I’d carried faith in the Angels my entire life. Faith in their causes, their guidance, their rituals. But…my eyes dropped to the tattoo beneath my elbow. The faith that I was always doing the right thing had led me down painful paths. The Undertaking and the Bind were fallible. Were the Angels, as well?
I was nothing but a puppet to them. How did faith play into that? Was faith the agent of the strings they pulled, or was it another misguided attempt?
“Trust fate to guide you,” Damien emphasized. “Do not stray from this path, but do not dig too deeply into the whims of the stars.”
The stars?
Were they talking about Vale? Her sessions?
“Why?” I asked, voice shredded and so out of place among this haven. “Why shouldn’t we arm ourselves with whatever knowledge the stars can provide?”
Valyrie’s eyes softened. “Because it might show more than warriors are meant to know.”
“What does that mean?” Irritation bubbled beneath my skin, the feverish heat mounting.
As if in response, the soothing clouds drifted closer, wrapping tighter around us. They slipped between the everlasting Angels and me. And as they formed that wall, fire mounted in my body.
“Spread your wings, Child Kissed by Angels,” Valyrie said, voice as light as the mist. “Spread your wings and learn. Go tothe ones who recount the histories in the land of your ancestors and find out the truth.”
“What does thatmean?” I cried.
But it was fruitless.
The clouds swallowed the Angels, and at their disappearance, my body faded in a burst of golden light, heat scorching to my bones.
Part Three
Xenique
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Santorina
“These Godsdamned splinters are in deep,”I grunted, tilting my head so the mystlight could illuminate Lancaster’s wound further. All the torn flesh and exposed muscle, gleaming red.
When had I become so desensitized to it? To the way blood shone against my skin—even that of my enemies. Perhaps it was when my friends and I first left Palerman. That cataclysmic shift that had occurred within all of us on the journey, preparing us for the people we were meant to become.
Or perhaps it was even earlier, when the war had swept through our home. When it had been my parents’ blood on my hands.
It should have unsettled me. Even now, it didn’t.
No, now, after carefully—painstakingly—finding the many, many minuscule splinters in Lancaster’s wound for an hour, the work was rhythmic. Like a beat beneath my skin to operate to.
I tweaked a particularly brutal shaving of the cypher spear, and the fae stiffened.
My eyes snapped up. “Did that hurt?”
“No,” he said brusquely. “If you can get them out so they stop blocking my magic, I’ll heal the rest myself.”
I scowled at his tone, but one look at the gash in his side and the remaining slivers of wood impacting his magic had me biting back my retort.
Still…I jerked the next splinter from his side, and he hissed. I flashed a small, saccharine smile in response. “That one was in deep.”
Lancaster only glowered. Mora was resting upstairs, under Celissia’s care. If I helped Lancaster, perhaps together we could all restore Mora.
With them gone, though, and having sent everyone else to bed for the evening, the emptiness of the dining room was a weight on my chest. Every plink of my supplies or shift of Lancaster pretending his stifled magic wasn’t a pain was thunderous.
“How does your healing magic work?” I asked, more to fill the silence than anything, the routine of fishing out the splinters now steady.
