We're with you.
Always.
Until every chain is broken.
Until every lie is dust and the truth stands naked in the light.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Aria
The early morning light filtered through broken shutters like shards of amber glass, painting the meditation spire in hues that belonged to neither night nor day, those liminal colors that seemed to exist in the space between breathing and waking. My body ached with the aftermath of channeling four princes' power simultaneously, a deep, fundamental wrongness that went beyond simple exhaustion.
Bones that had restructured themselves to contain divine force now protested their return to mortal density, each movement sending sharp protests through my skeleton. Muscles burned from movements they shouldn't have been able to make, from angles that human joints weren't meant to achieve. Even my skin felt too tight, as if it remembered being something more and resented the constraint of flesh.
Master Theron had dozed off against the wall, his weathered face lined with exhaustion that went deeper than a single sleepless night. His spectacles sat crooked on his nose, and one of his gnarled hands still clutched a half-charred scroll he'd been studying before sleep claimed him. The villagers took turns keeping watch, their makeshift weapons, kitchen knives,farming tools, broken chair legs, all of them clutched with white-knuckled determination. They moved with the jerky alertness of people running on fear and adrenaline, starting at every creak of the ancient tower. The pregnant woman sat nearest to me, one hand resting on her swollen belly while she hummed a lullaby to her unborn child. The melody was haunting in the pre-dawn quiet, a simple tune that probably dated back generations, sung by mothers in this valley long before the Keepers ever came.
We couldn't stay here. The realization settled over me like frost, cold and inevitable, creeping across my thoughts until it crystallized into absolute certainty.
Natalia would find us eventually. She knew every stone of this place, even the forgotten ones, even the spaces that hadn't appeared on official maps for centuries. The Citadel had been her domain for decades, and she'd made it her business to learn every secret passage, every hidden alcove, every bolt-hole that desperate souls might use. Already, I could feel the Citadel stirring below like a disturbed hive, guards mobilizing in the courtyards with military efficiency, search patterns being organized with the kind of methodical precision that left no corner unchecked, no shadow unsearched.
"We need to move." My voice came out rough, scraped raw from exhaustion and the smoke I'd inhaled during yesterday's battle. Each word felt like dragging stones across broken glass.
Marcus's widow, who I'd learned was called Nan, turned from the window where she'd been keeping watch. Her face was gaunt with grief and sleeplessness, but her eyes remained sharp, alert. "The eastern passages are clear for now, but they're closing the net. I can see patrol patterns forming in the courtyards below. Another hour, maybe less, before they have every route blocked."
I pushed myself to my feet, ignoring the way my legs trembled with the effort. The world tilted dangerously to theleft, my vision swimming with exhaustion before it slowly, grudgingly settled back into something resembling stability. The golden veins beneath my skin pulsed with feverish heat that had nothing to do with illness and everything to do with the divine power still crackling through my mortal frame. Through them, through that unnatural connection that the Gate had forged, I felt the princes stirring in the Threshold. Their consciousnesses brushed against mine like silk against broken glass.
You need rest,Thane rumbled through our connection, his concern a warm, heavy thing in the back of my mind.Your body is failing.
No time.I moved to the window, gripping the stone sill to steady myself while I studied the maze of corridors and courtyards sprawling below. The Citadel looked like a geometric puzzle from this height, all sharp angles and deliberate design. "They'll expect us to flee downward, toward the valley. Standard escape protocol. We go up instead, through the archive tower."
"That leads nowhere," Master Theron protested, having woken at my movement. He pushed his spectacles up his nose with one ink-stained finger. "Just the old astronomical observatory, and that's been?—"
"Sealed for seventy years, I know." I turned to meet his confused gaze. "But the Order of Khaos left markers on the eastern slope during their failed assault three months ago. If they have forces regrouping there, waiting for another opportunity..."
Understanding dawned in his watery blue eyes, followed swiftly by reluctant approval. "You want to use them as distraction. Set them against Natalia's forces while we slip away in the chaos."
"I want to survive long enough to free the princes completely." The admission came out harder than intended, edged with something that might have been desperation ordetermination or both. But there was no point in pretense anymore, not after everything that had happened. "The Phoenix's Ash seal is already failing. I can feel it cracking with every breath. When it breaks, and it will break, we need to be somewhere that isn't trapped between stone walls and a thousand Keepers."
Footsteps echoed from the stairwell below. Many footsteps, at least a dozen sets of boots, moving with the coordinated precision of a trained military unit. The sound bounced off the stone walls, making it impossible to judge exact distance but leaving no doubt about their destination.
"They've found us," one of the villagers breathed, his voice cracking with terror.
I moved before thought could interfere, before fear could root me to the floor, grabbing Master Theron's arm and pulling him toward the narrow service ladder that led to the archive tower. The iron rungs were green with verdigris and hadn't been used in living memory. "Everyone, now! Move!"
We scrambled upward, hands scraping against rough metal, the ancient iron rungs protesting under our combined weight with groans and pops that sounded alarmingly like structural failure. Below, the meditation spire's door exploded inward with a concussive boom that made my ears ring. Keepers flooded through the breach with suppression blades drawn, the weapons humming with the particular frequency of magic designed to destroy other magic. Their shouts echoed up the shaft as they realized we'd already fled, voices overlapping in controlled fury as they reorganized their pursuit.
The archive tower was a labyrinth of dusty shelves and forgotten knowledge, row upon row of books and scrolls that hadn't been touched in centuries. The air was thick with mold spores and the particular musty scent of paper slowly returning to its constituent elements. Scrolls gathered mold in the dampair, their once-pristine vellum now spotted with growths in shades of green and black and sickly yellow. But I wasn't interested in the books, in the accumulated wisdom of ages past. My enhanced senses, still crackling with residual divine power that made everything too bright and too sharp, caught something else, the acrid, unmistakable stench of crude magic bleeding through from the eastern wall. The kind of magic that came from desperation and madness rather than discipline and study.
"Get back," I warned, already pulling on the princes' power again despite my body's screaming protests.
The sensation was excruciating and exhilarating in equal measure, like swallowing lightning and feeling it reforge your bones from the inside out. My body, already pushed far beyond what mortal flesh should endure, screamed in protest as divine fire flooded my veins again. Every nerve ending lit up with agony that bordered on rapture. But this time, something was different. Fundamentally, terrifyingly different.
Elias's phoenix fire burned through me, but not the healing kind I'd felt before when he'd mended my injuries. This wasn't the gentle flame that knit flesh and sealed wounds. This was something far more dangerous.
Transformative fire.
The kind that unmade things at their most basic level just to remake them into something new. The kind that turned caterpillars into butterflies, winter into spring, death into rebirth.
