To touch her.
"Your thoughts are leaking," Thane rumbled from his corner of our shared cage. My brother hadn't moved in decades, possibly longer, his massive form settled into stillness that looked like acceptance but tasted of barely controlled despair. "We can all feel what you're thinking about the Keeper."
"She's not just a Keeper anymore." Elias drifted closer, his phoenix nature making him more concept than form even here. His copper hair shifted through shades that shouldn't exist, and his turquoise eyes saw too much, past and future tangling in his gaze. "She's becoming something new. The patterns are shifting around her, creating possibilities that didn't exist before."
"She's changing because of us," Flynn argued, resuming his restless pace. "Our essence in her blood. She smells more like pack every day."
"She's changing because she's choosing to change." I pushed against the chains, feeling them give just slightly. The Dragon's Ember seal was gone, but the others remained—Wolf's Heart, Bear's Sorrow, Phoenix's Ash. Three locks on a door that wanted to open. "Every Keeper before her fed the Gate out of duty. She feeds it out of?—"
"Desire," Flynn finished, his grin showing too many teeth. "Don't pretend you haven't felt it. The way her pulse quickens when she enters the Threshold. The way her thoughts scatter when you get close. She wants us."
"She wants truth," Thane corrected quietly. "After a lifetime of lies, she wants something real."
"She wants freedom," Elias sang, his voice carrying prophecy in every note. "Her own and ours, though she doesn't understand yet that they're the same thing."
They were all right. And all wrong. Because what Aria wanted was more complex than any single desire. I'd felt it when she'd stood before me in the Threshold, when my hand had pressed against her heart and our connection had blazed to life. She wanted justice but feared the cost. Wanted truth but understood its danger. Wanted us but couldn't reconcile desire with duty.
She was fighting her nature, and the conflict was literally tearing the Gate apart.
Through the crack in the seal, I felt a disturbance in the mortal realm. Armed figures moving through darkness, their intentions reeking of fanaticism and crude magic. The Order of Khaos, those fools who thought destruction was divine. They were approaching the Citadel, drawn by the Gate's instability like moths to flame they didn't understand would consume them.
"They're coming," I announced to my brothers. "The chaos worshippers. They can feel the Gate failing."
Flynn's laugh was wild, savage. "Good. Let them come. Let them burn everything down. Maybe in the ashes, we'll find our freedom."
"They'll hurt her," Thane said, and the temperature in the Threshold dropped several degrees. When the bear prince roused from his grief, even slightly, the world noticed. "If they breach the Citadel, she'll be their primary target."
"She can handle herself," I said, though uncertainty gnawed at me. "She's stronger than she knows."
"She's untrained," Flynn countered. "Powerful but raw. If they attack in force?—"
"Then we intervene." The words left my mouth before I'd fully formed the thought.
Silence fell over the Threshold. My brothers stared at me with expressions ranging from surprise to calculation.
"We can't intervene," Thane said slowly. "We're chained. Imprisoned. We can barely manifest in the Threshold when she's present."
"The Dragon's Ember seal is broken." I pulled against the chains again, harder this time, and felt them give another fraction. "I'm stronger now. Strong enough to push through if she's in genuine danger. If she opens herself to it."
"You're talking about partial manifestation," Elias breathed, his eyes going distant as he calculated probabilities. "It's theoretically possible, but the energy required?—"
"Would come from her." I met each of my brothers' gazes in turn. "Through the connection she's been building with her blood. She's been feeding us for five years. That power doesn't just disappear. It accumulates. Waiting."
"You want to possess her," Flynn said flatly.
"I want to protect her." The truth of it burned in my chest like dragon fire. "Because if she dies, we're trapped forever. No other Keeper will ever open themselves to us the way she has. She's our only chance."
"Is that the only reason?" Thane's knowing gaze saw too much, understood too much.
I didn't answer. Couldn't answer. Because the truth was more complicated than strategy, more dangerous than simple need for freedom. Somewhere in five years of tasting her blood, of feeling her emotions through the Gate, of watching her struggle against the lies that defined her existence, I'd begun to want more than escape.
I'd begun to want her.
Not as a key to my prison. Not as a tool for revenge. But as herself. Conflicted. Powerful. Beautiful. even in her defiance, even when she didn't realize she was defying anything.
"The seal's crack is widening," Elias announced suddenly, his attention snapping back to the present. "Something's happening in the mortal realm. She's... afraid."
I felt it too, her fear spiking through our connection like ice in my veins. But beneath the fear, something else. Determination. She was making a choice, preparing for something.
