Together, they played, and it was together that Olivia began to find her voice again.

Out in the open gardens of the temple, Jason and Olivia went through song after song with little regard for structure or form. Though people passed by and there was the occasional mumble of conversation on the other side of the hedges, they were left alone to their music.

When they ran out of temple songs they both liked, they began to try other things. As Jason played the slight chill that rode in on the breeze, Olivia tried to sing the warmth of the sunlight. It didn't harmonise all that well, but it didn't have to.

Not everything was always good, she reminded herself, over and over again, reaching into her pocket and wrapping her fingers tight around the Cryophoenix amulet. Use them. Build off them. Don't let them crush you.

Instead, Olivia changed her melody. She left the sunlight behind and drew inspiration from the quiet shadows in the corners, the shadows that hid under the hedges, that were stronger the more they came together. The breeze of Jason's harmony whispered through her melody, twisting and twining together far better than it had with the sunlight.

From where she was sitting on the ground, Olivia reached out, dipping her fingertips into the shadows as she sang the long, sorrowful notes. They didn't feel as familiar as they once had... and maybe they never would again. She'd understood them once, had breathed them and danced in them like they were one.

With Viri unconscious, they didn't recognise her.

Their shadow-and-breeze song came to an end. Jason lowered his violin and gave her a curious look.

"Are you okay, Olivia?"

"I'm okay," she said, running a hand over her tattoo. "It's strange, feeling it cold all the time. I keep having this urge to transform and find the Manifested."

"I understand the feeling," said Jason, sitting down beside her. "It's hard, knowing there isn't anything we can do for the High Speakers as Luminaries. It feels wrong to simply herd them into DragonFae's wards and leave them there until the auroras."

She managed a wry smile. "Bet you're glad for once that I didn't decide to choose any more High Speakers."

Jason chuckled at that. "Indeed. Though, given how overwhelmed we are with twelve Manifested Speakers, I can't imagine another two or three would tip the scales in their favour any further. The scales are already touching the floor."

It was still so strange, thinking of Jason as Cryo. It made sense, yet at the same time... it seemed too incredible to be true. She couldn't quite bring herself to believe it, but then, that wasn't saying much when she was still struggling to believe in the floor she sat on.

Olivia released a slow, steady breath. She gave herself a moment as the doubt and guilt surged up through her throat and tried to escape. "Okay, real or not--you're Cryo, yes?"

"I am," said Jason. "I am indeed the idiot who believed my own partner's civilian identity to be corrupted by the Other, then proceeded to complain about said civilian identity to her Luminary identity."

"We almost ended up hating each other," mumbled Olivia, drawing circles on the floor.

"Well, I can't blame you given how I was acting," said Jason. "Lucky for me, you were exceptionally clear on what a brat I was being." He paused, then looked up at her with a small, uncertain smile. "You know, I actually worked out who you were before Adande's involvement."

"You did?"

He nodded. "After the first day you visited Ella in her cell and got her eating the sandwich, I went home that night and was playing my violin when I slipped into a vision. Everything was silver mist except for you, though I don't think you saw me. I was shoved from the vision fairly quickly, but I pulled something back with me." He frowned. "I'm not certain what it was, exactly, that I took, but after, I knew that you were Banshee--that the girl I'd seen in our amulet vision was both Olivia and Banshee. I almost voiced the realisation, but Sae intervened and wiped my memory of the event to save you from going Dark. Even after seeing your Ascended, after Ella figuring out that you were Banshee, I was left completely unable to connect you to Banshee until Sae returned the memory. It made things interesting, to say the least."

Olivia bit down on her lip. "Aurora's realm looks like silver mist, but I don't remember ever being there until recently. If the Ascended can take memories, do you think Viri took it, or..."

She let the question hang in the air, hoping that Jason would pick it up, that he'd reassure her. The silence stretched thin over the seconds, until a dark pit began to coil in her stomach.

"I know what you mean," Jason said eventually. "Given my trust in Sae, learning that he'd taken something like that... it wasn't a simple thing to move past and accept. I had to trust that he had my best interest at heart, even if it felt like a betrayal." He looked up at Olivia. "I'm sure the same is true of your Ascended. There is a reason they keep things from us, even if we can't see it yet."

Olivia swallowed down the doubt, the thousands of what ifs that swarmed her head with haze. "I don't suppose we can ask Sae, see if he can confirm that it was Viri and not... not something else that took the memories...?"

