"But a floor need a foundation," I softened my voice, stepping into the circle of his arms. "And right now, you're trying to float. You need to land, Thane. You need to come back to the present."
"How?" he breathed, the word a cloud of vapor. "The ghosts... they're so loud."
"Then we make something louder," I said.
I released his hands and grabbed the collar of his tattered shirt. I yanked him down and kissed him.
It wasn't a tentative question. It was a collision. I pressed my mouth to his with the force of a branding iron. I tasted salt and cold stone and the desperate, metallic tang of his fear.
Thane froze for a heartbeat, his body rigid as petrified wood. Then, a low groan rumbled in his chest, vibrating against my ribs. His arms wrapped around me, crushing me against him.
It wasn't gentle. It couldn't be. We were two heavy, dangerous things colliding in the dark.
He walked me backward until my back hit the rough stone wall of the grotto. The impact knocked the breath out of me, but I welcomed it. It was real. The stone bit into my skin through my tunic, grounding me.
"Aria," he gasped against my neck, his lips moving over the pulse point there. "I need... I need to feel..."
"I know," I whispered, tangling my metal fingers in his hair. I scraped my nails against his scalp, hard. "I’m right here. I’m solid."
His hands were everywhere, frantic, mapping the territory of my body as if to confirm I hadn't turned into smoke. He gripped my waist, his thumbs digging into the soft flesh, then moved up to my shoulders, testing the seam where the star-metal met the skin.
He hesitated at the metal. He always treated me like glass, afraid his strength would shatter me.
"Touch it," I ordered, guiding his hand to the cold, hard plating of my upper arm. "It's star-metal, Thane. It was forged by the hands and hammer of the Smith himself and tempered in the same fire that destroyed Titans. You can't break it. You can't break me."
He groaned again, the sound tearing free from his throat. He pressed his forehead against mine, his eyes swimming with dark, heavy desire.
"Be the bedrock," he whispered, a desperate plea.
"I am the mountain," I promised.
He kissed me again, and this time, he swept my legs out from under me. He lifted me effortlessly, my weight seemingly nothing against his strength, and pressed me flat against the stone wall.
We didn't undress completely; it was too cold, and the desperation was too high. Clothes were shoved aside, fabric tearing in our haste. I needed skin. I needed friction.
When he entered me, it was slow. Agonizingly, beautifully slow.
With Kaelen, it had been an explosion, a flash fire that consumed everything. With Thane, it was tectonic. It was the movement of continents. It was deep, heavy pressure that filled every empty, aching crack in my soul.
I gasped, wrapping my legs around his waist, anchoring myself to him as he began to move.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The rhythm was steady, relentless. He drove into me with a heaviness that should have been crushing but instead felt like safety. Every thrust pushed the ghosts back. Every impact of our bodies drove the silence of the Underworld a little further away.
"Stay here," I commanded, biting his shoulder, tasting the sweat and grime of the road. "Don't you dare go back to that ridge."
"I'm here," he grunted, burying his face in my neck. "I'm here. With you."
I could feel the magic shifting. His gravity field, which had been erratic and dangerous all day, began to stabilize. It condensed around us, creating a heavy, warm bubble of pressure. It pinned us to the wall, to the earth, to each other.
Something shifted in the bond.
I'd been carrying the tether for so long it had become a part of my own breathing, that low violet hum I'd thrown around their minds on the iron plain, the leash that kept Kaelen from going dormant and Flynn from chasing phantoms and Thane from sinking into his own grief. I hadn't dropped it for a single second. I couldn't. The moment I did, the Underworld would start eating them.
But Thane had a hand on the back of my neck now, his thumb stroking the seam where flesh met metal, and I felt himtakesomething. Not power. Not magic. Weight. A strand of the tether passed from me to him, and he wove it into the heavy, patient gravity of his own soul, anchoring it there. He wasn't asking permission. He'd simply decided he could carry his own piece.
Lean,his thought rumbled.I told you. I am the wall.
