The thought only blinked through my mind, but something about it tightened my throat. Worthiness wasn’t a sentiment I’d associated with myself after I’d been imprisoned. After that sacrifice I’d made to end the war hadn’t actually made anything better, instead allowing Lucidius and Kakias to devastate the Mystiques, I’d lost a lot of personal faith.
It had driven all sense of value from me for a while. And still, when I considered my worth, it wasn’t anything like…this.
Wasn’t anything a warrior deserved. No Undertaking, no titles. Nothing more than a quiet existence away from this mess.
But…
When you signed the treaty, Malakai, I was freed from my imprisonment. You saved me.
That decision hadn’t been all bad. Perhaps there was some worth yet to recover.
I turned back to the orb, crouching again to examine it. My reflection was distorted in the glassy surface, but after a few seconds, it cleared and I saw the high points of my life. The ones in recent months where I’d come back from the dead and fought for myself. The moments I’d felt and seen the purpose of life again.
Mila. I saw a whole lot of her in there. Every tomorrow, every redemption.
Maybe that was what made meworthyof getting here. Of hearing that song in the depths of the chasm. Because I’d been as good as gone and had fought to stand on my own two feet.
If that’s true, though, I thought, watching my muddled reflection return to only me and the cave,what does that mean for me next?
Damned if I knew.
Whatever had gotten me here, I didn’t care. I swiped up the moon-white orb from its stand and waited for any sort of reaction.
Minutes passed, the scars across my back itching, and I rubbed my fingers along the rough indentations cut into the orb.
Still, nothing happened.
I didn’t stop to question it, though I worried a trick was breathing down my neck, an Angel laughing at my naïveté.
But instead of paying heed to that unavoidable possibility, I waded back into the water and got the fuck out of there.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Ophelia
“Godsblood.”
The answer rang through the air, so confident and yet so uncertain. Because it shouldn’t be possible, not within the warriors or the Angels.
The sphinx’s teeth gleamed something ferocious as she grinned, and for a moment I thought that might be the last thing I ever saw. That I had been wrong in that guess and was now to suffer the tragic fate of a failed riddle: death at the maw of the sphinx.
Those teeth, the length of my hand, glimmered with predatory intent.
But then, she purred, “Very good.”
A relieved breath swept from me. “How is that possible?”
“To understand that, you must gaze upon the heart of the stream’s magic.”
Before we could ask what she meant, the sphinx rose. And behind her, stone grated against marble, another archway forming in the wall. The babbling of water returned, much louder this time.
The sphinx lumbered on her great paws through that door, a silent instruction to follow.
Uncertainly, Jezebel and I looked to Erista. She nodded, and despite the fact that she knew of something going on here that she hadn’t told us, I trusted her. Our Soulguider grandmother had instilled the importance of secretive predictions in us from a young age.
We crossed into the new chamber, waterfalls of all sizes and speeds cascading from spouts and gaping mouths up the sparkling alabaster walls, cut to look like craggy cliff sides. Through pockets in the stone, rivers rushed.
Cyphers dotted the room, a veritable abundance of magic pouring into a central pool taking up the majority of the chamber’s floor.
