"I can smell their intent even through the chains." He breathed deep, chest expanding, nostrils flaring as he tasted the air, tastedmeand the traces of the Council chamber still clinging to my skin. His lips pulled back in something that wasn't quite a snarl, revealing teeth that seemed sharper than they should be, more wolf than man. "They reek of your funeral. Of fresh-turned dirt and finality and the particular satisfaction that comes from solving a complicated problem with simple murder."
I pushed myself to my feet with shaking hands, the Threshold responding to my movement by solidifying beneath me, Flynn allowing me just enough reality to stand on, just enough substance to keep from falling endlessly through the void. My legs felt unsteady, my balance uncertain in this place where up and down were merely suggestions.
"You heard the Council meeting."
"We hear everything you hear. Feel everything you feel." He moved then, not walking but flowing like smoke, like shadow, liquid violence that brought him behind me before I could track the motion, before my eyes could register the shift. His breath stirred my hair, warm against my neck, raising goosebumps along my spine. "Your fear tastes like copper on my tongue. Your rage like smoke in my lungs. Your desperation…" He inhaledagain, deep and slow, and I felt it pull something from me, some essential part of myself that had nothing to do with physical form or flesh. "Like honey laced with poison. Sweet and deadly in equal measure."
"Stop." But the command came out breathless, threadbare, lacking any authority or conviction.
"Stop what? Speaking truth?" He materialized in front of me again, the space folding to accommodate his will, closer this time, so close that the heat radiating from him made my skin prickle with awareness. "They plan to drain you dry, little keeper. Use your precious blood to forge chains that will never break, never weaken, never give us even a moment's respite. Turn you into nothing but fuel for their eternal prison. A battery. A resource to be consumed."
"I know what they plan." The words tasted bitter on my tongue.
"Do you?" His hand rose, not quite touching my face, fingers tracing the air near my jaw with aching precision, close enough that I could feel the displacement of molecules, the heat of his skin. "Because you're standing here in my domain, reciting useless reinforcement rituals in your mind instead of accepting the obvious solution."
"Which is?" I forced myself to meet his eyes, to hold that burning amber gaze.
"Us." Simple. Final. Absolute. "Accept us, all of us, and let the Gate fall. Let their precious prison crumble to dust. Let them deal with the consequences of their millennium of carefully constructed lies."
The Threshold shifted dramatically around us as he spoke, the void reshaping itself to show me visions painted in light and shadow and terrible beauty. The Gate shattering like glass struck by a hammer, fragments of reality spinning away into darkness. Four princes stepping through the wreckage, divine and terribleand absolutely free at last, power blazing around them like living fire. The Council cowering as their carefully constructed world collapsed around their ears, all their certainty crumbling to ash. And me, standing with the princes, not as their keeper but as something else entirely, something new and undefined and terrifying in its possibility.
"You think you're protecting those mortals?" Flynn's voice dropped to a growl that vibrated through my chest, resonating in my bones. "The ones in the village? The innocent farmers and children sleeping safe in their beds, trusting in the Keepers' protection? You're not. You're protecting the cowards who would murder you the moment you become inconvenient. Who already plan your death while you bleed for them daily, sacrifice yourself for them year after year."
He moved like liquid shadow, suddenly so close our chests nearly touched, the space between us charged with electricity. This near, I could see the intricate gold flecks in his amber eyes, could count the individual lashes, could trace every sharp angle of a face that belonged to something wild and untamed and absolutely lethal.
"I would tear apart anyone who tried to harm you."
The declaration hit harder than it had any right to, stealing the breath from my lungs. Not because of the violence implied in it, I'd seen enough violence in the Threshold, felt enough rage from all of them. But because of the absolute certainty, the fundamental conviction. The way he said it like a universal truth, like gravity or sunrise or the biological need to breathe.
"We all would," he continued, and through our connection, that golden thread that bound us across dimensions, I felt the others' agreement like thunder rolling through distant mountains. Kaelen's dragon fire ready to incinerate any threat, reduce our enemies to ash and memory. Thane's protective fury that could level mountains, reshape continents. Elias's ancientpower ready to unweave reality itself around anyone who dared raise a hand against me. "But first, you have to choose us."
"It's not that simple?—"
"It's exactly that simple." His hand finally made contact, fingers grazing my jaw with shocking gentleness that contradicted everything about his predatory intensity. "Choose us or choose them. Freedom or chains. Life or the slow death they've planned for you, draining you drop by drop until there's nothing left."
I could see my reflection in his eyes, distorted and strange and undeniably changed. Golden veins blazing beneath my skin like molten metal in marble. Amethyst eyes shot through with their colors, amber, gold, copper, brown, marking me as theirs as surely as any brand burned into flesh.
I looked like what I was becoming, what I'd been becoming for years without fully understanding. Not human. Not keeper. Something new, something undefined, something the prophecies had tried and failed to capture.
Something that belonged with them.
"They made me to be your chain," I said, the words scraped raw from my throat, tasting of blood and bitter truth. "My entire bloodline, bred and shaped and molded across generations to keep you contained."
"No." His thumb traced my cheekbone with devastating tenderness, the touch leaving trails of heat that lingered on my skin. "They tried to make you into a chain. Wanted you to be nothing but a tool, a weapon, a prison built of flesh and blood. But you're not. You're a door, Aria. You've always been a door, not a lock. The question is whether you'll finally open or stay locked forever."
The intensity in his eyes, in his voice, in the way his entire being focused on me like I was the only thing that mattered in any world or dimension. It was overwhelming in its totality.Possessive and protective and absolutely sincere in a way that bypassed all my defenses. This wasn't manipulation or strategy or careful seduction. This was Flynn, savage and honest and stripped of pretense, telling me exactly what I meant to him.
To all of them.
"You don't know me," I whispered, even though it was a transparent lie. They knew me better than anyone living, had tasted my blood and memories for five years, had witnessed my every thought and feeling and secret shame.
"I know you keep dead flowers hidden in the wall of your quarters because beauty matters to you, even dried and faded and past its season." His words hit with the precision of arrows finding their mark, each one striking true. "I know you cry in your sleep sometimes, calling for a mother who can't answer because she died feeding the very Gate you tend. I know you stand at windows during storms, wishing you could run into the rain instead of watching it through glass, wishing you could feel the water on your skin instead of duty pressing down on your shoulders."
Each truth stripped away layers of armor I'd spent years building around myself, exposing the vulnerable places I'd thought were hidden.
"I know you dream of us," he continued, leaning closer until our foreheads nearly touched, until I could feel his breath on my lips. "Not because we force ourselves into your mind, but because some part of you recognizes what we could be together. What you could be if you stopped letting them clip your wings, cage your power, diminish everything you could become."
"Flynn—"
