“Itisus?” I asked, my mouth dry. “We’re the sisters from the myth?”
“No. Think of yourselves as the next generation of them.”
As if summoned, voices rose among the fog. It was almost a gleeful sort of laughter tinkling off the marble. Something off-kilter and distant that made Jezebel shiver.
The sphinx turned her dark, slitted eyes on my sister. “I am sorry about that facet of the power.”
“What do you mean?” Jez asked, chin high.
“Is it not haunting to hear their dying, remorseful thoughts?”
“Sometimes, yes,” she admitted. “But often, the honor outweighs the misfortune.”
The sphinx tilted her head with feline grace. “Honor?”
“To be the one to remember them, the last connection their spirits experience to the living world. I can think of few greater honors than escorting them through that final hurdle of life.”
Angels. My ferocious, myth-born sister. Only she would find the glory in such a power rather than seeing it as a curse on her spirit. And to have kept it a secret for so many years, carrying both the heavy burden of life and the sanctity of it.
Jezebel was a true warrior at heart, worthy of the legends spun around her, of being the rider of khrysaor and destroyer of myths. Only one who handled the title Mistress Death with such grace earned it.
Stepping closer, I squeezed her shoulder, hoping she felt that admiration in the gentle touch.
The sphinx bowed her head toward my sister. “You have a noble heart, Jezebel Alabath.”
“Thank you,” Jez said with something I rarely saw: a modest blush.
“You said you’ve been waiting for us,” I began, and the sphinx’s attention swiveled back to me. “For what exactly?”
She smiled, and even that grin was mischievous and feline. “I have a tale. One I can only share with the chosen, but it required the sisters of the myth to free me.”
“What about me?” Erista asked, and based on her step back, she was prepared to leave, but the sphinx shook her head.
“You may stay, Miss Locke.” And there was something knowing—something rich with understanding—in that ancient voice. Something that reminded me of how Damien and Valyrie spoke to me in that dream.
“What is the story?” Anticipation fluttered through my chest.
“We must start at the beginning,” the sphinx said.
“Beginning of what?”
“Atmybeginning, Ophelia. Of how I came to be in this hall with a story to bear.” Walking soundlessly to the back wall, thesphinx turned a circle and settled on the floor, her paws crossed primly before her.
When she began, her voice was bathed in truth and legends, almost like that of the Storytellers. “I once roamed the Soulguider lands freely. Until the fateful day the Angels were tricked into ascending by the wiliest of higher beings, and their divine power was imprisoned. On that damned day, I was turned to stone, and have not woken since, much like many other lives slipped from this world.”
Jezebel and I exchanged a look, brows furrowed.Tricked?
“But before that, the dunes were mine to traverse, and the warriors were subjects to overlook, so that they might not cause harm to my Angel and mistress.” A venomous glint shone through the sphinx’s jade eyes.
“I was a gift to her from a god himself when she asked for a defender.” She chuckled. “Though, she meant aloveror afriend. But as I said, gods are tricksters, and Xenique did not properly frame her request. He gave her a half dozen of my merciless kind to stand by her side instead. To defend her.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why would a god give an Angel a gift when warriors were so uninvolved with them?”
A devious smirk flitted across the sphinx’s lips. But she turned to Erista. And she bowed her female head, wings rustling with…excitement? “A true guard of secrets. Your service is appreciated.”
Erista’s face remained impassive.
“E?” Jez asked softly, voice wavering. “What does she mean?”
