"We have another amplifier," I said.
Silence.
They all looked at me.
"The obsidian tomb back in the Cradle?" Thane asked, confusion knitting his brow.
"Not that one," I said, rolling my eyes. I shook Aria gently. "Her. The Door. The Gate. Use whatever metaphor you want. She just told a dead Titan to scream and it did. Sheisa conduit."
Kaelen went still. The fire around him cooled instantly, sucked back into his skin as his focus narrowed to a laser point. "You want to use Aria as the instrument?"
"Why not?" I argued, the plan solidifying. "She merged with the Gate. She has the wiring. If the crystal down here is broken and we can’t fix it, then we bypass it. We channel the songthroughher."
"It will kill her," Thane said immediately. "To broadcast a signal strong enough to reach a cosmic entity? She is almost dead from the last stunt, Wolf."
"She’s almost dead because she’s empty!" I shouted, the frustration finally boiling over. "She’s running on fumes! But if we fill her up, if we do the binding, she won't be empty. She’ll be overflowing."
I looked at Aria. Her eyes had widened. The scent of her fear spiked, acidic and sharp, but beneath it was something else. A spark. The scent of ozone before a storm.
"The binding," she whispered.
"We talked about it," I said, my voice dropping, becoming rougher. "Back in the cave. We said we needed to do it to power the door to Olympus. Well, the plan has changed. We need to power the broadcast first."
"Flynn," Kaelen started, his voice warning.
"Don't 'Flynn' me," I snapped, turning on him. "Look at the ceiling, Kaelen! Look at the cracks! We can die here, holding our dicks and arguing about ethics, or we can do the one thing we were built for."
I gestured to the four of us. "We are high-density magic cores. She is the outlet. We plug in, we charge her up, and she sings the damn song."
"It– it could work," Elias murmured, his eyes unfocused as he did the mental arithmetic. "If the connection is absolute. If there is zero resistance. The human soul is resonant. Ifshe amplifies the intent– yes. She could broadcast the Void sequence."
"But," Thane rumbled, stepping forward, "the binding requires surrender. From all of us. And from her." He looked at Aria, his face pained. "To do this under duress, to force this intimacy because of a collapsing roof..."
"It's not forced if she chooses it," I said. I looked back at her. "Do you? Do you choose this? Or do you want to wait for Hera?"
"You were the one who said we shouldn't force it!" Kaelen roared at me. "I wanted to do this earlier, and you said no. You said her first time shouldn't be out of desperation or because a goddess was breathing down our necks!"
I couldn't look at Kaelen at that moment, not when Aria was right in front of me. She looked at the ceiling, where a new fissure was spreading like lightning across the stone before her gaze flicked to the oozing, broken crystal. Then she looked at me.
Her scent shifted. The fear remained, but it was joined by something else. Something heavy, sweet, and primal.
Desire. And resolve.
"I choose you," she said. Her voice was steady. "I choose this." She stepped slightly away from me, which made me want to scream. But then she looked at Kaelen. "Before it felt forced because we weren't in immediate danger. Yes, there was the beacon looking for us, but it hadn't found us yet. But Mariss, Hera, whatever you want to call her, is literally standing above us trying to dig through this bone to get to us. Now we really don't have a choice."
I didn't wait for Kaelen’s permission. I didn't wait for a strategy meeting. I acted.
I reached out and pulled her against me, crushing her mouth to mine.
This wasn't like the kiss on the mountain with Thane, gentle and grounding. This was hunger. I kissed her as if I wanted todevour her, like I wanted to breathe for her. I bit her lower lip, tasting the copper of her blood, and the jolt of magic that surged between us was like sticking a fork in a socket.
Aria gasped into my mouth, her hands gripping my arms, digging into the muscle. She didn't pull away; she pressed closer. She opened for me.
Mine,the Wolf roared in my head.
Ours,the logic corrected, though it was a struggle.
I broke the kiss, breathless, my forehead resting against hers. "We need to do this now. Everything. No barriers."
