Aria POV
The air didn't just burn; it screamed.
The chamber was a pressurized furnace of clashing intent. To my left, Gabriel was a void of absolute silence, his Abyssal aura devouring the light. Before me, Ignis was a supernova in human skin, her presence a chaotic roar of solar winds. And between us, Logan the man who had once been my entire world lay broken, a pathetic conduit for powers that were stripping the marrow from his bones.
« Careful, Aria, » the White Wolf whispered in the back of my mind, her voice a glacial echo. « The Phoenix does not seek to rule. It seeks to consume. She is the fire that leaves no ash. »
I ignored the warning. I stepped forward, my silver mail clinking with a sound like shattering ice. Every breath was a struggle against the golden heat radiating from Ignis, a heat that tried to blister my soul before it touched my skin.
"You call yourself a Queen, Moon-Child," Ignis laughed, her voice a crackle of dry brush catching flame. She didn't move her lips; the fire spoke for her. "But you're still tied to this... thing."
She pointed a finger of living plasma at Logan. The silver wire I'd wrapped around his heart began to glow a sickly, incandescent white.
"You use him as a leash. I will use him as fuel."
"He is mine to break, not yours to burn," I hissed.
I didn't wait. I lunged.
The Dance of the Primals
I didn't shift. A full shift in this confined space would bring the mountain down on all of us. Instead, I channeled the Primal essence into my limbs. My speed became an impossible blur, a streak of moonlight cutting through the golden haze.
I swung my hand, a blade of silver energy extending from my fingertips. Ignis met it with a shield of white-hot fire. The collision sent a shockwave through the room that pulverized the stone floor into dust.
BOOM.
The impact vibrated through my teeth, tasting of ozone and ancient iron. I felt her hunger a wild, starving thing that wanted to melt the world back into the sun. But I was the Moon. I was the cold clarity that brought the tide.
"Gabriel! The pedestal!" I roared through our mental link.
I didn't need to see him to know he moved. Gabriel didn't run; he folded the shadows. One moment he was at the periphery; the next, he was behind Ignis, his hands wreathed in black Abyssal fire. He reached for the bone pedestal, the anchor of her power.
"No!" Ignis shrieked.
She turned, unleashing a torrent of liquid flame toward him. Gabriel didn't flinch. He opened his arms, his Abyssal vacuum swallowing the fire whole, though I saw the violet runes on his neck flare with a dangerous, agonizing light. He was taking the hit to give me the opening.
Now.
I threw myself into the center of the heat. The silver fire in my chest exploded outward, not as a blast, but as a freezing fog. I wrapped my arms around Ignis from behind, pinning her wings of flame.
The agony was instantaneous.
It felt like my skin was being flayed by a thousand suns. My silver mail began to glow red-hot, searing into my flesh. I gritted my teeth, the taste of blood filling my mouth as I bit back a scream.
« Hold her, » the White Wolf commanded.
« Drain the sun. »
I opened the link. I didn't push my power out; I pulled hers in.
It was like drinking molten lead. The Phoenix's fire poured into my silver veins, a chaotic, golden poison that tried to incinerate my identity. I felt her memories millennia of burning stars and dying worlds crashing into my mind.
"Get... off... me!" Ignis roared, her body vibrating with the force of an erupting volcano.
Logan's Choice
On the floor, Logan let out a sound that wasn't human.
Caught between the silver wire pulling his soul toward me and the golden heat of Ignis, his body was a battlefield. I felt his mind fraying. Through the link, I saw his thoughts shards of our childhood, the scent of jasmine, the moment he had spit on me in the ballroom.
"Aria..." he gasped, his eyes rolling back in his head.
He reached out a hand, his fingers clawing at the air. He wasn't reaching for Ignis. He wasn't reaching for freedom. He was reaching for the silver wire. He was reaching for his leash.
In that moment of absolute suffering, Logan Blackwood finally chose his side. He didn't choose the Silver Moon. He didn't choose himself. He chose the woman who had enslaved him.
He grabbed the silver wire with both hands, ignoring the way it scorched his palms to the bone. He pulled.
He didn't pull it toward him. He pulled it into him. He offered his own life-force as a sacrificial ground for the clashing powers.
The silver fire and the golden flame found a common path through Logan.
The scream that left his throat was the sound of a god dying.
The Price of the Sun
The explosion didn't make a sound.
It was a silent expansion of white and gold light that erased the chamber, the pedestal, and the heat.
When my vision finally cleared, I was lying on the cold, ash-covered stone. My skin was mapped with delicate, silver-white burn scars that glowed with a faint, pulsing light. I felt... different. Heavier. Older.
I sat up, my bones aching. Gabriel was kneeling a few feet away, his breathing ragged, his dark hair matted with blood. He looked at me, and for a second, the Black Lion in his eyes was replaced by a raw, human relief.
"Aria," he whispered.
I looked toward the center of the room. Ignis was gone. In her place, a small, glowing ember floated in the air, drifting slowly toward the ground. She wasn't dead, but her physical form had been spent, forced back into a dormant state by the collision.
And then there was Logan.
He lay in a heap of scorched leather and tattered silk. He was alive, but only just. His hair had turned white as a winter grave, and his skin was a map of translucent, glass-like scars. The silver wire was still there, but it wasn't a wire anymore. It had fused with his nervous system.
He was no longer a werewolf. He was something else a living relic of the White and the Red.
I walked over to him, my boots crunching on the ash. I looked down at the man who had been my fated mate, the man who had broken me, and now, the man who had nearly died to save my power.
I felt no love. No pity. Just a cold, clinical satisfaction.
"You saved me," I said, my voice sounding like the wind through a graveyard.
Logan opened his eyes. They were no longer amber. One was a piercing, luminescent silver. The other was a hollow, glowing gold.
"I... I had to," he whispered, his voice a dry rasp. "The fire... it showed me. You aren't the monster, Aria. We were."
I knelt beside him, my fingers tracing the silver-gold ruins of his face. The silver wire hummed under my touch, a steady, subservient vibration.
"You're a broken toy, Logan," I murmured, leaning down until my lips were inches from his ear. "But you're a useful one. You've earned your place in my new world. As my footstool."
Logan didn't flinch. He simply closed his eyes, a single tear of molten silver tracking down his scarred cheek. "Yes, my Queen."
Gabriel stood beside me, his abyssal hand resting on my shoulder. He looked at the glowing ember of Ignis, then at the broken Alpha at our feet.
"The Red line is secured," Gabriel said, his voice a dark, victorious rumble. "But the Council felt that blast, Aria. They know we have the Sun now. The war is no longer in the shadows."
I stood up, pulling the silver fire back into my chest. I felt the hunger of the Phoenix mingling with the cold of the Moon. I felt the roar of the Lion in the man beside me.
"Let them come," I said, looking toward the mouth of the cave where the first hints of dawn were breaking.
"The Silver Moon was just a pack. The Council is just a court. But we... we are the end of the age."
I looked at my hands, where the silver-gold light was still dancing.
"Gather the Rogues, Gabriel. We're going to the High City. I have a throne to burn."