Chapter 2
TWO
Aria
Athena’s spear blurred toward Elias’s exposed throat; the panic in my chest detonated like a landmine. I didn't reach for the bond. It reached for me. It grabbed me by the base of the skull and yanked.
Suddenly, I wasn’t just Aria.
I was everyone.
My vision split into a kaleidoscope of five distinct perspectives, superimposed over one another in a dizzying, nauseating overlay.
I was Kaelen, seeing the curve of Hera's throat as she laughed, smelling the ozone of his own rising fury and the deep, possessive terror that I, that Aria, was too close to the enemy.
I was Flynn, crouching low to the left, seeing the tendons in Athena’s arm bunch a split-second before she struck, smelling the stale sweat of the goddess and the sharp tang of steel.
I was Thane, feeling the vibrations of the dying city through the soles of my boots, sensing the structural weakness in the floor beneath Hera’s throne.
I was Elias, watching the spear tip approach my own jugular, calculating the exact angle of entry, knowing with cold, mathematical certainty that I was too slow to dodge.
And I was me, standing paralyzed in the center, overwhelmed by the sensory assault. I felt five hearts hammering against five sets of ribs, tasted blood, bile, mint, and ash all at once. I became a hive mind of the five of us. It was total immersion.
Move, Flynn’s instinct screamed in my right ear.
Block, Thane’s resolve grunted in my left.
Duck, Elias’s logic whispered.
BURN, Kaelen’s rage roared.
The input was too much. The sheer volume of tactical data, emotional panic, and physical sensation short-circuited my restraint. I couldn't pick a precise countermeasure. I couldn't thread the needle.
In that split second of cognitive overload, I grabbed the loudest, hottest thread in the tapestry. I grabbed Kaelen.
I didn't mean to take it all. I just wanted enough fire to deflect the spear.
But with zero barriers between us, with my soul wide open to all of them, I didn't siphon a cup of water; I broke the dam.
"NO!" The scream ripped from my throat, but it was harmonized, a chord struck by five voices.
I thrust my hand out, palm flat, aiming not at Athena, but at the space between her and Elias.
Dragon fire didn't just shoot from my hand; it erupted.
It wasn't a stream of flame. That would have been too simple. What came from me was a solid wall of black and gold flames, hot enough to vaporize iron instantly. It slammed into Athena with the force of a freight train, catching her mid-lunge.
She didn't get burned.
She got blasted.
The goddess was lifted off the ground and thrown backward, crashing into a row of empty thrones with a sound like a collapsing cathedral.
But the fire didn't stop.
It poured out of me, a torrential, unchecked river of combustion. It hit the obsidian floor and the stone didn't melt; it ignited. The fire climbed the curtains of woven starlight. It raced up the pristine marble columns. It licked at the ceiling, consuming the painted constellations.
"Aria, stop!" Kaelen’s voice came from outside and inside my head simultaneously.
I couldn't. The valve was stuck open. I was channeling the Dragon Prince’s millennium of hoarded rage, and it felt good. It felt like breathing after holding my breath for a lifetime.
"The roof!" Thane bellowed, shielding his face as chunks of burning plaster began to rain down.
Hera shrieked. It wasn't a regal sound. It was the shriek of a homeowner watching her house being destroyed. She threw up a hand, summoning a shield of white light to deflect a falling beam that was entirely engulfed in black flames.
"You little pyromaniac!" Hera screamed, her eyes wide with genuine shock. "Stop this! You'll bring the whole palace down into the Void!"
The heat was instantaneous and suffocating. The air turned to steam. The sweet scent of ambrosia curdled into the stench of scorching sugar and burning velvet.
"Grab her!" Flynn yelled, diving through the smoke.
I felt his hands on me, not through my own skin, but through his sense of touch, the fever-heat radiating off my body. He tackled me, knocking me sideways.
The physical impact jarred my concentration. The stream of fire sputtered and died, leaving me gasping, my throat feeling as if I’d swallowed charcoal.
The High Seat was an inferno. The flames were eating the very magic of the structure, defying physics, spreading faster than thought. Thick, oily smoke billowed down from the ceiling, obscuring the furious form of the Queen.
"Well," Flynn coughed, dragging me to my feet, his eyes streaming tears from the smoke. "That's one way to change the drapes."
"I didn't... I couldn't..." passed through my lips, looking at my hands. They were trembling, soot-stained and glowing with faint, dying embers.
