"I know you're terrified of wanting anything for yourself. Terrified that desire makes you weak, selfish, unworthy of the sacred duty you were born to fulfill." His other hand rose to frame my face, holding me like something precious andbreakable, like I might shatter if he gripped too hard. "But wanting isn't weakness, little keeper. It's not a flaw to be purged or a sin to be punished. It's the most honest thing about you. The most human. The most real."
The Threshold pulsed around us, responding to the emotion building between us like storm pressure before lightning strikes, reality itself trembling with the weight of what passed between us. Through our connection, I felt the others watching, waiting with breathless intensity, their attention focused on this moment with a concentration that made reality itself hold its breath.
"What do you want from me?" The question came out broken, desperate, all my careful control crumbling.
"Everything." No hesitation, no careful calculation, no strategic maneuvering. Pure, unfiltered honesty. "Your trust. Your truth. Your choice, made freely without coercion. Your heart, if you'll give it. Your body, when you're ready and not a moment before. Your soul, because it already calls to mine across every barrier they've erected." He pulled back just enough to meet my eyes fully, letting me see the raw sincerity burning there. "Your freedom, because watching you caged, watching them slowly kill you with duty and sacrifice, is killing us as surely as these chains."
"And if I choose you? All of you? What then?" My voice trembled with the weight of the question.
"Then we reshape the world." His grin was wild, dangerous, beautiful in its feral joy. "Tear down the lies and build something true in their place. Show them what gods and mortals can become when they choose each other instead of fearing each other, when they build bridges instead of prisons."
"People will die." The practical truth, stark and unavoidable.
"People are already dying. Your mother died. Master Theron died trying to show you truth. You're dying, slowly, feeding aGate that drinks your life as surely as it drinks your blood." His hands tightened slightly on my face, not painful but insistent, demanding I hear him. "The question isn't whether people will die. The question is whether their deaths will mean something, whether the world that comes after will be worth the price."
I wanted to argue, to find the flaw in his logic, to locate some moral high ground to stand on. But I couldn't. Because he was right. The system we maintained was already built on death, on suffering, on sacrifice. On the slow consumption of Keeper after Keeper fed to an insatiable prison, my entire bloodline nothing but fuel for someone else's peace.
"Fourteen days," I said, the words hollow. "That's all they've given me."
"Then we have fourteen days to prepare." His forehead pressed against mine, and through the contact I felt his wolf nature more clearly, wild and fierce and absolutely devoted, loyal beyond reason or logic. "Fourteen days to teach you what you really are, what you could be. Fourteen days to show you what we could become together, what power we could wield as allies instead of enemies."
"And at the end of those fourteen days?"
"You choose." He pulled back slightly, amber eyes boring into mine. "Not because prophecy demands it. Not because we manipulate you into it with pretty words and strategic seduction. But because you'll finally know the truth of everything. Them. Us. Yourself. Because you'll have all the information they've spent your entire life hiding from you."
The Threshold began to shift around us, reality reasserting itself with increasing insistence, but Flynn pulled me against him before it could fully claim me and tear me back to the physical world. The full contact, body to body, his arms steel bands around me, sent lightning through every nerve, overwhelming my senses. This wasn't the careful touch ofbefore, the measured contact. This was claiming, possessive and protective in equal measure, staking a declaration that bypassed words entirely.
"Come back tonight," he breathed against my ear, voice rough with emotion. "Not as their tool or our keeper. Not as duty or destiny. Come as Aria. Just Aria. Let us show you what that could mean."
The Threshold expelled me with sudden violence, reality snapping back like a released bowstring, sending me stumbling back from the Gate with enough force that I nearly fell. My hands shook, my whole body trembling from the intensity of his presence, his words, his touch that lingered like phantom fire on my skin, burning long after contact had broken.
The guards watched me with suspicious eyes, hands resting on weapons, ready to act the moment I showed signs of losing control or succumbing to corruption. But I managed to walk past them with measured steps, spine straight, maintaining the careful illusion of composure until I reached my quarters and the blessed privacy of stone walls.
Once alone, door sealed behind me, I pressed my back against the rough wood and slid to the floor, legs giving out, Flynn's words echoing in my mind with relentless clarity.
I would tear apart anyone who tried to harm you.
We all would.
But first, you have to choose us.
Fourteen days to decide between my prisoners and my captors. Between the chains I'd been born to maintain and the freedom they offered.
Fourteen days to choose between duty and desire, between what I'd been taught to want and what I actually craved.
Fourteen days to discover if I was strong enough to forge my own path, to make my own choice instead of following the script written before my birth.
Or if I'd end up just another sacrifice on the altar of other people's ambitions, another name in the tragic history of House Pandoros.
Through the Gate's connection, thrumming in my blood like a second heartbeat, I felt Flynn's presence. Patient and waiting, not pushing or pulling or demanding, justthere. A constant, steady pressure. Ready whenever I was ready to take the next step.
The terrifying truth was, I was already choosing.
With every breath, every heartbeat, every moment I didn't report his words to the Council, every second I kept his declaration of protection secret, I was choosing. The decision was already being made in small increments, in tiny treasons I committed with each passing hour.
The question was whether I'd be brave enough to admit it, to own it, to claim my choice openly before my rapidly dwindling time ran out.
TWENTY-ONE
