"The static," he murmured, looking at me with awe. "It's gone. My head is quiet."
"Good," I said, adjusting my clothes, though my hands were shaking. "Because we have a job to do. And I need you, Flynn. Not the ghost."
He kissed me again, softly this time, lingering. A thank you. A promise.
"You have me," he swore. "You have all of me."
"Then let's go," I said, taking his hand. "The others are waiting."
NINE
Thane
I watched them return from the clearing, observing the way Flynn held her hand, loose enough to allow movement, tight enough to anchor. The red flush on Aria’s neck was fading, replaced by the encroaching, metallic pallor of the Silvering. It was creeping up her throat now, past the collarbone, seeking the soft skin beneath her jaw.
"She’s back," Elias murmured beside me, his voice a low hum that vibrated against my shoulder. "But the timeline has not corrected itself. The fog remains."
"The fog is the least of our concerns," I rumbled.
I didn't look at Flynn’s triumphant grin or the way Kaelen’s shoulders dropped an inch in relief. I looked at Aria’s left leg. She was favoring it heavily. When she placed her weight on it, there was no flexion in the knee. It hit the ground with a solid, jarringthudthat vibrated through the mossy floor.
Structural failure was imminent.
"We move," I announced, my voice cutting through the lingering atmosphere of their intimacy. I hefted my war hammer, the weight of it familiar and grounding. "The gardenis a maze, but the air current pulls east. That is where the ventilation feeds into the Forge."
Kaelen stepped toward her, his hand reaching out to brush her cheek, likely to offer comfort or to reclaim his place in her orbit.
"Don't," I said.
Kaelen froze, his golden eyes snapping to mine, narrowing into slits. "Excuse me, brother?"
"Do not stop," I corrected, stepping past them. I refused to look at the hurt and confusion in Aria's eyes. I focused on the path ahead, a tangle of silver vines and razor-leafed ferns. "Every second we spend indulging in sentiment is a second the transmutation speeds up. Look at her leg, Kaelen."
Kaelen looked. He saw the stiffness, the unnatural angle. He paled beneath the soot on his face, but I was already moving.
I took point, not bothering to dodge the crystalline flora, instead I smashed through it. My hammer swung in efficient, brutal arcs, shattering branches that chimed like bells and vines that bled glowing blue sap. The destruction was necessary. A clear path meant speed. Speed meant the Forge. The Forge meant, potentially, survival.
But as I walked, listening to the stumbling, uneven rhythm of Aria’s footsteps behind me,step, step, clack, I felt a coldness settling over my heart. It was a numbness I hadn't felt since the first century of our imprisonment. It was the anesthesia of the earth. To endure the weight of the mountain, one must become stone. To watch the woman I loved turn into a statue, I had to become one first.
If I felt the horror of it, if I let the grief of what was happening to her frail, mortal body permeate my mind, I would stop functioning. And if I stopped, we all died.
"The air is changing," Flynn called out from the rear guard. "Smell that? It’s lost the rot."
He was right. The cloying, sweet stench of the garden’s decay was thinning, replaced by something sterile. Something sharp.
It smelled of nothing.
"The void," I said to myself.
The garden ended abruptly, severed by a clean line where the mossy floor simply stopped. Beyond lay a tunnel of smooth, dark basalt. The transition was jarring. We stepped from a riot of impossible life into a vacuum of absolute geometry.
"This isn't a natural formation," Elias whispered, his footsteps silent on the smooth floor. "This tunnel, it feels scraped. Hollowed out."
"It leads down," I noted. "Toward the heat."
But it wasn't hot yet. It was freezing. A chill draft blew up from the depths, carrying with it the scent of non-existence. It bit through my armor, seeking the warmth of my blood.
Behind me, Aria stumbled.