"We have to go," Kaelen roared, appearing out of the gray haze. He grabbed my other arm. "Now! Before she realizes the fire won't kill her!"
On the far wall of the throne room was a massive expanse of stained glass depicting the First War.
It was the only thing remaining intact after Hera’s outburst, but now it shattered as the heat warped the frame.
The pressure difference between the burning room and the void-storm outside sucked the glass fragments out into the night.
"The window!" Elias shouted, pointing to the jagged hole where the glass had been. "Jump!"
"Are we just jumping off things now?" I wheezed, letting them drag me. "Is that our only strategy?" I also wanted to know why it had to be the window furthest from us, but then I realized we were still penned between Athena and Hera.
"Strategy is for people who aren't on fire!" Flynn yelled back.
We sprinted for the opening. Behind us, a wave of force slammed into the floor, clearing the smoke in a ten-foot radius around the dais. Hera stood there, unscathed but apoplectic, her white eyes burning brighter than my flames.
"Seize them!" she commanded the empty air, or perhaps the shadows themselves.
We didn't wait to see who answered.
We leaped.
The transition from the super-heated throne room to the freezing, chaotic air of the Olympus exterior was like being slapped awake. We tumbled through the air, flailing, falling toward the lower terraces of the city. We were just free-falling through a storm that wanted to eat us.
"Thane!" I screamed, the bond activating again instantly. I felt the lurch in my stomach through four other stomachs.
Got you, the Bear’s thought was a heavy, grounding anchor in my mind.
He snagged a passing sculpture, part of the palace's external architecture, with one massive hand, his arm jerking with the strain. His other hand grabbed Elias’s ankle. Elias grabbed Kaelen. Kaelen grabbed Flynn. Flynn grabbed me.
We formed a ridiculous, dangling chain of demigods and something that wasn't human anymore, hanging over the city, buffeted by winds that smelled of rotting ozone.
Thane groaned, the noise vibrating up the chain. "I am... not... a rope."
"Swing!" Kaelen ordered, looking down at a balcony about twenty feet below and to the left.
Thane grunted and began to oscillate. It was terrifying. I was at the bottom of the pendulum, swinging out over the swirling black nothingness that was eating the edge of the world. One slip, and I would fall forever.
"On three!" Kaelen shouted. "One! Two! Three!"
Thane let go.
We flew through the air, a tangle of limbs and terrified screams, mostly mine, though Flynn definitely yelped. We crashed onto the marble balcony, rolling, skidding, taking out a decorative planter filled with silver ferns.
I slammed into a balustrade; the air leaving my lungs.
For a moment, we just lay there, a pile of groaning, bruised bodies. The fire above us raged, licking out of the palace windows, painting the bruised sky in strokes of violent orange and black.
"Okay," Flynn gasped, staring up at the burning High Seat. "Okay. Note to self. Do not make the tiny girl angry."
Kaelen pulled himself up, wincing. He crawled over to me, grabbing my face. His hands were shaking. "Aria. Look at me. Are you back? Is the connection closed?"
I blinked, trying to focus. The multiple perspectives were fading, layering back down into a singular viewpoint, but the ghost of it remained, a peripheral awareness of their hearts beating, their pain, their adrenaline.
"I think so," I whispered. "I'm just me. Mostly."
"You nearly incinerated us along with the furniture," he growled, but he pressed his forehead against mine, his relief flooding down the bond like warm honey. "You cannot funnel that much power without a focus. You are a conduit, not a reservoir."
"She saved Elias," Thane pointed out, sitting up and rubbing his shoulder where the socket had surely been strained. "Athena would have skewered him."
Elias was sitting against the wall, looking uncharacteristically disheveled. His robes were singed, and his hair was windblown. He looked at me, his turquoise eyes wide.
"You saw it," he said softly. "You saw the strike before I did."
"I was everyone," I murmured, rubbing my temples where a headache was blooming. "I saw everything."
"We need cover," Kaelen said, snapping back into general mode.
He looked up at the burning palace. Figures were moving on the upper balconies.
Sentinels. And Athena. They were all silhouettes against the fire.
"She will not let the fire distract her for long.
We need to get deeper into the city before they can find us or the storm decides to take another bite out of Olympus. "
"The city is falling apart," I said, pointing toward the edge of the terrace.
A chunk of the district just past where we had landed had sheared off, drifting silently into the vortex. The Devourer’s storm was closer now, the red lightning arcing horizontally, bridging the gap between the nothingness and the stone.