Ten feet ahead, the metal walkway had simply snapped, the rest of the structure lying in a molten heap a thousand feet below in the rivers of magma. The heat radiating upward seemed to drag the air from my lungs and dry my eyes instantly. My silvered leg throbbed in time with the rhythmic crashing of the massive hammers below, a dull, metallic ache that felt like my marrow was freezing despite the inferno.
“Dead end,” Thane rumbled, peering over the edge. His face was bathed in the violent orange glow of the magma. “Unless we fly. Can you use your wings, brother?”
Kaelen shook his head, his hand tight on my waist to keep me steady. “Not in here. The ventilation is too tight. My wings would clip the support struts, and we’d tumble into the slag before I could get us airborne.”
“There,” Elias pointed, his slender finger indicating a dark, arched opening set into the cavern wall to our right, half-hidden by a curtain of heavy chains. It looked less like a doorway and more like a wound in the stone. “A ventilation shaft. Or perhaps service access for the automatons. The air current pulls inward.”
We didn't have a choice. With Hera’s voice still echoing in our minds and the heat searing our skin, we ducked through the heavy chains.
The noise of the forge cut out instantly, replaced by a damp, heavy silence that pressed against my eardrums. The tunnel was cool, smelling of wet minerals and something sweet and cloying, like lilies left too long on a grave. We walked for minutes that feltlike hours; the tunnel winding deeper into the earth, away from the fire.
Then, the floor leveled out, and the walls fell away.
I gasped, the sound loud in the quiet.
We had stepped into a cavern, but not one of rock and darkness. It was a garden. But it was a garden grown in the graveyard of the gods.
Ruins of white marble, styled like ancient gazebos and temples, lay scattered in heaps, their surfaces slick with moisture. And growing over them, through them, were plants that defied every botanical law I knew.
Vines of translucent silver spiraled up broken columns, pulsing with a faint blue bioluminescence like veins carrying moonlight. Flowers the size of dinner plates bloomed from the stone itself, their petals black and velvety, weeping a thick, golden nectar that pooled on the floor. There were trees with bark like hammered copper and leaves of glass that chimed softly in the stagnant air.
“I've never seen anything like these,” I whispered, reaching out toward a fern that looked like it was made of frosted lace. Flynn walked past me, and the rest of the group, his anxiety bleeding into my mind.
“Because they shouldn't exist,” Elias murmured, stepping up next to me, his eyes wide as he took in the impossible flora. “This isn't nature, Aria. This is runoff. This is what happens when divine magic leaks into the soil for a thousand years.”
I looked at the garden, beautiful and wrong, a paradise growing on poison. Was this what I was becoming? A thing both mortal and magic, trying to mimic life? The thought stopped me in my tracks.
EIGHT
Aria
"You need to go to him," Kaelen’s voice was a low rumble, barely audible over the chiming of the glass leaves in the stagnant breeze.
He stood beside me, his hand hovering near the small of my back but not touching. The golden fire in his eyes was banked, dim and weary, but the bond between us was wide open. Through it, I felt his concern, but more overpowering was the jagged, screaming static coming from the connection to Flynn.
It wasn't a sound; it was a sensation, like steel wool being scrubbed against the inside of my skull. The only emotion it brought to mind was shame. Thick, oily, suffocating shame that tasted of old blood and snow.
"He's blocking us out," Elias murmured, examining a bloom that looked like an orchid weeping black ichor. "He is trying to sever the limb to save the body. He thinks his memories are poisoning the bond."
"He thinks he's a monster," Thane corrected, his gaze fixed on the dark path of crushed vegetation Flynn had left in his wake.
"We need a minute," I said, the words heavy on my tongue. My jaw felt stiff, the Silvering creeping up my neck like a tightening collar. "Just... give us a minute."
Kaelen nodded, turning his back to the path to stand guard. "We will secure the perimeter. Do not wander far, Aria. The garden is beautiful, but it smells of death and decay."
I moved past them, following the trail of broken glass leaves and trampled silver vines. My gait was uneven, my left leg moving with a heaviness that sent tremors of impact up my spine with every step. I felt less like a woman and more like a golem made of spare parts and stubbornness.
The garden was a labyrinth of impossible botany. Trees with trunks of twisted bronze grew out of marble ruins, their roots clutching stones like prey. The air was thick with a perfume that was too sweet, cloying like rotting fruit. It made my head swim, masking the usual scents of the underground.
I found Flynn in a clearing dominated by a massive, weeping willow made entirely of translucent crystal. The long, delicate branches swayed, chiming softly, creating a curtain of sound.
He was destroying it.
Not with daggers or weapons of any kind.
He was using his bare hands.
Flynn punched the trunk of the crystal tree, his knuckles splitting, blood smearing against the pristine surface. He didn't seem to feel it. He struck again, and again, a rhythmic, self-destructive cadence.
