"A busy evening," Flynn deadpanned, resuming his pacing. "I hope everyone stretched."
"We can't get through unnoticed," Kaelen said, his hand resting instinctively on the pommel of his sword. "Not with four of us radiating magic like bonfires in a dark room. As soon as we get within visual range of the site, she’ll know, maybe even before that."
"She already knows we're here," I reminded him. "She saw me through Steve. She knows I'm coming."
"Then we don't even try to sneak," Thane rumbled. He picked up a heavy slab of fallen granite, testing its weight in one hand like it was a child's toy. The muscles in his arm bunched like steel cables. "We breach."
"A distraction might be prudent," Elias suggested, his head tilted to the side as if listening to a distant melody. "We split the force. One group draws Hera's eye, making noise and chaos. The other goes for the chords."
"No splitting," Kaelen and Flynn said in unison.
They paused, looking at each other across the firelight, genuinely startled by their agreement.
"We stay together," Kaelen said firmly, recovering his composure. "We are stronger as a unit. And if we split up, shewill pick us off one by one. Or worse, she will isolate Aria while we’re distracted fighting her pawns."
"Together," I agreed, nodding. "But we have an asset she isn't expecting. She likely assumes it died when she collapsed the access tunnels."
I looked toward the tunnel entrance, where the shadows were deepest. The Skal was sleeping curled against the wall, looking like a chaotic pile of discarded armor plating and wet leather.
"Steve," I called out softly.
The monster jerked awake, its three asymmetrical eyes scrambling to focus in different directions before locking onto me. It let out a chittering yawn, mandibles clicking together with a sound like dry bones.
Master? Meat?The thoughts pushed into my mind, simple and hungry.
"Soon," I promised, managing a small, grim smile. "We're going to crash a party. Remember that yummy, squishy meat you had before? The ones in the robes? We're going to get you some more of it."
Steve chittered happily at my declaration, vibrating with anticipation. I began to close the journal, ready to command the march, but a smudge of ink in the margin caught my eye, making me freeze.
Pandora was created, not born. The box is the key.
I opened the book wider, pulling it closer to the luminescent moss on the wall. Master Theron had scrawled the note in the very corner of the page, so close to the edge it was nearly cut off, as if he were begging me to see it from beyond the grave.
"Pandora was created," I whispered, the words robbing the air from the room.
All four princes froze. The cave fell utterly silent. Even Steve stopped his excited chittering, sensing the sudden, plummetingdrop in the mood. The silence stretched tight, a wire pulled to the breaking point, humming with tension.
"Created?" Kaelen’s voice was a low, dangerous rumble that seemed to vibrate up through the stone floor and into the soles of my boots. "She was a woman. She had a childhood. She had a sister she sold us to save. She wept when she betrayed us, when the gate was closed."
"A backstory," Elias murmured. He wasn't looking at us; his turquoise eyes were fixed on the rough darkness of the ceiling, tracking invisible, tragic patterns. "Just like us. Bear. Wolf. Dragon. Phoenix. Woman. Roles to play in a grand theater written by a cruelty we cannot comprehend. If we’re the bait, then she was merely the hook to keep us here."
"If Pandora was a construct," Flynn said, his voice unusually quiet and devoid of its usual jagged humor, "then her betrayal wasn't a choice. It was a command. She didn't choose the Keepers over us. She was forced to do it."
Kaelen flinched as if physically struck. The color drained from his face. The idea that his greatest heartbreak, the defining tragedy that had fueled his rage for centuries, might have been nothing more than a predetermined event seemed to hollow him out. His hate had no target; his love had been given to a mirror.
"It doesn't matter," Kaelen snapped, turning his back on the group. The faint outline of wings shifted beneath his skin, betraying his turmoil. "Flesh or clay, the result was the same. We rotted for a millennium in the dark."
"It matters for Aria," Thane said quietly.
I looked down at my hands, pale, scarred, trembling slightly. The same hands that had opened the Gate. The hands of Pandora's heir. "If she was created, engineered by Hephaestus and Zeus, to be the perfect cage, then what am I?" My voice shook. "Am I just a spare part left on the shelf? Is my entire life just a delayed function of her programming?"
Thane’s large hand covered mine, encompassing it completely. His skin was rough and warm, anchoring me to the earth. "You are the one who broke the command, Aria. Pandora closed the box. You opened it. That is choice. That is chaos. No machine chooses chaos."
I took a shaky breath, looking from Thane's kind eyes to the journal. "The box is the key," I repeated Master Theron's words, gripping the leather until my knuckles turned white. "If the Gate is the box, and if I was always meant to be the key, then I don't just open it. I can lock it. I can change what's inside." I looked up at them, conviction hardening inside me. "We change the song. We turn the box into something else entirely."
"You've already become the Gate," Flynn said warily, sniffing the air as if he could smell the magic shifting within me. "If you try to change its nature, won't it change you as well?"
"I don't know," I admitted softly. "I don't know what I am anymore. Between becoming the conduit for the Gate, being the descendant of a biological construct, and then needing to bind my soul with all of you? Maybe I am just clay."
