I spread my consciousness through its structure like roots through soil, feeling every link, every chain, every carefully constructed binding that Pandora had been forced to create under duress and a thousand years of Keepers had maintained without question or mercy. The architecture of it was beautiful and terrible at once, elegant in its cruelty, a masterwork of containment magic that had taken the greatest minds of an age to construct. And then, drawing on all four princes' power simultaneously, Kaelen's commanding fire that burned with authority and will, Flynn's wild instinct that knew only truth and desire, Thane's immovable strength that had endured millennia, Elias's transformative flames that had been reborn countless times, I began to remake it.
Not destroying. Not breaking what had been so carefully built over centuries.
Transforming it into what it should have been all along.
TWENTY-NINE
Kaelen
The sight of her through the Gate's widening fractures stole the breath I didn't technically need in this cursed space between worlds.
Aria stood before our prison with blood seeping through her clothes from wounds both fresh and half-healed, crimson spreading across grey fabric and leather like wine spilled on stone. The knife wound Ellie had inflicted still wept sluggishly despite our combined efforts to heal it. New cuts decorated her arms where she'd fought through Natalia's guards. Her dark hair hung loose and wild around a face pale with exhaustion, those amethyst eyes were shot through with our colors now, blazing with a determination that made my chest constrict.
She was magnificent. Not the frightened girl who'd first entered the Threshold months ago, trembling at the weight of forbidden knowledge. Not even the conflicted woman who'd kissed me in defiance of everything she'd been taught. This was something harder, sharper, more. Forged in betrayal and tempered by impossible choices.
Through our connection, I felt her intention crystallize like ice forming on still water. She reached toward the Gate witha hand that shook with exhaustion, golden markings pulsing beneath skin gone almost translucent from channeling too much divine power. The Gate responded to her approach, its surface rippling with anticipation, with hunger, with recognition of what was about to happen.
She was going to free one of us.
The realization hit with the force of a mountain falling. Not all of us, the remaining barriers couldn't withstand that, and she knew it. The Gate would collapse entirely, taking her with it, if she attempted to shatter every chain at once. But one... one she might manage. One prince pulled through completely while leaving enough structure intact to prevent total catastrophe.
And she was choosing me.
I felt it in the way her consciousness reached specifically for my essence through the tangled web of our bonds. Not because I was strongest, Flynn's raw power arguably exceeded mine in pure destructive force. Not because I was the leader, we'd never truly had one, just four brothers bound by shared suffering. She was choosing me because, through five years of blood-sharing and months of dreams and communion, she'd come to trust me to protect the mortals if freed. To not immediately burn the world in vengeance for our imprisonment.
The weight of that trust hit harder than the chains ever had.
She trusted me, the dragon prince who'd spent centuries dreaming of nothing but fire and retribution, to show restraint. To choose wisdom over wrath when every fiber of my being screamed for blood, for justice, for the Council to burn as we had burned in these chains.
"Choose us all."
The words tore from my throat before I could stop them, reverberating through our shared connection with desperate urgency. Through the Gate, I saw her falter, her hand freezing inches from the surface.
"Or the world will never forgive you for choosing just one."
It was manipulation and truth tangled together. If she freed only me, leaving my brothers chained, the guilt would destroy her. The other princes would understand, eventually, but the weight of that choice would crush her spirit as surely as any physical blow. She'd spend whatever time we had together haunted by Flynn's howls, Thane's patient sorrow, Elias's prophetic songs of what might have been.
And the mortals... they'd see it as favoritism, as proof that her corruption ran deeper than just defying the Council. That she'd chosen not just the princes over duty, but one prince over justice itself.
Flynn materialized beside me in the Threshold, his amber eyes blazing with barely controlled emotion. "Tell her the truth, brother. Tell her what happens if she chooses just one."
The truth. That freeing one of us while leaving the others would create an imbalance that might tear reality apart at the seams. The Gate had been built to contain four specific divine essences. Remove one completely while leaving three, and the mathematical perfection of the binding would collapse into chaos.
But more than that, the personal truth.
"I can't be free while the others are still chained," I said, letting every wall drop, letting her feel the raw honesty through our connection. "None of us can. We're brothers, not by blood, but by something deeper. By shared suffering that's welded our souls together. Free one, and that one will spend eternity trying to free the others. The cycle continues, just with different players."
Through her eyes, I saw Natalia approaching with the full might of the Citadel's forces. Time was running out. She had seconds, maybe less, before they reached her, before they pulled her away from the Gate and implemented their final solution.
Her hand pressed against the Gate's surface, and power flooded through the connection. But not the focused, specific pull I'd expected. Instead, she was doing something else entirely, spreading her consciousness through the Gate's structure like water finding every crack, every weakness.
"What are you doing?" Thane rumbled, his massive form tense with confusion.
Understanding dawned like sunrise after the longest night of your life, brilliant and terrible and absolutely inevitable.
"She's not choosing one of us," Elias said, his prophetic voice carrying a note of wonder I hadn't heard in centuries. "She's choosing all of us by choosing none of us."
She wasn't going to free us piecemeal, releasing one while leaving others bound. She was going to transform the entire structure of our imprisonment. The Gate would remain, but its fundamental nature would change. Instead of a prison, it would become what it had always been meant to be, a bridge, a connection, a doorway between worlds that could be opened or closed but never again locked.
