As if satisfied that we were finally talking about this, Zanox and Sapphire started a slow trail through the clouds. Dynaxtar followed leisurely.
“And you’re certain?” I asked over the breeze their wings created.
“Yes. Erista was there, too. We tried to figure out what could have caused it—if we may have been seeing things—but nothing else explains it.”
“Have there been any other incidents since the Spirit Realm?”
Jez shook her head, but the weight of her secret unfolded from her. Up here, with Sapphire, Zanox, and Dynaxtar as our guards, a sense of assurance wrapped around us.
“My Angellight has been different since the realm, too,” I confessed.
Jezebel chewed her lip. “What does yours feel like?”
“It feels like each Angel it stems from, rooted in me. There’s Ptholenix’s fire and Gaveny’s wild seas. Thorn’s is a living storm, and Damien and Bant are both…sublime power.”
As we coasted across a thick bank of clouds, Jez muttered, “Mine doesn’t feel like any of that. It’s…cold. Like a great loss.”
I didn’t say it aloud, but if Jezebel was able to communicate with departing spirits, that sensation of loss didn’t surprise me. It all had to be connected.
“But there’s a new instinct within mine, too,” I admitted, wanting her to know she wasn’t the only one feeling lost. “Avibrance even the five strings of the Angellight can’t match. Like something seeking life and breath. I assume it’s how they’re merging within me, becoming mine. But I’m not really sure.”
Jezebel was quiet for a moment as we flew. Then, she asked, “Can you summon it?”
And the uncertainty in her eyes was so uncharacteristic that I did. Starting with Damien’s, I slowly unraveled the Angellight. The first thread pulsed, reaching from some archaic source right down into my very soul, golden and effervescent and wondrous.
One by one, I awoke each of the other four. Ptholenix’s fiery orange and Gaveny’s tempest of turquoise came first and easiest, the most controlled. The bright phenomenon of flame reflected and undulated against a glassy ocean.
Next, Thorn’s erratic silver power rose like scattered storm clouds, the only one hard to wrestle into its strand, but still tethered to that source deep within me. Whatever power it was I didn’t know I commanded. Something rooted to being the chosen child of the Angels, I presumed. To retaining the agent that activated my Angelblood, though we still were unsure what it was.
Finally, I engaged the last shred of power I held. The most unfamiliar and eerily sentient. Bant’s.
With my eyes sealed tight and the other four patiently waiting, I prodded the Engrossian Angel’s light. It was threaded with ink as dark the valley’s pits and so reminiscent of those whips of tar the queen had wielded; it glowed and pulsed within me.
It had changed when Bant’s Spirit disappeared into the mountains, like a beast raising its head and turning aware eyes on me. That connection was a little harder to fight for than the others.
But I caressed it, coaxed it to trust me. And I turned them from five buds of power into one solitary essence. A might unlike each of the Angels they stemmed from.
A magic wholly and intrinsicallymine.
And as a singular force, the strands shot forward in a whirl of shining light, hovering high above the glassy sea. Warmth bathed my skin in a gust, and my eyes fell closed as I breathed in that strength.
Sapphire whinnied as the mass of power grew, a sound of pure encouragement and glee. Forming an effervescent braid, the light wound its way around my wrist, up my arm, teasing and tasting me. It sparkled against my skin, catching the reflections of the stars and winking to each.
Turning my face to the constellations, I swore they winked back.
I directed the Angellight to dance through the air over to Jezebel. Hesitantly, she pulled up her magic, as well. A delicate silver orb flickered in her hand, mist curling around it, twin to one of the stars plucked from the sky above.
For a moment, the magics mingled peacefully. I dug up more of that life-seeking source and fed it to the light.
Then, Zanox reared up, the scales on his wings snapping out. He roared, and I swore the back of his throat burned the same blue as the heart of Jezzie’s magic. Sapphire bucked beneath me.
And my sister’s power and mine careened into the sky like shooting stars falling from the heavens. The cold haunting sensation of loss combined with the vibrance of light.
“What’s happening?” Jez shrieked.
“I don’t know!” I gasped. “It’s out of my control!”
Twin trails of gleaming gold and silver-blue collided with the force of meteors crashing to earth, and chills spread across my skin even as something within me burned. A shower of sparks rained to the thick clouds below, reminding me of both the dawnand the end of the world captured in one impossible moment—reminding me of the balance of power that held Ambrisk in its palm—shattering.
