The kind that would let me rise from the ashes of everything I'd been taught to be.
SIXTEEN
Aria
Sleep pulled me back under even though dawn had already broken, even though I knew I should be rising for morning meditation. The crystal tears still lay scattered across my pillow like fallen stars, their edges catching light from the narrow window and refracting it into tiny rainbows against the stark stone walls. My body felt leaden, weighted with exhaustion that went deeper than physical tiredness—deeper than muscle fatigue or sleep deprivation. This was bone-deep weariness, the kind that settled into marrow and made even breathing feel like labor. The golden veins pulsed with heat that made consciousness unbearable, each throb sending waves of feverish warmth through my limbs, so I let myself fall back into the dark.
The dreams came immediately.
Not the structured dreamscapes where the princes could teach and talk, where I maintained some semblance of control over the connection. These were different. Raw. Unfiltered. Like doors in my mind had been thrown open, locks I didn't even know existed suddenly shattered, and they'd all rushed through at once, flooding my consciousness with their presence.
Kaelen's hands materialized first, solid and warm against my throat. Not squeezing, not threatening, just... there. His palms radiated heat that seeped into my skin, making me hyperaware of my own pulse hammering beneath his touch. His thumbs traced the hollow where my heartbeat fluttered like a trapped bird, and everywhere he touched, my skin came alive. Like I'd been numb my whole life, wrapped in layers of duty and discipline that had dulled every sensation, and only now remembered what it meant to truly feel. His breath ghosted across my ear, words in the old tongue that I shouldn't understand but did anyway, the language of Olympus flowing through our connection like water finding its level. Promises. Claims. Truths that made my back arch against nothing, my body responding to implications my mind couldn't fully process.
The scene shifted, melted, reformed like wax under flame. Flynn's teeth grazed my shoulder, sharp enough to mark but not break skin. The contact sent lightning through every nerve, waking something feral that had been sleeping in my bones, something wild and untamed that the Keepers had spent years trying to bury.
My hands tangled in his wild hair without conscious thought, fingers threading through the thick, untamed strands, pulling him closer when I should be pushing away. He growled against my throat, the sound vibrating through me like thunder felt in the chest, and something in my core answered with a sound I'd never made before, a whimper, a plea, a surrender I didn't have words for.
Before I could process, before I could pull back and reassert control, the dream changed again. Thane's arms wrapped around me, solid and safe, holding me like I might shatter if his grip loosened even fractionally. Like I was something precious that needed protecting, not a jailer who deserved nothing but his contempt.
The urge to burrow into his chest, to hide from the world in the shelter of his strength, overwhelmed every trained instinct. He smelled of pine and honey, of forests I'd never walked through and homes I'd never known, and when his hand cradled the back of my head, so large it could crush my skull but so gentle it made tears prick my eyes, I wanted to weep from the tenderness of it.
Then Elias. Oh gods, Elias. He didn't touch me so much as burn through me. Phoenix fire that didn't consume but transformed, setting every inch of my skin alight with sensation that transcended physical touch, pure energy, pure connection, pure becoming. I felt myself coming apart and reforming, dying and being reborn with each breath he drew.
His copper hair fell around us like a curtain of flame, and through it I saw myself reflected in his turquoise eyes. Not as I was, but as I could be.
Divine.
Terrible.
Free.
A woman who chose her own path instead of following one carved out by ancient prophecy and duty.
I gasped awake, skin flushed and oversensitive, the sheets twisted around me like chains, like the very bonds I was supposed to strengthen. My quarters were still dark, but I could hear morning bells beginning to ring in the distance, their chiming melody drifting through the narrow window. The golden veins blazed so bright they lit the room, casting dancing shadows on the walls and ceiling, turning my stark cell into something otherworldly.
The Gate pulsed in response to whatever was happening to me. I could feel it through the walls, through the mountain itself, through the very foundations of the Citadel. Each throb matchedmy racing heartbeat, as though the Gate and I had become one organism sharing a single, frantic pulse.
Sleep,Kaelen's voice whispered through our connection, honey and smoke and inevitable gravity.You need rest.
I shouldn't listen. Should fight the pull. Should get up and start my duties and pretend everything was normal, that I wasn't slowly unraveling at the seams.
Instead, I let my eyes close.
The dreams returned instantly, more intense than before. Multiple sensations layering over each other until I couldn't tell where one prince ended and another began. Hands in my hair — whose? Breath on my neck — from which direction? Heat surrounding me from all sides, pressing in, claiming space I'd once guarded so carefully. The careful control I'd maintained for my entire adult life shattered like spun glass dropped on stone.
When I woke again, someone was calling my name from outside my door.
"Aria! The morning ritual!"
Sister Margaret's voice, sharp with disapproval that cut through the fog in my mind. I'd missed the dawn bleeding. For the first time in five years, since I'd taken the sacred oath and become a full Keeper, I hadn't fed the Gate at its appointed hour. The realization sent a spike of panic through my chest, but it felt distant, muted, as though happening to someone else.
I dressed with shaking hands, trying to ignore how the rough fabric of my robes felt against oversensitized skin. Every fiber seemed to scrape and catch, every seam pressed too hard, every fold restricted movement I suddenly needed. Every nerve felt exposed, raw, aware of textures and temperatures I'd previously filtered out as irrelevant.
The walk to the Sanctorum took forever and no time at all, each corridor both endlessly long and impossibly short. Other Keepers stared as I passed, and I knew they could see the changein me. The way I moved differently, less rigid, more fluid, like something had loosened in my joints. The way the golden veins pulsed with their own light, no longer requiring my blood to activate them.
The ritual knife felt strange in my hand as I opened my palm, the familiar weight suddenly foreign. The blood that welled up glowed gold before darkening to crimson, the transformation taking longer than it should have. When it hit the channel in the floor, the Gate screamed.
Not with pain. With recognition.