Jason tilted his ear, letting the icy cuff on his ear catch the sunlight. "Sae, did you hear that?" Silence passed. "Sae, you awake?" More silence. Jason sighed. "It appears he's asleep."

"Asleep?" said Olivia, wondering if she'd heard correctly. "Does... does he do that a lot?"

"He does," said Jason. "And he gets sarcastic if you wake him up, though he probably likes you enough to give you some kind of answer, however cryptic."

"Oh," said Olivia. "Uh, no. It's okay. I wouldn't want to wake him up, he's been working rather hard lately."

"Believe me, he complains about it enough that I could never forget it," said Jason. He lifted his violin. "Shall we try something else?"

They continued playing until finally, dusk began to settle over the City.

Olivia watched the growing shadows with a sinking dread as they walked across the outer courtyards, heading for the Core Chamber. If she couldn't sing the aurorasong tonight, they were all in trouble. Stefan couldn't bail her out forever. He had one, maybe two nights left in him if she were lucky. Without the auroras, the Manifested would reign. The starstone would crumble. Envy would break into the Core Chamber and consume the last of Aurora's light, and the corruption would spread across the land like never before.

Beside her, Jason touched her arm, dragging her up from the depths of thoughts. "We can do this, Liv."

Olivia squeezed the Cryophoenix amulet in her pocket and nodded.

She was grateful for the lack of people around the Core Chamber as they walked across the inner courtyard. In previous nights, there'd been a small crowd: the High Speakers who hadn't Manifested, the Luminaries who weren't on guard duty, and Stefan.

Tonight, it was just Pegasus, Nereid, Stefan, and Ariel.

"Where are the others?" Jason asked Ariel once they were within speaking range.

"They've all Manifested," Ariel said quietly. "Lucian's helping guard them. DragonFae recommended that I also stay close to her, given that it wouldn't be long before I also Manifest, but, well..." She looked up at Olivia. "I only need to be in there if I Manifest, and tonight... I know you can do this, Liv."

Olivia stepped forward, grabbing one of Ariel's hands. "I'm not gonna let you Manifest again."

"I know," said Ariel. "I know you, Liv, and if there's one thing you can do, it's sing. It doesn't matter what song it might be, it's getting you to shut up that's the trick."

Olivia made a face, causing Ariel to give a soft laugh.

Stefan approached, closely followed by Nereid who looked ready to catch him at a moment's notice.

"I'm s-sorry I didn't get a chance to tutor you much today," croaked Stefan. He attempted to clear his throat, pressing a hand against his throat as he swallowed. "I've been trying to--" He coughed. "--to think of something that might help, but everything is a little fuzzy right now, and..."

Stefan swayed, and Nereid caught him by the arm with a frown.

"Take him inside," said Olivia. Nereid glanced up, her various fins flaring with uncertainty, so Olivia gave her a little wave of her hands. "We'll be fine, trust me."

Nereid nodded and called back over her shoulder. "Hey, ponyboy! I'm taking Stefan inside to sit down. Tap me twice if anything goes wrong."

"Yes, my puddle queen!"

As Nereid headed inside, Olivia turned to Ariel and Pegasus. "You two move back, too. I dunno what's gonna happen."

Pegasus lifted his hands to his mouth as he moved backwards. "Success, Shadowheart! That's what's gonna happen!"

Ariel grabbed him by the wing and dragged him back, muttering something out of Olivia's hearing range.

That left Olivia and Jason standing side by side, staring at the Core Chamber that loomed over them.

"Nervous?" he asked softly.

Yes. "No."

"How come?"

"Because I've got you," murmured Olivia. "And, even if it's a little bit of an abstract solution, Banshee and Cryo have never failed to save a Manifested. We're not gonna break that streak now just because we're down a transformation or two."

Jason lifted his violin to his shoulder. "Then shall we begin?"

Olivia gave a firm nod, and Jason began to play.

She closed her eyes, shutting out the light, the stars, the shadows--everything except the music as it drifted from Jason's violin. He started slowly, calling the notes awake before he asked them to dance on his melody. Olivia just let herself breathe. She didn't try to force them from the back of her throat before they were ready. Jason would wait for her, Jason would keep playing, keep calling to her like he called to the notes until she stood up and joined him.

