We fell into the deep. Toward the only way out.
And as we fell, wrapped around the woman who was now burning brighter than a star, I looked at Kaelen. He was laughing. A wild, broken, terrifying sound.
We had done it. We had changed the song.
Now we just had to survive the fall.
TWENTY-SIX
Aria
The fall was not a terrifying, chaotic descent into oblivion. It was a plunge into the throat of the world, yes, but I wasn’t a stone dropping helplessly through water, waiting for the darker depths to crush me. I had become the lightning strike that boiled the ocean, a jagged tear in the fabric of the Citadel’s oppressive reality.
Wind whipped past us, a roar of displaced air that battered my ears, smelling of crushed damp minerals, ancient dust, and the sharp, coppery ozone burn of the magic I was hemorrhaging. I was hyper-aware of everything, my senses dialed up to a painful degree by the sheer overdose of power coursing through my veins. I felt the scorching heat of Kaelen’s chest pressed against my back, his presence a furnace against the subterranean chill. His arms were locked around my waist like bands of heated iron, refusing to let go even as wind whipped and tore at our clothes, threatening to rip us apart.
Beneath that, there was the rough, calloused grip of Flynn’s hand clamped around my ankle, a desperate tether preventing him from spinning away into the pitch-black void. Below us, I sensed the massive, gravitational pull of Thane, a heavy anchorsteering our chaotic descent through the twisting throat of the cavern. And spiraling around our tangled forms was Elias, a comet of turquoise light and sorrow, his presence a shimmering shield deflecting the jagged rock walls that blurred past too fast for mortal eyes to track.
We shouldn't have survived. By all laws of physics and any magic I had ever studied in the Citadel’s pristine library, we should have been pasted against the jagged walls within seconds. Instead, we fell for moments that stretched into agonizing eternities, dropping past layers of geological strata that predated humanity, down into the dark of the mountain.
"Brace!" Thane’s voice boomed. It was a command; his tone more stern and desperate than I’d ever heard it before.
The ground rushed up to meet us, a slab of unforgiving black rock that should have obliterated us instantly.
Thane hit first. But he didn't impact; he merged. He struck the cavern floor with the force of a falling meteor, yet instead of the sickening crunch of shattering bone, the rock yielded. Under his command, the geology surrendered. The stone turned to liquid mud on contact, rippling outward like water disturbed by a thrown pebble. He sank waist-deep in an instant, creating a shock-absorber of living earth deep enough to swallow a tank.
We slammed into him a split second later, a chaotic pile of limbs, glowing skin, and raw divine power.
Mud sprayed in a violent, gritty arc, coating everything in a layer of cold slime. Air left my lungs in a violentwhoosh, the impact rattling my teeth and snapping my head back despite Thane’s impossible cushioning. Momentum took over, physics demanding its due, and we tumbled out of the liquefied pit. We rolled across a surface that felt slick and organic, like wet moss growing on cold rock. We slid, limbs tangling and untangling, until friction finally won the argument against speed.
I came to rest on my back, breath hitching in a bruised throat, staring up into a darkness so complete it felt heavy, pressing physically against my eyes like a velvet blindfold. My chest heaved, sucking in air that tasted nothing like the sandalwood-scented incense of the temple above or the cold damp of the Cradle. This air was thick, heavy, and tasted of ancient fungus, stagnant water, and the slow, deep breath of the earth.
Silence.
No booming percussion from the ceiling above. No mental screams from an enraged goddess tearing through my psychic defenses like paper. No chanting of the Keepers, no alarm bells, no order.
Just the sound of five hearts beating a frantic, synchronized rhythm in the oppressive dark, loud as war drums in the quiet.
Then, the laughter started.
It came from beside me, starting as a low, shaking sound that reverberated through the stone floor before building into a roar of pure, unadulterated release.
"Kaelen?" I wheezed, my voice cracking as I pushed myself up on trembling elbows, my hands sinking into the muck.
The Dragon Prince was lying on his back in the mud, staring up at the invisible ceiling. I could barely make him out in the dark. His chest was convulsing, rising and falling in sharp, jagged spasms. He was laughing so hard he was choking on it, a ragged, desperate sound that scraped against the silence. It wasn't the laughter of joy; it was the hysteria of a man who had looked absolute death in the face, paused, and then spit in its eye.
"We survived," he gasped, the words tumbling out between sharp inhales as he fought for composure. He rolled onto his side, ignoring the slime coating his body. His golden eyes found mine in the gloom, blazing with a fervor that was terrifyinglybright. "You utter lunatic. You beautiful, disastrous lunatic. You actually pulled it off."
"Are we... functional?" Flynn’s voice drifted from somewhere to my left.
There was a frantic scuffling sound, the scratch of nails on stone, and then a small flame flared to life. It wasn't the devastating roar of dragon fire, just a simple conjuring cupped in Kaelen’s palm. It illuminated his face, which was streaked with blood, which I hoped wasn’t his, and gray rock dust. He looked manic, his pupils blown wide, adrenaline warring with exhaustion. "I feel buzzed. Like I swallowed a thunderstorm."
"We are more than functional," Elias murmured. He was standing a few feet away, illuminated by the fringe of Kaelen’s flickering light. He was brushing mud from his grey robes with an air of fastidious annoyance that seemed utterly absurd, given we were miles beneath the crust of the earth. "We are silent."
I sat up fully, wincing as my muscles protested the abuse they’d just taken. Every inch of me ached, but the magical exhaustion that had crippled me earlier, the hollowness that usually followed a major working, was gone. In its place was a humming, vibrating energy that made my skin feel too tight for my body, as if I were a vessel overfilled. I looked down at myself in the flickering light.
My shredded clothes hung precariously off one shoulder. The bite mark on my throat, where Kaelen had claimed me to seal the bond, pulsed with a rhythmic golden light. It didn't hurt. It felt like a second heart, pumping raw power directly into my jugular. The mark on my shoulder from Flynn mirrored it, a warm, throbbing knot of amber magic that seemed to sync with my own pulse.
I raised a hand, touching the glowing mark on my neck, feeling the heat radiating from it. "The song, the broadcast, did we complete it?"
