"I have her," Thane rumbled, his voice thick.
Elias moved like the wind. He came up beside Kaelen, his hands finding the bare skin of her back, his fingers tracing the spine. "The channels are opening," he murmured, his eyes glowing white. "She is taking it. She is holding it."
The air in the chamber began to scream. Not the sound of the Devourer, but the sound of magic becoming too dense for physics to tolerate. Static electricity arced between us, snapping against our skin.
Aria was glowing. She was incandescent. Her head thrashed back against my shoulder, her eyes rolling up.
"It hurts," she gasped. "It’s too much."
"Just a little more, fireheart," Kaelen growled, grabbing her face, forcing her to look at him. "Take all of us, Aria. Don't leave anything for the goddess."
He kissed her again, hard, brutal, feeding her his fire.
I felt it happening. The walls between us were dissolving. I wasn't just Flynn anymore. I was Kaelen’s rage. I was Thane’s sorrow. I was Elias’s vision. And I was Aria’s overwhelming, terrifying capacity to endure.
We were one thing. One beast with five heads and a single heart that beat with the force of a collapsing star.
The Song,Elias’s voice echoed in the collective mind.Sing the Song.
Aria’s mouth opened against Kaelen’s.
She didn't scream. She didn't shout.
She vibrated.
A tone, pure and crystalline, emerged from her throat. It wasn't a human sound. It was the sound of the rune we had seen in the book. The sound of Void.
The broken crystal behind us shattered. It couldn't handle the resonance. It exploded into dust. As did the crystal floor we’d been standing on. The cracks spread out under my feet until it felt like trying to balance on ice. The sensation only lasted a moment before it too turned to dust.
But Aria realized she didn't need it. She was the amplifier.
The sound wailed out of her, pouring from her, driven by the infinite magic of the four princes. It punched through the ceiling of the cavern, through the rock of the mountain, and through the atmosphere of the world.
Silent. Empty. Dead. Gone.
The signal blasted out into the cosmos, overwriting the distress call, replacing the dinner bell with the static hiss of a graveyard.
Above us, the thumping stopped.
Hera had paused.
She felt it. The sudden, violent erasure of the bait.
For a heartbeat, there was silence.
Then, the roof caved in.
A slab of rock the size of a city block detached itself from the ceiling directly above us.
"Hold!" Thane roared.
He didn't let go of Aria. He didn't try to catch the rock. He poured his essence into the floor, the area where the broken crystals had been, the area that now looked like stone.
The ground did not liquefy; it vanished.
Thane dropped us.
We fell into the darkness below the throat, a tangle of limbs and glowing skin and divine power, just as the Titan's voice box was crushed into oblivion by the Queen's wrath.