The first few notes that left her lips were painfully quiet. They were stretched and scarred, a twisted mess of soul and spirit. Something had eaten away at her when she'd sung the other night. It had devoured her song, consuming the auroralight and spitting it back out as something darker, something that had Manifested the High Speakers, but not tonight.

This time, Olivia fought for each and every note. She fought to keep them whole, clinging to the stalwart melody of Jason's violin every time the fragment's hungry void tried to suck them in. She faltered, she stumbled, but she persisted until her own melody was strong enough to hold its ground. No longer the fledgling beginning of a song, her voice became sleek and smooth and strong enough to resist Envy's call as together, she and Jason plunged into the true heart of the aurorasong.

Light danced around her fingers. Silver, pure light. The bliss it promised danced in her thoughts, the freedom, the swirling mists and the endless, forever song that could outlast eternity. It'd be so easy to fall, so easy to slip into it, to lose herself in this Song and let herself be consumed by it. It pulled her in, and in her vigilance against Envy's influence, she didn't notice herself slipping from reality until she was already falling.

Her melody stumbled as mentally, she thrashed and clawed her way back to reality, only to feel herself drawn further and further into the silver mist that she wasn't ready to face again.

She wasn't ready to relinquish what little control she'd clawed back in the past few days. She wasn't ready to let the tides of Aurora's mind smash into her like waves on a rock. She wasn't a rock. She wasn't even a pebble. She was little more than a clump of sand, dried out by the sun and easily scattered by the first hint of a breeze.

A flicker drifted through Jason's melody, enough to stop her from drowning in the light, enough to pull her back.

Together, his violin said.

Olivia's fingers closed around the Cryophoenix amulet. Together.

He played, she sang. The harmony of the aurorasong twined them together, binding them to each other as much as it bound them to the Song. The incredible power that they drew from the ethereal realm through the gateway of the aurorasong flooded them both, a power that was not so much malicious as it was simply immense. It was a boulder rolling down a mountain. It was a wave crashing against a cliff. It was like trying to hold up the moon with nothing but your arms.

Yet somehow, they did it. Somehow, they pulled the scattered notes of the Song Olivia had damaged back into a cohesive melody. They smoothed the notes, they filled the silences, and they restored the pitch. As the aurorasong reached its crescendo, the light around them was so bright, so thick, that it seeped in under Olivia's closed eyelids.

She knew it'd taken a lot out of her. She could feel her body shaking, her thoughts trembling, hear the ringing silence at the edges of her skull, held at bay only by the aurorasong's presence.

Together, they pushed through, and together, they locked that final, sealing note into place which marked the aurorasong whole once more.

With it, the light faded. Olivia's eyes flickered open to find the auroras out across the sky, bright in their teals, violets, and the slightest hint of cyan. A careless smile drifted across her face as her head felt like floating. She staggered back one step, two--until she felt Jason's hand on her back.

"We did it," she breathed. "We did it, Cryo."

Then she blacked out.

*+*+*+*

Olivia woke up alone in a dimly lit room.

Panic clenched her heart, setting it racing at a million miles an hour as she struggled to bring herself down. Before it could sweep her away, she shoved her hand into her pocket and grabbed the Cryophoenix amulet, lifting it up and pressing it to her chest.

Real. This was real.

She forced herself to look around, to take in the useful details. One door that was slightly ajar. One window with the curtains drawn shut, though not enough to completely hide the glow of the auroras outside. Golden walls--she was at the temple. Jason's violin case resting against the wall opposite from her beside an armchair.

He wouldn't have left her. He wouldn't have. The violin case was to tell her that he hadn't gone far, that he'd be back soon.

Olivia forced herself to breathe, close her eyes, and run her fingers over the amulet. It was impossibly smooth with the slightest chill to it. The slight, pale blue glow that crept under her eyelids was incredibly calming. If she focused on it like this, she could almost imagine that she'd open her eyes and find the smallest breath of snow resting on its surface.

She heard the door swing open and looked up.

Jason stepped into the room, quietly closing the door behind him before he finally glanced in her direction. He smiled. "You're awake, I'm glad."

Olivia lowered the amulet into her lap. "Did we do it? Did it work?"

He let the silence hold for a while before he finally reached up to adjust his ponytail. "No. We didn't. After you blacked out, the High Speakers were still Manifested, and Stefan had to sing again. He doesn't believe the auroras are whole yet."

The dull ringing roared in Olivia's ears. "We... we didn't?"

