When I’d been drunk off sparkling wine, drowning the thoughts of what the night should have been. Only days afterfinding Malakai’s spear. Heartbroken and longing and so damn naive to the workings of the world around me. To what was waking within me at that very moment. When I’d stumbled upstairs to my room in my family manor and crawled into my bed only to be awoken by blinding Angellight for the very first time.
The magic within the Godsblood must have been potent enough to overrule my claim on the Mystiques and initiate the Angelcurse. Little could, but the will of a god? Not much could trumpthat.
But…twenty?—
A new fear lodged a breath in my throat. “Will Jezebel receive the Angelcurse when she comes of age?” I gripped my sister’s hand tightly, her cold front remaining up. I’d been ravaged by this damn curse. I wouldn’t let that happen to her.
But the sphinx shook her head. “Not if you complete it. Finish the task, and the curse will never touch another again.”
I released a breath.
“We thought the Angelcurse was the cause of my magenta eyes. If Jezebel has the potential for it as I did, and the fate wasn’t activated until my twentieth birthday, why weremyeyes always a sign of it?”
Spirits, it was such a frivolous thought, but my mind reeled.
“Only one life can harbor the curse at any time.” She shrugged those powerful shoulders, her wings ruffling. “It is my suspicion that if you fail, the curse will transfer to your sister upon her twentieth birthday, and the signs will show, as well. Now that the bloodlines of Angel and Goddess have merged naturally, anyone born unto you will know the same fate. Always the oldest first.” She added again, voice dark, “Should you fail.”
Should I die, she meant.
If I failed, Jezebel would be left with the Angelcurse. My chest hollowed at the consideration of it. I’d been uncertain if Ieven wanted to complete the thing or if perhaps Annellius was correct in hiding it. That the Angels had toyed with our lives enough and it was time to fight back.
This wiped all possibility of that from the table.
“If we have Godsblood from our mother’s line, how did Annellius get it?”
The sphinx answered, “Annellius discovered the curse within Alabath Angelblood and activated it himself. He tracked down a descendant of the goddess anddrankfrom the source.”
My stomach turned. So desperate. He wassodesperateand greedy for power, he took a warrior’s blood in the worst possible way to activate this curse. One he turned his back on in the end, anyway. It was a cruel kind of irony.
What could have been that bad? What did he learn that made him decide he didn’t want to complete the curse cast when the Angels ascended and instead doom future generations of Alabaths to carry on a cause he was too cowardly to face? Especially when he had already gone to such egregious lengths.
Could freeing the spirits of the Angels truly be that bad?
There was only one way to know for certain. I looked up at the sphinx, steeling myself to ask the question.
Briefly, a part of me faltered—didn’t want to know.
A scared, shriveled piece of my wayward spirit wished to remain in denial for a moment longer. To hug naivety because certainly,certainly, it would be easier to face than whatever I learned next. To hear the reason I’d been exploited.
But I knew, deep in my soul, that was never truly an option. I was saddled with this Angelcurse and the heavy decision that would follow once I heard the truth.
I took a breath, and it weighed down my lungs like it was a life-changing inhale. One that would alter the trajectory of everything that followed. The last innocent one of my existencebefore I was forced to make choices no mortal should be responsible for.
With my sister’s hand locked in mine, the Godsblood and Angelblood and Spirits knew what else pumping through my veins, I asked, “It isn’t only the Angels’ spirits that need to be freed, is it?” A shake of the sphinx’s head. A squeeze of Jezebel’s hand. A breath through my traitorous, dry throat. “Then, what is the purpose of the Angelcurse?”
The sphinx smiled all those sharp teeth. “The purpose of the Angelcurse is to free the Warrior God.”
Chapter Sixty-Three
Ophelia
I blinked at her,the room utterly still.
Finally, I forced out, “Wh-what?”
“Fulfilling the Angelcurse, replacing those seven emblems into their statues where Annellius should have, and bleeding across the lot, will free the Warrior God.”
“Warriors do not keep the gods.” A stupid statement, clearly.
