"You won't succeed," I managed, voice rough as sandpaper.
"We already have." She stepped into the cell, and I smelled the ritual oils on her, frankincense and myrrh and something else, something that reeked of endings. "Your friend's betrayal, your blood on the stones, even your survival, all of it serves our purpose. The binding ritual is already prepared. At dawn, you'll take your place as eternal guardian, the first truly permanent Keeper."
"A slave, you mean."
"A necessary sacrifice. One we should have made generations ago but some were too squeamish about. Now you've forced our hands." She turned to the guards. "Bring her."
They lifted me with impersonal efficiency, carrying me between them when my legs refused to hold my weight. Through the corridors we went, past windows showing the first grey hints of dawn, past doors where I could sense other Keepers watching through cracks, terrified and fascinated in equal measure.
The Sanctorum doors stood open, revealing preparations that must have taken all night. Circles within circles drawn in salt and blood, probably mine. Candles at cardinal points, their flames burning the wrong colors. And at the center, directly before the Gate itself, chains.
Not ordinary metal, but something that hurt to look at, that seemed to exist partially in this world and partially somewhere else. Chains designed to hold not just a body but a soul, to bind across dimensions.
They were going to chain me to the Gate itself, make me part of its structure. I'd exist in constant contact with it, bleeding endlessly, conscious but paralyzed, a living component in their eternal prison. Not close enough to touch it though. Not close enough to connect with the princes. I'd be forever just out of their reach and they out of mine except for in dreams. If I'd even be able to dream.
"Dawn comes," Natalia announced to the assembled Council. "Let the binding commence."
They walked me to the center of the circles, and dumped me onto the ground. Magic immediately crackled over my skin like the energy before a storm, the ritual's power was already building, already reaching for me with hungry fingers. The chains rose like living things, serpents of metal seeking flesh to bind.
But as they began to wrap around my wrists, something else happened.
Through the Gate's crack, wider now than ever before, massive brown eyes appeared. Not Kaelen's gold or Flynn's amber, but Thane's deep, sorrowful brown.
And for the first time since I'd known him, they blazed with fury.
No more.
His voice didn't echo through the Threshold or whisper through our connection. It boomed directly into reality, making every person in the Sanctorum stumble. Making the very mountain shudder.
I stood by once when innocents were chained. Not again.
The Bear's Sorrow seal didn't crack or shatter.
It dissolved.
Simply ceased to exist, as if Thane's will alone had unmade it. And through the space where it had been, power flooded into the mortal realm. Not violent or destructive, but implacable as mountains, patient as stone, inevitable as gravity.
Thane's hand, massive and impossibly gentle, reached through the Gate itself. Not fully manifested but solid enough to matter, real enough to grasp the chains that sought to bind me and crush them to powder with casual ease.
"Impossible," Natalia breathed.
"Nothing's impossible," Thane rumbled, his partial form solidifying with each second. "Not when you have something worth protecting."
He looked at me then, those brown eyes full of centuries of sorrow but also, finally, hope.
"Every choice is a chance to break the pattern," he said, echoing words he'd spoken in dreams. "I choose differently this time. I choose to act."
The guards rushed forward, but Thane's other hand swept them aside like leaves before wind. Not violently, even now he was gentle, but with absolutely irresistible force.
"You cannot stop the binding!" Natalia shrieked, her careful control finally shattering completely. "The ritual is already begun! She must be bound or everything falls!"
"Then let it fall."
The words came from my throat, and they were mine, not Thane's. I pushed myself to my feet, drawing on his strength, on all their strength, finding my footing despite the weakness that wanted to drag me down.
"Let it all fall," I repeated, louder now. "Every lie, every chain, every carefully constructed prison. Let it burn and crumble and turn to ash."
Through the widening Gate, I could see them all now. Kaelen pacing like a caged beast, sparks falling from his lips. Flynn prowling the edges, muscles coiled to spring the moment he could. Elias hovering between states, ready to remake reality itself.
