"You," Kaelen growled, stopping inches from me. He reached out, cupping my face with hands that were still hot to the touch, smelling of smoke and molten gold. "You insanity-driven, reckless, beautiful disaster."
"I saved you," I whispered, my knees trembling as the adrenaline finally began to drain away, leaving me hollow. "I saved all of you."
"You died," he accused, his voice dropping to a rough whisper. His thumbs stroked my cheekbones, frantic, as ifchecking I was solid. "I felt you die, Aria. For a second, between the breath and the pull of the mechanism, you ceased to exist. The tether snapped."
"I came back."
"Don't do it again." He leaned his forehead against mine, his breathing ragged, his presence overwhelming my senses. "I spent a thousand years in the dark, plotting, raging. I will not spend a single second in the light burying you."
"Touching moment," Flynn drawled from somewhere to my left, his voice rasping with lingering growls. "Really. Top tier. Even I'm feeling a bit misty. But we are currently standing naked in a hole, surrounded by the wreckage of our prison, and the sky is bleeding. Perhaps we should relocate before the neighbors complain?"
Elias looked up at the rift above us, his turquoise eyes narrowing. "He's right. The death of a Sentinel rings a loud bell in the firmament. Others will come. And they will bring heavier artillery than a mere foot soldier."
"The archives," I said, forcing my brain to work through the haze of exhaustion. I pulled away from Kaelen's mesmerizing heat, though my body screamed at the loss of contact. I pointed toward the shadowed tunnel mouth half-buried in rubble, the servant’s entrance we had been aiming for. "There are clothes there. Old ceremonial robes unused for decades. Weapons. And a path down the mountain that skips the main roads."
Kaelen straightened, the general taking over the lover. "Lead the way."
We ran.
Or tried to.
My body was off. Something felt fundamentally different; my center of gravity shifted, and I couldn't coordinate my movements. My legs felt like lead, and the ground seemed to tilt with every step. I stumbled over a loose cobblestone.
"Allow me," a smooth voice said from entirely too close.
I didn't have a chance to respond before Flynn had me up in his arms. He adjusted my weight effortlessly against his chest and began running over the treacherous ground like it was the flattest, smoothest pathway possible. He moved with a wiry, devastating grace, leaping over rubble and sidestepping fissures that would have broken a human ankle. I smelled the forest floor and musk on him, overpowering the scent of the burning Sentinel.
"I'll teach you later, if you like. How to run without thinking," Flynn winked at me, his amber eyes dancing as we scrambled over the ruins of the Sanctorum walls, slipping into the cool darkness of the archive tunnels. "Provided we survive what comes next, of course."
The silence of the underground was a blessing after the roar of battle. The air here was cool, smelling of dry paper and stone, a stark contrast to the destruction outside. I directed them deeper, my enhanced sight, a gift from the Gate, I realized, picking out the path in the gloom where pitch darkness should have been.
I stopped at a supply cache Master Theron had shown me years ago, hidden behind a false section of wainscoting. I tore open the chests, coughing as dust motes danced in the gloom, and tossed bundles of wool and leather to the princes.
Flynn set me down reluctantly and pulled on a pair of breeches, grimacing at the rough fabric. "It scratches. I miss being a wolf. No seams."
"You miss licking yourself in public," Elias countered, pulling a grey scholar’s robe over his head. Somehow, he adjusted the folds with such elegance that the moth-eaten wool looked like royal silk draped for a portrait.
Thane struggled with a tunic that was three sizes too small, the seams stretching dangerously across his massive shoulders.He eventually abandoned it with a soft sigh of defeat, settling for wrapping a heavy, dark cloak around his waist and shoulders like a toga, leaving one immense arm bare. It suited him, ancient and formidable.
Kaelen dressed quickly, his movements sharp and efficient. He found a black tunic that fit reasonably well and strapped a sword belt around his waist, testing the balance of a blade taken from the armory chest. He turned to me, the gold in his eyes flashing in the dark.
"Where do we go?" he asked. "The villages are vulnerable. If Olympus descends, they will burn the countryside to flush us out."
"We don't go to the villages," I said, clutching the leather-bound journal that Master Theron had died to protect. My fingers traced the scorched leather cover, feeling the phantom heat of the spell that had killed him. "We go to the one place Natalia never looked. The place that no one will go to because they are too afraid of the old magic."
"Where?" Thane asked, his deep voice rolling through the tunnel like distant thunder.
"The Cradle," I said, the name tasting forbidden on my tongue. "The place where the first stone of the Citadel was cut. There’s a crypt beneath the mountain. Theron told me about it once when he was drunk on winter wine. He said the foundation of the world is different there."
"The Heart of the Titan," Kaelen murmured, recognition flashing in his eyes along with a grim sort of respect. "Yes. The earth magic there would be chaotic. Ancient. It would hide our signatures."
"Lead on," Flynn said, testing the weight of a dagger he'd found for a brief moment before snatching me up again. He almost seemed to rub his cheek against my shoulder, like heneeded tactile reassurance that I was there. "You smell like ozone and fear, Aria. Let's fix at least one of those."
I couldn't deny that I needed the reassurance as well. Everything seemed to be happening too fast, blurring together. I just needed a moment to breathe, to make sure that we were all okay.
But we weren't all okay.
Master Theron was dead. The image of his body, slumped over his beloved scrolls, flashed behind my eyes.
