The question was whether I'd let it burn purposelessly, consuming innocent and guilty alike, or whether I'd direct the flames toward something better.
The golden veins in my arms pulsed with heat, with power, with possibility.
Twenty-four people now sat in cells because they'd seen me channel divine fire.
The Order of Khaos would attack again, drawn to destruction like moths to flame.
And I was changing faster than anyone realized, becoming something that belonged to neither side.
Something that might have the power to end this cycle entirely.
If I was willing to pay the price.
If I was willing to choose.
EIGHTEEN
Kaelen
She'd pulled on my power without permission, without ritual, without even conscious thought. Just reached through our connection andtook.
The sensation still reverberated through me hours later, phantom echoes of her desperation flooding my consciousness. She'd grabbed my fire like a drowning woman seizing rope, yanked it through the dimensional barrier with a force that should have been impossible for any mortal. The Dragon's Ember seal, already cracked, had screamed at the violation. And I'd let her. More than let her, I'd poured everything I could through that connection, feeding her flames hot enough to unmake reality itself.
It should anger me. Another Keeper using me as a tool, a weapon, a source of power to be drained. The parallels to our original imprisonment were too obvious to ignore. Mortals taking what they couldn't create, stealing divine power for their own purposes.
Instead, it thrilled me.
Because she hadn't taken my power to maintain the prison. Hadn't used it to strengthen her position or enforce the Council'swill. She'd used it to save innocents, to protect those who couldn't protect themselves. She'd reached for me not as her prisoner but as her partner, trusting me to help her without question or hesitation.
She'd accepted the connection. Even if she didn't fully realize it yet.
The Threshold pulled at her now, I could feel it through our bond. She was fighting the call, trying to focus on cleaning blood from her hands, on processing what she'd done. But the Gate demanded communion after such a display of power. And through the Gate, I demanded her presence.
When she finally entered, exhausted and blood-stained, the Threshold shaped itself to my will. Not the chaotic swirl of colors and possibility it usually was, but something more deliberate. Stone walls that might have been the Citadel or might have been Olympus. Shadows that danced with dragon fire. A space that was neither prison nor freedom but something suspended between.
She stood before me, still wearing that leather training gear splattered with evidence of violence. Soot streaked her face, and her dark hair had come partially loose from its binding, wild strands framing features that looked harder than they had even days ago. The golden marks beneath her skin pulsed with my fire, with all our power, creating patterns that made her look like she wore armor made of light.
Magnificent.
Terrible.
Mine.
"You saved them using the power of a monster."
The words fell between us like stones into water. She flinched, but didn't retreat. Those amethyst eyes, shot through with gold now, with amber, with copper, met mine steadily.
"They were innocent."
"So were we, once." I moved closer, watching her reaction. She didn't step back, though her breath quickened. "Innocent until your ancestors decided otherwise. Innocent until they needed someone to blame for their own failures."
"You're not innocent anymore." Her chin lifted, defiant even in exhaustion. "None of us are."
"No," I agreed, close enough now that she had to tilt her head back to maintain eye contact. "We're all stained by this. Corrupted by the choices others made for us. The question is what we do with that corruption."
She tried to argue, started to recite some doctrine about duty and necessity, but I pressed closer. The void behind her solidified into something resembling a wall, and I used it, backing her against that impossible surface until she had nowhere to retreat.
"I could teach you to use it properly." My hand rose to rest against the wall beside her head, not quite caging her but making the possibility clear. "The power you pulled from me today, that was raw, uncontrolled. You wasted most of it, burned through energy that could have leveled mountains just to save a handful of mortals."
