FIVE
Aria
The cold was different here.
Up on the iron plains, the cold had been a physical thing, an absence of heat that numbed the skin, but as we descended toward the scar where the Phlegethon River was supposed to flow, the cold became something spiritual. It was a parasite. It didn't just sit on your skin; it hooked unseen claws into your chest and pulled, dragging the warmth out of your blood, the memories out of your head, the will out of your bones.
We were walking down a ravine that looked like a throat slit in the world's crust. The walls were jagged obsidian, slick with a frost that shouldn't exist this close to a volcanic artery.
But the Phlegethon wasn’t flowing.
Below us, the river of fire that legend said circled the Underworld was nothing but a sluggish, grey sludge. It moved like cooling tar, crusting over with black scabs. The heat that should have been radiating from it was being eaten before it could reach us.
And Kaelen was dying.
The Dragon Prince had stopped walking ten minutes ago. He had collapsed onto a shelf of black rock, his massive bodyheaving. His scales, usually a brilliant, light-eating black that shimmered with an internal furnace, were dull. They looked like slate. Frost, actual, white frost, was webbed across his wings.
For a creature of fire, this environment wasn't just hostile. It was poison.
"Kaelen," I rasped, sliding down to reach him. My boots sparked against the stone.
He didn't lift his head. A low, rattling wheeze escaped his jaws, followed by a puff of smoke that was thin and grey, smelling of wet ash instead of sulfur.
Cold,his mind projected. The thought was faint, a whisper across a bad connection.The pilot light... is out.
"Thane!" I yelled, looking back up the slope. "We need shelter. Now."
The Bear Prince was already moving. He pointed a massive paw toward a fissure in the cliff face, a volcanic vent that was emitting a faint, sickly heat. It wasn't much, but it was warmer than the open ravine.
"Move him," I ordered.
It took all of us. Thane shoved from the back, his stone muscles straining against Kaelen’s immense bulk. Flynn pulled at the dragon’s forelegs. Elias fluttered nervously around Kaelen's head, trying to use his own dimming light to guide the way.
We dragged him into the vent. It was a small cavern, barely big enough to contain the dragon, smelling of rotten eggs and old earth. The heat here was palpable, but weak, like the inside of an oven that had recently been used but left open.
Kaelen slumped against the back wall, his tail curling loosely around him. His golden eyes were half-closed, the slit pupils blown wide and unseeing. He was shivering, a terrifying, tectonic shaking that scraped his scales against the stone floor.
"If his core temperature drops below the ignition point, he won't wake up," Elias warned, his voice vibrating with panic. "The Dragon is a fusion reaction, Aria. If the reaction stops, the star dies."
I placed my flesh hand on Kaelen’s snout. It was freezing.
My heart hammered a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I looked at the others. Thane was exhausted, barely holding his form. Flynn was pacing, snapping at invisible flies. We were all running on fumes, but Kaelen was the fire. If we lost the fire, the darkness wins.
"Get out," I said.
Flynn stopped pacing.What?
"Guard the entrance," I commanded, my voice hard, vibrating with the harmonic metallic resonance of my new throat. "I need to jumpstart him. And I don't think he'd want me to do it with an audience."
Thane looked at me, his brown eyes deep and knowing. He saw the desperation in my stance, the way my star-metal arm was beginning to glow.
Hold the line, Thane rumbled to the others. He grabbed Flynn by the scruff of his neck and dragged him toward the tunnel mouth. Elias hovered for a second, looking from me to Kaelen, then bowed his head and followed.
Silence descended on the cave, heavy and suffocating, broken only by Kaelen’s ragged, wet breathing.
I turned back to the dragon.
"Kaelen," I said, stepping closer. "Shift."
