Through the chains, through the Gate they anchored, I felt her. The latest Keeper. Another daughter of Pandora's cursed line, another jailer come to feed our prison with her blood. Except...
This one tasted different.
Her blood sang in the Gate's mechanisms, and the song was nothing like her predecessors'. Where her mother's blood had tasted of resignation and slow-burning despair, this one's blazed with suppressed fire. Power, raw and untapped, constrained by iron will and ignorance in equal measure. She had no idea what she was. What she could be.
Good. Ignorance would make her easier to break.
My brothers stirred around me in the Threshold, our consciousness bound together by proximity and shared suffering. Flynn's awareness prowled the edges of our prison, restless as always, testing every boundary for the thousandth time. Thane stood silent in his grief, that crushing weight of guilt he'd carried since the betrayal. And Elias... Elias watched patterns only he could see, muttering about prophecies and probabilities.
But I'd felt her first. When that crack formed in the Dragon's Ember seal—my seal, the one specifically designed to contain my fire—her blood had touched the breach. And in that moment of contact, I'd tasted not just her power but her essence.
Innocence, despite years of feeding the Gate. Strength, despite a lifetime of being taught she was meant to serve. Questions, despite generations of doctrine designed to prevent them.
She entered the Sanctorum, and through the Threshold, I saw her clearly for the first time. Not through the distorted lens of the Gate's magic, but as she truly was. Young. Barely past her first quarter-century. Beautiful in that severe way the Keepers cultivated, all sharp angles and contained grace. Dark hair pulled back so tightly it must have hurt. Amethyst eyes that marked her as Pandora's heir as surely as any bloodline could.
And terrified. Gloriously, deliciously terrified.
The fear rolled off her in waves I could taste even through the dimensional barrier. Her heart hammered against her ribs.I could hear it, that mortal percussion that counted down their pathetically short lives. Her hands trembled despite her attempts to still them. When she dropped to her knees before the Gate, I saw the way her throat worked as she swallowed her terror.
Perfect.
My brothers wanted to speak first. Flynn's hunger pressed against the barrier, eager to feast on her fear. Thane's sorrow reached out, wanting to warn, to protect, still playing the guardian even in chains. Elias hummed with possibility, seeing futures spreading from this moment like cracks in glass.
But I'd been planning this conversation for three hundred years, ever since I'd first felt the shift in the bloodline that suggested Pandora's line might produce something different. Something special.
I spoke first, my voice cutting through dimensions like a blade through silk.
"So Pandora's line produces another jailer."
She flinched. Even through the Threshold, I felt the impact of my words on her consciousness. Her mind was more open than she knew, all that suppressed power made her vulnerable to us in ways she couldn't imagine.
"Tell me, little Keeper, do you enjoy holding the keys to our cage?"
Her sharp intake of breath fed something dark and hungry that had been growing in me for centuries. Not just rage. Rage was too simple, too clean. This was something more complex. Anticipation, perhaps. Or hunger of a different kind.
She tried to speak, those rote words of binding they taught their children, but her voice emerged as a whisper. Blood ran from her nose, the Gate's growing instability was affecting her more than she knew. The connection between us, forged by a thousand years of her bloodline feeding our prison, pulled taut.
"You're not supposed to be awake," she managed, and the naivety of it almost made me laugh.
I did laugh. We all did. The sound must have been terrifying from her perspective—four divine beings finding amusement in her ignorance.
"We've been awake for quite some time," Flynn growled, unable to resist joining in. His presence pressed closer to the barrier, and I saw her shrink back slightly.
"Waiting. Watching. Learning the taste of each Keeper's blood as it fed our prison." I let the words sink in, watched the horror bloom across her face as she understood the implications. "Year after year after year."
"Your mother's tasted of sorrow," Thane added, his voice heavy with his eternal grief. "Bitter and broken, like ashes in water."
I leaned into the connection, pushing my consciousness as close to the barrier as the chains would allow. "Yours tastes of questions."
"Questions that will unmake everything," Elias sang, because of course he did. Always speaking in riddles, always seeing the end from the beginning. "The pattern breaks. The wheel turns. The daughter becomes the key."
She pressed her hand against the stone floor, trying to push herself up, trying to flee. The movement made her sleeve shift, and I saw it. Golden light visible even through bandages.
Already marked. Already mine.
No, not mine. Not yet. But the Gate recognized what she was even if she didn't. Even if they'd lied to her about her entire purpose.
"I'm a Keeper," she recited, falling back on doctrine like a child reciting lessons. "I hold the locks. I maintain the prison. I serve the mortal realm."
