"Listen," Thane rumbled. He pulled himself out of the mud pit he had created with a wet, sucking sound, shaking himself off like a massive bear shaking off river water. Great clumps of mud flew everywhere, splattering against the rocks. "Do not listen with your ears. Listen with the blood. Do you hear her?"
I closed my eyes and reached out with my senses, expanding my awareness upward through the miles of rock, past the tangled roots, toward the excavation chamber far above us.
Silence.
Not the silence of an empty room, but the silence of a void. The "Distress" signal, that constant, subconscious pressure of the Gate’s screaming broadcast that I hadn't even realized I was hearing until it was gone, had vanished. The psychic weight that had pressed on my mind since birth was simply absent.
"She stopped digging," I whispered, the realization washing over me like cold water. "Hera. She halted the excavation."
"Because there is nothing to dig for," Flynn said, a sharp, feral grin splitting his face, his teeth flashing white in the magical light. He wiped a streak of slime from his cheek, smears of dirt enhancing the savage angle of his jaw. "As far as the universe, Hera, and your Keepers are concerned, we just ceased to exist. We are background radiation. We are dust mote signals in a hurricane."
"We are ghosts," Kaelen corrected. He pushed himself to his feet with a fluid grace that defied the sludge beneath us, the mud sliding off his scales as if it dared not stick. He reached down and hauled me up, pulling me hard against his bare chest. His skin was scorching hot, dragging the chill of the deep earth right out of my bones. "And ghosts can go where the living cannot."
He buried his face in the crook of my neck, inhaling deeply, his nose brushing against the pulsing bond-mark he had placed there. "You taste like the Void, fireheart. It is terrifying. And entirely intoxicating."
"I feel..." I flexed my fingers, watching arcs of golden sparks dance between my knuckles, illuminating the dirt under my nails. "I feel full. Too full. Like a glass jar about to crack from the pressure."
"The binding," Elias said, stepping into the circle of light, his turquoise eyes examining me with clinical fascination. "We flooded your system to power the broadcast. But the broadcast was a burst. A shout into the dark. You still hold the echo of that shout within you."
"Is that safe?" I asked, looking at the glowing veins now mapping my arms like river deltas of liquid light.
"Probably not," Flynn said cheerfully, appearing at my side in a blink of motion. He wrapped a strong arm around my waist, his nose burying into my hair even though it must have smelled of sweat and tunnel decay. He kissed my temple, a proprietary, possessive gesture that made Kaelen growl low in his throat. "But you look spectacular. Like a galaxy wrapped in skin."
"Where exactly are we?" Thane asked, looking around into the shadows that Flynn’s fire couldn't pierce.
I followed his gaze. Flynn pushed a little more will into his flame, and the sphere of light expanded, pushing back the oppressive darkness. It revealed columns of stone that twisted and spiraled like braided rope, stretching up into the blackness. The floor wasn't flat rock; it was textured, grooved, and knotted with patterns that looked biological.
"The Roots," I said, a visual from Theron’s stolen journal flashing in my mind, overlaying reality. "The nervous system of the Titan. We are below the Throat. Deep in the substrata."
A wet, chittering sound echoed from the dark, followed by a wet squelch.
Damp,a voice complained directly inside my skull, the mental tone shivering with displeasure.Dark. Good hunting. Bad smell.
"Steve!" I spun around, eyes searching the gloom.
The Skal pulled itself from the mud behind Thane, shaking its tentacles with vigorous indignation. It looked unharmed, though thoroughly coated in subterranean slime that made its translucent skin glisten. Its large, soulful eyes swiveled toward me, narrowing with recognition and simple, biological pleasure.
Master shines,it observed, the mental voice vibrating with satisfaction.Bright meat. Tasty signal.
"Don't eat me, Steve," I warned automatically, the reprimand slipping out with the ease of habit despite the absurdity of the moment.
Forbidden snack,it agreed mournfully, dropping a tentacle in defeat.
"We cannot linger here," Kaelen said, the dark humor fading from his face, replaced instantly by the sharp, calculating focus of the general he had once been. He scanned the perimeter, counting exits and choke points in the gloom. "Hera stopped digging because the signal vanished. But she isn't stupid. She will suspect a trick. She will send search parties to scour the mountain’s base."
"She won't find us," Elias said, his voice carrying the weight of prophecy and old dust. "Not down here. The Titan’s resonance masks us now. We are surrounded by its dormant dreams."
The adrenaline that had sustained me through the fall and the impact finally began to recede, leaving my knees weak and trembling. I slumped to the ground, legs folding beneath me as gravity reasserted its hold. "I feel like I'm full of angry bees. I'm exhausted, but I don't want to sit still. Every nerve is firing." I didn't add aloud that the sensation was confusingly entangled with the heat of desire that had been in their eyes a few moments ago, a hunger that the mortal danger had only sharpened into a blade.
The roots of the Titan pulsed beneath me with a slow, rhythmic heartbeat, the air thick with the scent of damp earth and something older, something that smelled like the essence of the world itself. I could feel the magic humming in my veins, a restless, vibrating energy that made my skin too tight, my thoughts racing too fast. The binding had changed me. Again.
Flynn crouched beside me, the movement fluid and predatory. His amber eyes faintly reflected the glowing marks on my skin, making them seem to burn with an inner light. He reached out, tracing a rough finger along some of the golden markings on my arm, his touch sending a cascade of invisible sparks skittering across my skin.
"Then don't sit still," Flynn whispered, his voice rough with a challenge as he cocked an eyebrow at me, a dangerous smirk playing on his lips. "Burn it off."
TWENTY-SEVEN
Aria
