I coughed again, a wet, rattling sound deep in my chest. More gold dust, divine ichor mixed with mortal blood, splattered onto the cold floor. My lungs felt brittle, as if they were crystallizing. The "Silvering" on my skin flared with a horrible, numbing cold. I watched, detached and terrified, as the iridescent, metallic sheen raced toward my heart, the complex geometric runes feeding on the chaotic emotional energy flooding the room.
He’s killing us,the realization struck me with the cold precision of a ledger balancing out.The weight... it createsgravity. He’s pulling the whole bond down with him into the dark.
If Thane didn't wake up, the feedback loop would shatter our minds long before the Silvering finished turning my biology into a statue.
"Get... away," I wheezed, shoving weakly at Kaelen’s chest.
"Aria, no, you need support," Kaelen argued, his golden eyes filled with a panic he would never admit to. He reached for me, his hands hovering, afraid to hurt me, afraid to let go. "Your structural integrity is failing. You cannot stand."
"I said move!" I snapped. The command didn't sound like me; it rang with a strange, metallic harmonic, like a sword striking an anvil.
I dragged myself toward Thane. My left leg, now almost entirely silver and heavy as lead, dragged behind me, scraping uselessly against the stone. I crawled, grit digging into my remaining flesh, until I was face to face with the kneeling giant.
He looked destroyed. His soft brown eyes were open, but they were unseeing, reflecting only rain, mud, and the faces of dead boys he had failed to shield.
I reached out. My human hand, warm, trembling, and stained with sweat, grabbed his left cheek. My metal hand, cold, unyielding, and shimmering with magic, grabbed his right. The contrast made me shudder, the duality of what I was becoming.
I didn't try to talk to him with my mouth. Words were wind. Words could be debated, twisted, or ignored. Guilt was heavy; it needed leverage, not language.
I leaned forward, straining against the stiffness in my neck, and pressed my forehead against his.
Open,I commanded the bond.
I didn't pull power this time, didn't draw upon the bond to fuel my magic. I reversed the flow. I pushed.
I took everything I was, the stubbornness of the girl who had scrubbed floors in the Citadel while memorizing forbidden texts and the fierce, possessive love of the woman who had claimed four broken princes as her own, and I shoved it violently into his mind.
The transition was jarring. One moment I was in the forge; the next, I was standing in freezing, ankle-deep mud. The smell of pine was gone, replaced by the copper stench of blood and the ozone of a storm.
I see them,I projected into the dark, swirling vortex of his memory.
I stood with him on the ridge. I used my Keeper training to analyze the scene, not to recoil from it. I saw the dead soldiers scattered like broken toys. I felt the biting cold of the rain soaking through armor that had failed.
I see what you did,I told him, my mental voice echoing like a judge’s gavel.I see the math. I see the horror. I see the variables you could not control.
Thane flinched in the physical world and the mental one. He tried to pull away, to curl in on himself, to hide his shame in the dark recesses of his subconscious.
No.I held him fast, my mental grip iron-tight.You do not get to look away. And you do not get to stay here.
I ripped the scenery away. I showed him the Forge as it was now. I showed him me, dying by degrees, calcifying into an ornament. I showed him Kaelen’s terror, Flynn’s frantic pacing, Elias’s bleeding nose.
You made a choice then,I whispered into the core of his soul, stripping away the layers of self-loathing.Make a choice now. Are you the butcher's block, soaking up blood? Or are you the hammer that shapes the world?
Aria?His mental voice was a ghost, faint and weeping, sounding so much younger than his eternal years.I failed them. I killed them.
They are dead,I agreed, ruthless in my logic.I am not. Not yet. But I will be in moments if you do not stand up.
I didn't shield him from my pain. I poured the sensation of my own freezing heart into him. I let him feel the Silvering creeping inward, turning soft tissue into hard, cold lattice. I let him feel the physical reality of my fear, not for myself, but for what would happen to them when I was gone.
Protect me,I pleaded, turning his greatest weakness into his only trigger.Protect us.
Thane gasped.
It was a wet, violent sound, as if he were surfacing from deep water. His real body jerked, shocked by the sensory input. The air rushed into his lungs with a ragged, desperate heave. His hazel eyes cleared, the grey rain of the past vanishing, instantly replaced by the red, urgent glare of the forge lights.
He looked at me. He saw the gold dust smeared on my lips, the grey metal creeping grimly up my throat, stiffening my jaw.
"Aria," he choked out, the name tearing its way out of his throat.
