"It hurts," Apollo wept, looking down at his own hands, which were glowing with the chaotic violet light I was pouring into him. "The shadows... They were so loud. I just wanted them to be quiet."
"Then stay in the light," I urged, the skin on my face tight with the strain of holding the flow. My muscles were screaming, my veins feeling like they were carrying liquid lead. "Stay with us. Don't let go."
He looked at me then. The clarity in his eyes held for a fraction of a second, a look of pure, unadulterated awe mixed with a flash of ancient recognition.
"Pandora?" he breathed.
Then the clarity shattered.
The cleansing wasn’t a cure; it was an exorcism, and the vessel was too damaged to hold the purity. The light became too much. His jaw tightened, the veins in his neck bulging as the corruption deep in his marrow fought back against the intrusion. The beautiful, tragic blue of his eyes flickered, the black smoke surging back up from his throat to reclaim him.
"No," he gasped, clutching his head, his fingers digging into his scalp until blood ran. "Too bright. Too loud. I prefer the dark."
He scrambled backward, crab-walking away from the violet glare of my presence, desperate to find a shadow to hide in. The summer scent soured instantly, curdling back into the smell of rot and old graves.
"Get away!" Apollo shrieked. The distortion returned to his voice, layering it with a thousand whispering dead things, a chorus of nightmares. "You blind me! You are a monstrosity of light!"
He didn’t fight. He didn’t raise his lyre to summon a sonic boom. He turned and fled.
He dissolved into a streak of dirty, grey light, shooting upward through the shattered ceiling, fleeing the Forge like a cockroach scattering when light hits it. He vanished into the swirling storm of the Devourer above, leaving only the echo of his scream bouncing off the sweating walls.
I lowered my hand.
The roaring column of energy cut off instantly. The silence that rushed back in was heavy, pressurized, a vacuum waiting to be filled.
I dropped to the floor and I staggered, the sudden return of normal gravity more surprising than I had expected. The sensation of being everywhere, of my consciousness being spread across the room in waves of radiation, retracted,slamming back into the confines of my body. But my body was different.
I felt heavy. Dense.
Like I was made of lead and lightning at the same time.
"Aria."
It was Flynn. He was the first one there, always the fastest, moving before the thought had fully formed in anyone else’s mind. He skidded to a halt in front of me, his boots sliding on the soot. His hands hovered over me, afraid to touch the smoking, glowing metal of my skin.
"I’m okay," I wheezed, though my voice still had that strange, metallic harmonic, like a chord played inside a steel drum. "I’m... solid."
"You really are solid," Flynn breathed, his amber eyes wide. He was staring at my face with such intensity that I could watch the reflection of my own glowing runes in his pupils.
He reached out and touched my left arm, flinching as though he expected blistering heat, but then his hand settled. The metal was still there, fused with my biology, but it had blurred with my humanity. It didn't look like armor strapped on; it looked like it grew from me.
"Cool," he murmured, running his fingers over the transition where star-metal met flesh at my shoulder. He tilted his head, inhaling deeply. "You feel like a sword fresh out of the quench. Dangerous. Sharp."
"Give her room, Wolf," Kaelen commanded, shouldering past Flynn with kinetic force.
The Dragon Prince looked wrecked. His bare chest was smeared with soot and drying blood, his hair matted with sweat and ash. But his eyes were clear, burning gold as he grabbed my face. His calloused thumbs traced the sharp angles of my cheekbones, following the gold patterns etched into my skin.
"The fire didn’t eat you," he whispered, examining my eyes as if looking for cracks in a gemstone. "I thought... when you stepped into the pit... I thought you were gone."
"I’m okay, I promise," I said, leaning into his touch, feeling the familiar, grounding heat of him seep into my cold metal skin.
Thane loomed behind him, a massive, silent wall of bruised muscle. He placed a hand on the top of my head, heavy and comforting.
"You held the mountain," Thane rumbled. His voice was thick with an emotion I couldn't place, pride, perhaps, or relief so deep it hurt. "I felt you take the weight, Aria. You didn’t buckle."
"I had good anchors," I said, looking past them to Elias.
The Phoenix was standing a few feet away, leaning heavily against a cooling gear assembly. He looked pale, drained, as if he had bled out his own soul to fuel me. But his turquoise eyes were locked on me with a feverish intense curiosity. He was analyzing the new geometry of my existence, reading the impossible equation I had become.
