Chapter 19: WE'RE GOING UP

Aria's POV

The day before we go up, Kael stops the training session without warning.

Not because I did something wrong, not because my nose started bleeding or my head was pounding past its limit. He just lifts his hand, goes dead quiet, and stares into the middle distance at something I can’t see.

I drop every thread immediately.

“What?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer right away, an heavy stillness settles over him. The one that means something big is happening.

“Kael.”

“Something changed above,” he says finally.

I go cold all over.

“Elena?”

“Not Elena.” He’s still staring off, reading whatever the Abyss is showing him. “The pack bond, something shifted in it.” He pauses. “Someone up there is pushing back against the Vorryn threads.”

I stare at him. “Pushing back how?”

“Actively.” His eyes finally snap back to me. “Someone noticed the fake threads hooked into the pack bond and they’re trying to yank them out.”

“Can they even do that without Starweaver magic?”

“No,” he says. “Not successfully, but they’re trying hard enough that the coven has noticed.”

I think about Damian.

“My brother,” I say.

“Possibly.”

“If the coven noticed him...”

“He’s in danger,” Kael says straight. “Yeah.”

I stand up fast, my heart hammering.

“Then we make today count,” I say. “We push as hard as we can. I need to be as ready as possible for tomorrow.”

Kael looks at me for a long moment, reading my face.

We don’t waste any time.

No break, no fruit. No sitting around talking. We go straight back to work, Kael pushes me harder than he has this whole time because tomorrow we’re going up.

Ten threads at once.

Then eleven.

“Don’t strain,” he says, circling around me. “You’re gripping too tight again.”

“I’m holding eleven fucking threads.”

“You’re white-knuckling them,” he says. “Different thing, loosen up.”

“If I loosen, they’ll drop.”

“They won’t.”

“They fell last time.”

“Last time you let go all at once,” he says. “This time loosen just one, feel the difference.”

I loosen thread seven.

It doesn’t fall. It actually steadies itself.

“Oh,” I say.

“Yeah,” he says, sounding a little amused. “Oh.”

“You could’ve told me that earlier.”

“You weren’t ready to feel it earlier.” He stops right in front of me, those silver eyes checking me over. “Now find Elena’s coven bond.”

I find it, that dark, twisted, braided wrongness sitting inside the pack bond like it belongs there.

“Find all the attachment points,” he says. “Not just the main one.”

“There’s more than one?”

“She’s been adding extras,” he says. “Reinforcing it to make it harder to remove.” He holds my gaze. “Find them all.”

I search deeper.

There’s the main sloppy join I already knew about, but there are six more smaller ones spread around like extra hooks.

“I see them,” I say through my teeth. Holding eleven threads plus seven attachment points is making my whole head hurt. “Six secondary ones.”

“Good.” He steps closer. “Now, without dropping a single thread, find the weakest secondary attachment and tell me which one it is.”

I examine all six carefully.

One feels newer than the rest, rushed, and sloppy.

“The one at the northern connection,” I say. “It’s rushed. She was scared when she placed it, you can feel the shake in it. This one came after she found out I was alive.”

Silence.

I look at Kael.

He’s watching me with that I suspected this look.

“What?” I ask.

“You just read emotional context from a magical construct,” he says. “From all the way down here through the Abyss connection.”

“Is that a big deal?”

“I didn’t teach you that,” he says. “That’s pure Starweaver instinct.” He pauses. “You’re further along than even I thought.”

Something lifts in my chest.

We keep going, harder, faster and no mercy. This is our last full day before we go up tomorrow.

That night I can’t sleep.

Not because of Elena or the Vorryn or Damian. Because of him.

I lie on the moss staring up at the glowing ceiling thinking about what he said earlier. About being scared of gaining something and then losing it.

Kael is scared of losing me.

Not just the bond or breaking the curse. Me, the girl who fell off a cliff, woke up here, ate glowing fruit, accidentally set moss on fire, cried over an old photo, and kissed him in a garden that took centuries to grow.

I press my hand flat against my chest and feel the bond. It’s warm and steady, always there now.

I turn my head.

He’s sitting against the far wall in shadow form. Those silver eyes glowing in the dark, trying hard not to look at me.

I can tell the difference now.

“Kael,” I say quietly.

“You should be sleeping,” he says.

“I know.”

“Then why aren’t you?”

I look back at the ceiling.

“Because tomorrow everything changes,” I say. “And I keep thinking about what happens after, not with Elena or the pack, with us.”

Silence.

He doesn’t pretend he doesn’t understand.

“What about us?” he asks carefully.

“I don’t want to lose this,” I say. “Whatever we have down here, I’m scared that once we’re up there, everything else gets so loud that this just… fades.”

He’s quiet for a moment.

Then he stands up, crosses the space, and sits right beside me on the moss. Not on the edge, right next to me.

He looks at the ceiling.

I look at the ceiling.

“It won’t fade,” he says.

“You don’t know that.”

“I’ve spent a thousand years in the loudest silence you can imagine,” he says. “Then you fell into it. Nothing about you is quiet, Aria. This thing between us isn’t going to disappear just because the world upstairs gets noisy.”

I turn my head and look at him.

“Promise me,” I say.

He looks back at me with those silver eyes.

“I’m certain,” he says.

That makes me feel better.

“Okay,” I say.

He stays right there beside me.

We lie together in the glowing dark with tomorrow waiting just ahead and the bond humming warm between us.

“Kael,” I say after a while.

“Yeah?”

“Tell me something good,” I say. “About before. Something that just makes you happy when you remember it, no sad parts.”

He thinks for a bit.

“The river,” he says. “End of summer, the whole pack would go. My mom always packed way too much food, complained the whole way about carrying it, then ate more than anyone.” His voice gets warm. “Eli losing the swimming race for the fourteenth time and still demanding a fifteenth try, my dad laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe.”

I close my eyes and picture it.

“That’s good,” I say.

“Yeah,” he says softly. “It is.”

I fall asleep to the sound of his voice, dreaming about that river, bright summer light, and everyone laughing loud and happy. In the dream Kael is there too, younger, the weight gone from his face, laughing along with them.

When I wake up he’s still beside me on the moss. The bond is humming strong. The Abyss is breathing steady.

Tomorrow.

We’re going up tomorrow.