Why?I wanted to shout to the heavens.
“Learn the light, Ophelia. Reach into the depths of your heart and spirit and let it beam, but do not be fooled by its might or presume what it means.”
“Fooled how?”
“Magic—like any form of power—is as tempting as a voracious lover. It will eat at you, steal you away.” Damien’s eyes were serious. “Become its master, but stay true to yourself. Stay true to your task.”
Stay true. The words of the Mystique Warriors rang through my blood, straight from our founder himself. The leader meant to guard us as we did the magic of the mountains.
But it had been months of this journey without a lick of help.
And I was so tired of being a toy to the Angels.
“Where have you been, Damien?” I asked. “I—I haven’t known what to do. I’ve had so many questions.”
“I have heard them all,” he swore. “But alas, I do not hold the answers.”
From the bob of his throat, it was clear that was a lie. He held the answers, he simply could not divulge them. Like the fae queen’s magic commanding Lancaster and Mora, it obstructed his speech.
“What—”
“Look to the stars,” a voice cracked like a whip behind me. And from the grove of pink-blossomed trees, a second Angel emerged.
A sparkling, lilac light that resembled the sky right after dawn ebbed at the edges of her wings, and silver hair as silky as a flowing river cascaded around her tan shoulders.
“Valyrie?” I gasped.
Her delicate lips tipped up into a smile, but it was somber.
My voice was small. “Did you see?”
A shallow nod.
“I’m so sorry,” I swore, guilt heavy in my chest. “I—I didn’t know the power at my hands.” I looked between her and Damien. “I didn’t know it would destroy the dead.”
That it would ruin those corpses, the ones I suspected were the victors of her races. Confidants who had rested in that chamber since she ascended. I hadn’t known it would obliterate the warriors that were her friends.
I wanted to cast the Angellight from my body at the memory. I’d killed before but not like that—not uncontrollably and on the whim of another. I wished I could expel the ability, as Bant had shed his Spirit into Kakias. This power was not meant to be contained by a mortal body, and I couldn’t stand another being trying to use me.
But Valyrie said, “It did not kill them, child. It only returned them to where they belonged.”
Her face tipped to the sky, eyes falling closed for a moment. The mourning in her words was offset with an apparent understanding, a satisfaction perhaps.
It ripped at my heart, my confusion, my uncertainty. Did I dive into this power or shun it? Which would benefit my family and my people more?
Which would solve this Angelcurse? That was what I was here for wasn’t it? To be the answer for these immortal beings. For whatever it was this mission was after. Whatever Annellius had been greedy and failed at.
Annellius…
Had he been greedy? Or had he…had he felt the power thrumming through his veins as I did and resented it? Perhaps it had hurt someone he loved, as Tolek suggested?
Was that his fatal flaw, loving too much that he ripped the power from his body to atone for it?
As if reading the thoughts flooding my mind, Damien and Valyrie stiffened. The Prime Mystique warned, “Do not follow his path.”
“Whatwashis path, though? What was the mistake that ended his life? At least tell me how to avoid it.”
“You must rely on faith, child,” Damien commanded. “It is the doctrine of all we do. Of all we are.”
