"They had her sister," Elias said, his voice shifting into that prophetic tone that made reality shiver. "Little Alexis, barely seven years old. Told Pandora they'd kill her if she didn't complete the binding. Kill her slowly. Make Pandora watch."
The Threshold showed me a child with Pandora's dark hair but green eyes, laughing in a garden. Then the same child bound, gagged, a knife at her throat while someone who looked like Pandora but older, broken, spoke words that tasted of ash.
"That's not possible. The First Betrayal was justified. You were tyrants. You tried to enslave?—"
"We tried to marry your kind." Kaelen's control cracked, just slightly, dragon fire flickering at the edges of his form. "To join our bloodlines and create something new. Something better. Your ancestors preferred keeping their daughters as tools, as payments, rather than seeing them as queens."
"You're lying." But the words felt hollow. The golden veins in my palm pulsed with each heartbeat, spreading further up my arm, and with each pulse came certainty I didn't want.
Truth. They were telling the truth.
"Every Keeper since has maintained the lie," Flynn growled. "Bled for it. Died for it. All believing they were heroes instead of accomplices."
"I'm not an accomplice. I'm protecting?—"
"You're protecting the descendants of murderers and traitors." Kaelen knelt in front of me, those golden eyes level with mine. "The real monsters aren't in this prison, little Keeper. They're in your Citadel. They wear grey robes and speak of duty while perpetuating a crime that's lasted centuries."
"The mortals would die without the Gate. The barriers between realms?—"
"Were never meant to be sealed," Thane interrupted gently. "They were meant to be doorways. The Gate doesn't protect your realm, it suffocates it. Cuts it off from the magic it needs to truly thrive."
"That's why your world is dying," Elias added, his turquoise eyes seeing past, present, future all at once. "No true magic. No real growth. Just slow decay disguised as stability."
My mind reeled, trying to process, trying to find solid ground in a world suddenly made of quicksand. Everything I'd believed, everything I'd been taught, everything I'd bled for?—
"Even if this is true," I managed, voice steadier than I felt, "you've been imprisoned for a thousand years. That changes people. Changes beings. How do I know you won't seek revenge the moment you're free?"
They exchanged looks, and Flynn laughed, bitter and sharp.
"Revenge? Oh, little Keeper, we dream of it. Every moment. Every heartbeat." He leaned closer, and I could smell wildness on him, forest and hunt and freedom just out of reach. "Do you know what a thousand years of chains feels like? Of being awake but unable to move? To speak? To exist as anything but consciousness trapped in nothing?"
"We weren't meant to survive," Kaelen said quietly. "The binding was supposed to kill us within a century. But we're harder to kill than your ancestors imagined. So we endured. And endured. And endured."
"We've gone mad more times than you can count," Thane admitted. "Lost ourselves in rage, in grief, in the sheer weight of existence without form."
"But we always come back," Elias finished. "Because prophecy demands it. Because the pattern isn't complete. Because somewhere, somewhen, a Keeper would come who could choose differently."
"And you think I'm that Keeper?"
"We know you are." Kaelen rose to his feet, pulling me up with him. His hand on my arm burned even through the metaphysical space, dragon fire contained in almost-human form. "Your blood sings differently. Your power recognizes us not as enemies but as equals. And you're already breaking their hold on you."
He turned my palm upward, and in the Threshold's strange light, the golden veins weren't just visible. They were blazing.
"This shouldn't be happening." But even as I said it, I knew what they had said was right. Inevitable. Like something in my blood had been waiting for this moment.
"Pandora's true heir," Flynn breathed, and for once his voice held something other than rage. "Not her blood. Anyone can carry blood. Her spirit. Her capacity to choose love over duty."
"I don't love you." The words came out too fast, too defensive.
Kaelen smiled, and it wasn't cruel this time. "No. But you could. And that terrifies you more than our hatred ever could."
The truth of it hit like cold water. Because he was right. Their rage, I could understand. Their desire for revenge made sense. But this… this pull I felt toward them, this recognition that went deeper than blood or duty? This was truly dangerous.
"The High Keeper will know something's wrong. The golden light?—"
"Tell her the Gate is corrupting you," Thane suggested. "It's even true, from a certain perspective."
"Tell her you need stronger bindings," Flynn added with a savage grin. "She'll believe that. She wants to believe you're weak."
