"We don't need the Sanctorum," Elias said, walking toward me. "The Gate isn't a place anymore, Aria. It's a person."
He stopped in front of me, reaching out to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. His touch was electric, making the phoenix fire in my blood hum.
"You absorbed the connection," he said. "The tethers. The bindings. They are inside you now."
I looked down at my hands, at the golden markings etched into my skin. "I can... open it? Here?"
"Theoretically," Thane said, sounding dubious. "But opening a door to Olympus... that is like opening a submarine hatch at the bottom of the ocean. The pressure..."
"The pressure is irrelevant if the alternative is waiting to be erased," Kaelen cut in. He stepped up beside Elias, forming a wall of divine masculinity that made the cavern feel suddenly very small.
"We go to them," Kaelen said, his voice hardening into the tone of a general. "We don't wait for the executioner. We march into the courtroom and we demand an answer."
"Into Olympus?" I squeaked. "You want to invade heaven?"
"It's not heaven, little fireheart," Kaelen said, a dark smile touching his lips. "It's just another realm."
"If we go there," Flynn said, the playfulness gone from his voice, "we are walking into the maw of the lion."
"Better the lion than the void," Kaelen countered.
He looked at me, waiting. The choice was mine. It was always mine.
"If we stay," I said slowly, thinking of Oakhaven, of the pregnant woman, of the lies that had strangled my life. "The Council will hunt us. The Sentinels will hunt us. This world becomes a battlefield."
"Yes," Kaelen confirmed.
"But if we go..." I looked up at the ceiling, imagining the shimmering aurora that lay beyond the stone. "We take the fight away from the mortals. We take it to the source."
"And we find the truth," Elias added. "Therealtruth. About the Devourer, and about how to stop it."
I took a deep breath. The air tasted stale, but beneath it, I could smell the faint, lingering scent of phoenix fire and dragon ash.
"Okay," I said. "Okay. We figure out what's going on in Olympus."
"Good," Kaelen said. He looked at the obsidian structure across the water. "Because that... that is not just a tomb. It's an amplifier. If you are going to open a door to the High Seat, to the realm of the gods who want us dead... you're going to need a hell of a lot more power."
"And," Flynn added, glancing at my tattered leathers and the dirt streaked across my skin, "you might want to wash the blood off first. We want to make a good impression before we burn their city to the ground."
I looked at the black water, then at the four men who had become my orbit.
"How do I do it?" I asked. "How do I open the sky?"
Kaelen stepped closer, his hand finding the nape of my neck, his thumb resting against the pulse point.
"First," he whispered, his golden eyes burning into mine, "you have to let us fully in. All of us. No barriers. No fear."
"I thought I already did that."
"No," Elias said, his voice overlapping with Kaelen's. "You let usthroughyou. Now... you must let usbind withyou."
The ominous weight of the statement hung in the air, heavy as the mountain above us.
"And once we are there?" I asked, not really wanting to think about what binding with them meant. Not yet at least.
Kaelen’s grin was sharp, terrifying, and utterly irresistible.
"Then we remind the gods why they were afraid of us in the first place."
