Hera’s presence intensified, focusing into a pinpoint of pressure right between my eyes.
Aria. Look at him. Look at the monster. That is what you are binding yourself to. That is what you invited into your body. Do you feel the blood on his hands? It never washes off.
I looked at Flynn. He was backing away, retreating down the steps, putting distance between us. He looked terrified. Not of Hera, but of me. Of my revulsion.
He was waiting for me to reject him. Just like the world had rejected him. Just like his creators had rejected him.
My stiff, silvered leg throbbed as I forced myself to take a step down. Then another.
"Flynn," I said.
"Don't," he choked out, holding up a hand. His claws were out, inadvertently summoned by the stress. "Don't come closer. She's right. You saw it. You felt it."
"I felther," I corrected, my voice hard. "I felt her command. I felt her finger on the trigger."
I reached him. He flinched, expecting a blow, or maybe just disgust.
I grabbed his face. My hands were clumsy, stiff with the transformation that was killing me, but I held him fast. I forced him to look at me, to see the gold and violet fire in my eyes.
"I don't care about the weapon," I snarled, projecting the thought as loudly as I could, aiming it at the ceiling, at the goddess, at the universe. "I care about the man who holds it."
Delusional,Hera sighed.Broken things love broken things.
"Get out!" Kaelen roared from behind me. He slammed his hand against the iron wall of the shaft, unleashing a pulse of raw, chaotic dragon magic, pure static interference meant to disrupt the signal.
The pressure lifted. The voice vanished, leaving behind a ringing silence and the smell of ozone.
Flynn sagged in my grip, his knees hitting the metal step. I went down with him, ignoring the scream of my fused joints.
"I killed them," he whispered, pressing his forehead into my stomach. "Before I met you, before Pandora, I killed them all. Anyone. Everyone. I didn't even know why."
"You were a tool," I said, running my fingers through his hair. It was damp with sweat. "A tool doesn't have sin, Flynn. The hand that wields it does. And that hand?" I looked up toward the invisible sky where Hera watched. "That hand is going to pay."
Kaelen crouched beside us, his hand resting on Flynn’s shoulder. Thane and Elias crowded in, a wall of brothers protecting their own.
"She is trying to divide us," Elias said, his turquoise eyes glittering in the red dark. "She knows the binding makes us stronger. She is trying to sever the limb before it can strike."
"She’s scared," Thane rumbled. "She wouldn't be whispering nightmares if she thought she could just crush us."
"We need to move," Kaelen said, though his voice was gentle. "We are sitting ducks on these stairs."
Flynn took a deep, shuddering breath. He pulled back, looking at me. The shame was still there, burning in his eyes, but the panic had receded.
"You saw it," he said again, needing me to acknowledge the blood.
"I saw it," I agreed. "And I'm still here. I'm still yours. Now stand up, Wolf. We have a forge to find."
He nodded slowly, pulling himself upright. He looked shaky, but the steel was returning to his spine.
We continued the descent. The air grew hotter, drier, filled with the roar of forced induction and the clang of massive hammers. The light at the bottom of the shaft grew brighter, shifting from blood red to a blinding, molten orange.
The stairs ended abruptly on a catwalk suspended over a cavern that made the Cradle look like a broom closet.
The primary area of the Forge.
It was a city of fire and iron. Rivers of magma flowed through channels cut into the obsidian floor. Massive gears, large enough to crush a cathedral, turned slowly in the smoky haze. Automatons, bronze spiders and iron giants moved with jerky purpose along the walkways, tending to the machines.
The catwalk ended in a jagged, rusted maw of twisted iron.
