"ELIAS!" Kaelen screamed, his flames sputtering out.
I raised my hands.
I didn't try to banish the shadows. I grabbed them. I twisted my wrists, turning the entropy into contrast.
"Light," I whispered.
I clapped my hands together.
My turquoise aura exploded outward, intricate and blinding. It caught the flailing shadows and wove them into the lattice,using the darkness to define the light, creating depth where there had only been surface.
The pattern above Aria snapped back into existence. But it wasn't rigid anymore. It was fluid. It moved like water, shifting and changing to accommodate the storm raging inside her.
"NOW!" I screamed at the others. "Pour it in! Fill the conduit!"
Kaelen roared, and the white fire returned, hotter than before. Thane slammed the gravity down. Flynn vibrated the air.
Aria solidified.
She slammed back onto the Anvil with a meaty, solid thud. The blur vanished. The silver on her arm stopped bubbling and settled into a sleek, hardened casing.
She screamed, but it was a sound of triumph, not pain.
"She is holding!" Hephaestus yelled, sounding stunned. He brought the hammer down.CLANG."The lattice is flexible! It’s expanding!"
I stepped forward, back to my position at the east. I didn't stop. I walked right up to the Anvil, ignoring the heat that singed my eyebrows.
I looked down at her. She was writhing, sweat and steam rising from her skin, her teeth gritted, her eyes locked on mine.
"I have you," I promised her, weaving a new thread of stability into her spine. "I have you, Aria. I’m not letting go."
She reached up with her flesh hand, the one that wasn't metal, and grabbed my wrist. Her grip was strong enough to bruise.
"Don't," she gasped. "Don't... leave... again."
"Never," I swore.
The runes on her body flashed gold, then white, then a color that was all of us woven together. The energy in the room spiked. The temperature soared.
But instead of exploding, the energy turnedinward.
The room went dark. All the light, the fire, the glowing iron, the divine auras, were sucked into Aria.
For a heartbeat, there was absolute, terrifying silence.
Then, the connection shifted.
We weren't in the Forge anymore. We weren't on the ridge. We weren't in the memory.
Using the bond as a highway, Aria pulled me. She didn't pull the others. Just me.
Everything around me vanished. The floor. The heat. My brothers. It was all gone, and then I was falling into her. And this time, I didn't fight gravity.
NINETEEN
Aria
I didn't catch Elias with my arms; I caught him with the gravity of my soul.