"We made progress," said Jason, sitting down next to her. He brushed a piece of hair off her face and gave her another smile. "Tomorrow, maybe we'll get it. For now, the Luminaries want to have a meeting, to see if there's anything we can do about that corrupted fragment. C'mon, I'll take you now."

Olivia clutched the amulet between her fingers as Jason took her by the arm and got her to her feet. He was halfway out the door when Olivia saw his violin case, still sitting on the floor by the chair.

For some reason, it seemed important enough that a thought slipped past the haze crowding her head. "Your violin is still here."

"I'll come back for it later," said Jason, attempting to encourage her to step out into the hall with a gentle tug on the arm.

But Olivia stopped. Her feet planted in the carpet below her and she stopped. "You'd leave your violin behind?"

Jason glanced over at the case. "I suppose you have a point. I thought it would be safe enough here, but I would feel better taking it with me. I was simply focused on your wellbeing."

Olivia wasn't listening. Her eyes were on the hallway outside, the hallway that was illuminated with the auroralight that streamed through the windows. "And why would you take me to the Luminaries now? The auroras are out. They never meet when the auroras are out."

"They were all transformed already," said Jason. "They didn't wish to wait when there was no need." He raised an eyebrow. "Olivia, are you okay?"

She didn't know what it was. She didn't know what instinct or what part of her was screaming in alarm, but even through the haze, she felt it. "I was sure. I was so sure that we'd healed the auroras. I felt it. The song ended. It was complete."

Jason turned back to her, moving his hand up to her shoulder. He bent down, levelling their eyes, swapping his gaze from her left, then her right. "Liv, I don't know what to tell you. The Song ended, but it wasn't complete. You blacked out before it was over, and we couldn't wake you up. I couldn't play the Song alone. Without you conscious, the auroralight corrupted Ariel again. Pegasus was barely able to keep her away before Nereid got Stefan back to sing." His fingers tightened on her shoulders. "I don't think the auroras were healed."

Olivia took a step back, pulling away from his touch.

Maybe... maybe she had been wrong. Maybe she had failed again, maybe her brain couldn't handle it. She'd shut down into silence before, but... but this time, she'd been so sure, so absolutely sure that she hadn't imagined it...

She looked down at her hands, where Cryo's amulet sat between her fingers.

My mother gaslights me, too.

Even when things don't add up, they're so insistent that they're right that you start to doubt yourself.

I have one person who I trust implicitly.

Olivia brought her eyes up to Jason's.

She lifted the amulet to eye level, keeping the Cryophoenix insignia facing towards her. "Can you tell me what this is?"

His forehead wrinkled with concern as he tried to move towards her. "Liv, honestly, you're acting weird, you're worrying me--"

She backed away further, still holding the amulet. "What is this, Jason?"

"It's a piece of starstone," said Jason with a sigh. He stepped back into the room and closed the door behind him. "I gave it to you because you were falling apart, and I thought it might help you to have something else to hold onto. It's nothing special."

Nothing special.

"Look," he continued. "I'm thinking the meeting can wait. We should probably get you to medical, you aren't looking well."

Olivia stared at the Cryophoenix insignia facing her as doubt scattered her confidence.

Was the amulet even real? Had she imagined that? Had he only told her he was Cryo to get her to calm down? The memory by the pond didn't seem as clear as it had a minute ago. It felt like she was losing it. The details were changing.

"Liv?" he said again. "Liv, look, you're okay. You're safe, I promise."

One person who I trust implicitly.

Sae. She'd seen Sae.

And there was one thing that, despite the doubt ruining her mind, she was absolutely certain of.

"Who is the one person you trust without question?" Olivia asked Jason.

Jason gave a small shake of his head like he couldn't believe she was asking him. "You, of course, Liv. You've helped me so much, both as Banshee and yourself. How could I not trust you?"

Olivia slipped the Cryophoenix amulet back into the pouch hanging from her waist. "I think I'd have remembered if you'd said that, Jason."

"I did say that," said Jason. "How could you--"

The door opened.

"Sorry, Liv," said a soft, familiar voice as he stepped into the room. "I didn't wish to leave you, but I had--"

The Jason that had just entered the room stopped dead as he saw the Jason who was already in the room.

*+*+*+*

A/N - Oh look, after that lovely last chapter--WE'RE BACK TO THE CLIFFHANGERS OF DOOM AND I'M NOT EVEN SORRY BWAHAHA