy stone table and heaved.
The table flipped.
Dozens of glass jars crashed to the floor.
The sound of shattering glass was beautiful.
Glowing liquid spilled across the dirty stone. Runes flared and died. The biological matrices, my stolen potential, withered instantly upon hitting the air, turning to grey dust.
"My work!" Marissa screamed, the sound echoing like a banshee. "My legacy!"
The air in the cavern grew instantly colder. The presence inside Marissa swelled, enraged.
"You ungrateful little pulses of electricity," Hera’s voice boomed from Marissa’s throat. "I will unmake you."
She began to rise into the air, white light pouring from her eyes, mouth, and fingertips. The Titan bone hummed, reacting to her fury.
"We have to go!" I shouted, scrambling to my feet, Kaelen helping me up. "We have to get to the Throat! The distraction worked too well!"
"The path is clear!" Thane yelled, having pulled himself from the stone. He pointed to a dark opening under the Titan bone that had been revealed when Flynn flipped the table. "There!"
We ran for the opening.
Marissa-Hera unleashed a wave of force that tore the ceiling open. Rocks the size of houses began to fall. It made what she did before look like child's play. Like she'd been skipping stones across water rather than trying to destroy something.
We dove into the darkness beneath the Titan bone just as the world collapsed behind us.
The last thing I'd expected was to slip down a steep chute, but that's what we did before tumbling unceremoniously into the dark, leaving the screaming goddess behind.
When we stopped, we had landed in a small, spherical chamber. It was lined with crystal pillars that hummed with a low F-sharp.
The Throat.
"We made it," Flynn gasped, checking his limbs. "We're alive."
"For now," Kaelen said, standing up and brushing dust from his shredded clothes. "But she will dig us out."
I stood up, walking to the center of the room where crystals that I could only assume were supposed to be the keys waited.
"Then we'd better change the song quickly," I said, pulling the journal from my waistband.
I opened the book to the page with the runes. I looked at the crystals once more trying to figure out how they matched up with what Master Theron had written since he'd never actually seen this place.
My heart stopped.
The crystalline structure was cracked down the middle, dark energy oozing from the primary fissure while spiderwebbing cracks spread in all directions around it.
"It's broken," I whispered. "The mechanism, it's broken."
"Marissa," Elias said, his voice quiet. "She was drawing power from the bone. She must have damaged the structure."
"So we can't change the frequency?" Flynn asked, panic rising in his voice. "We're still bait?"
"We're worse than bait," Kaelen said, looking at the ceiling where dust was sifting down. "We're trapped rats."