He looked back at me, his brown eyes soft.
"There is more than one kind of claustrophobia," Thane said gently. "Sometimes, the walls are made of stone. Sometimes, they are made of people who need too much from you."
Kaelen stiffened, his jaw tightening. Flynn looked like he’d been slapped. But Elias? Elias nodded slowly, retreating to his spot by the fire.
"Go," Kaelen said, his voice rough. He sat back down, though his eyes burned with frustration. "Take her to the light, Bear. But bring her back."
I took Thane's hand. He pulled me up, and for the first time in hours, I felt like I could draw a breath that reached the bottom of my lungs.
"Thank you," I whispered.
"Do not thank me yet," Thane rumbled, leading me toward a narrow fissure in the wall I hadn't even noticed. "It is a long climb to the sky."
NINETEEN
Thane
The darkness of the fissure swallowed us, but to me, stone has never been dark. It has a heavy, thrumming hum, a vibration of patience and memory that I have listened to since the first days of my creation.
I held Aria’s hand. It was small, swallowed entirely by my own, her skin fever-hot and vibrating with a nervous energy that felt like a trapped bird beating its wings against a cage. Her pulse fluttered against my palm, erratic and fast.
"Stay close," I rumbled, my voice bouncing off the narrow walls. "The mountain remembers the trauma of the collapse. We must be gentle with her."
"I thought you said you could shape it," Aria whispered, her voice tight. The claustrophobia was still there, a cold knot in her chest that I could feel through the bond. It was a thin connection, gossamer-fragile compared to the roaring inferno she shared with Kaelen or the electric live-wire that tethered her to Flynn.
"I can," I said. "But you do not shape stone by forcing it. You ask it to move."
We reached a dead end, a wall of collapsed granite that blocked the upward path. Aria flinched, her breath hitching. To her, it was a tomb door. To me, it was clay.
I released her hand, though the loss of contact made a hollow ache open up behind my ribs. Placing both palms against the rough surface of the blockage, I didn't push, instead I simply let my essence, the weight of the Bear, sink into the grain of the rock. I sought the fault lines, the microscopic gaps between crystals, the places where the stone wanted to yield.
Part,I thought, a suggestion of movement rather than a command.
The rock groaned. The granite didn't crack; it flowed. It went soft, like wax continuously warmed by a hand, and slid aside, opening a path just wide enough for two.
Behind me, Aria let out a small, sharp gasp.
I felt it then, a spike of pure, unadulterated wonder traveling down the golden thread that linked us. It was a clean, bright sensation, washing over the dark oil of her fear. She wasn't looking at the exit; she was looking at me. At my back. At the power I wielded.
It made me want to straighten my spine, to expand my shoulders, to be the mountain she needed. But it also terrified me.
Our bond was so faint, unlike the one she had with Kaelen or Flynn, and now even unlike the one she had with Elias. It was akin to a single strand of spider silk holding a boulder. If I leaned on it, if I let myself need her the way the others did, I would snap it. I was too heavy. My grief was too heavy. My history was a sediment layer of failures, and she was already carrying the weight of the sky.
"Come," I said, stepping through the opening I had made. "The air is fresher above."
She followed, her boots scraping on the loose scree. "That was beautiful, Thane. It looked like the rock was breathing."
"It breathes," I said, taking her hand again to guide her over an uneven patch of floor. "Just very slowly. Slower than us. Slower than trees. But it breathes."
We climbed in silence for a time. I carved stairs where the slope became too steep, molding the stone into flat, reliable steps. Every time I used the magic, I felt that flicker of awe from her, followed immediately by a wave of exhaustion. She was running on empty, her reserves drained by the fights she had endured and the flight through the dark. It wasn't something a little healing magic from the phoenix and a few mouthfuls of fish could fix, yet, she kept climbing.
Her resilience was a terrifying thing.
We moved upward, winding through the veins of the mountain. Just as we neared a junction where an old mining shaft intersected a natural cavern, I stopped.
The smell hit me first. Not a physical scent, though the staleness of the air changed, but a magical stench. It smelled of sulphur, rot, and the sharp, acidic tang of fanaticism.
"Thane?" Aria whispered, sensing my tension.
