He smiled, sharp and beautiful and absolutely predatory, every inch the dragon prince. "With pleasure, little Keeper. Though you're not really a Keeper anymore, are you? Not after this."
I looked at the Gate, bleeding golden fire in rivers. At the unconscious bodies scattered around us like broken dolls. At my hands, marked with Malachi's blood and glowing with divine power that had no place in mortal flesh.
"No," I said, tasting truth and terror in equal measure on my tongue. "I'm something else now. Something new."
"Something better," he corrected firmly. "Something real, something honest. Something that chooses instead of being chosen for."
His form was beginning to fade, the partial manifestation taking too much energy to maintain even with the seal's complete destruction. But before he disappeared entirely backinto the Threshold, he kissed me again, fierce and claiming and full of dark promise.
"The next seal that breaks," he whispered against my lips, "I'll be able to stay longer in your world. And the one after that, longer still. Until finally?—"
"Until finally you're free," I finished.
"Until finally we're together. Properly. Permanently. The way we were always meant to be."
He faded completely then, pulled inexorably back into the Threshold by the remaining chains, but I could still feel him through our connection, so much closer now, more present than ever before, the barrier between us gossamer-thin and growing weaker by the moment.
Around me, people began to stir, consciousness returning slowly and painfully. Soon there would be questions, accusations, consequences for what I'd done, for the choice I'd made. The Council would demand answers I couldn't give, explanations that would sound like treason.
But standing there in the center of the Sanctorum, surrounded by golden fire still pouring steadily from the Gate, I found I didn't care about any of it.
I'd kissed the dragon prince.
I'd shattered his seal.
I'd chosen him, chosen this, chosen a future I couldn't see clearly but wanted desperately.
And now, everything would change.
TWENTY-THREE
Kaelen
The kiss still burned through me like wildfire in dry grass, consuming everything in its path with beautiful, terrible efficiency.
Not the physical sensation, though that lingered too, phantom pressure of her mouth against mine, the taste of her desperation and choice mingling on my tongue. No, what burned was the fundamental shift in reality itself.
The Dragon's Ember seal hadn't just broken. It had been obliterated by the force of her conscious choice. Shattered not through violence or degradation but through connection willingly embraced.
Through the widening crack in the Gate, I could taste the mortal realm properly now. Not filtered through layers of dimensional barriers and ancient wards, but directly. Rain drumming against stone. The copper tang of spilled blood mixing with ritual incense. The particular sweetness of terror as Keepers realized their perfect world was crumbling. Each sensation flooded through me like water breaking through a dam, and I drank it all in with the greed of a man who'd been dying of thirst for a millennium.
But more than any of that, I could feelher.
Aria's presence blazed through our connection like a beacon in absolute darkness. Every emotion she experienced hit me with the force of a fire storm, terror at what she'd done, exhilaration at the power still singing through her veins, confusion as the Citadel's survivors began to stir. And beneath it all, thrumming like a bass note too low to properly hear, desire. For me. For us. For the terrifying freedom she'd just chosen.
She was running now, I could feel it through our bond. Her feet pounded against stone corridors she'd walked her entire life, but everything had changed. The very walls seemed to lean away from her, as if the Citadel itself recognized she no longer belonged to it. Never had, really. She'd always been ours, even when she didn't know it.
"You can't run from this," I whispered through our strengthened connection, the words flowing directly into her consciousness like water finding its level. "From us. From yourself."
Her mental response came not in words but in sensation, the memory of my partial manifestation, solid enough to touch, real enough to kiss. The impossible made possible through sheer force of will and want.
My brothers felt the change too. The Threshold itself had shifted, reality restructuring around the absence of my seal.
Flynn materialized beside me in a rush of savage joy, his form more solid than it had been in centuries. The wolf prince threw back his head and howled, the sound reverberating through dimensions with enough force to crack stone in the mortal realm.
"She did it," he laughed, wild and triumphant. "She actually did it. Pulled you through, shattered the seal, kissed you in front of their precious Gate." His amber eyes blazed with hunger. "She's ours now. Marked. Claimed. They can't take her back."
Thane stood slowly, and the Threshold groaned under his movement. For the first time in decades, perhaps centuries, something that might have been hope flickered in his brown eyes.
