Ophelia took in the new information, a thread of tension winding tighter between us all. Her eyes drifted across Mila andLancaster, and it was clear she wanted to question the male but wasn’t willing to disturb his healing.
Looking over her shoulder, she found Mora sitting against the high wall. She took a determined step toward the female, but froze. “Are you okay?”
I followed Ophelia’s stare. Mora’s skin was even paler than it had been earlier. Her energy drained. Despite the glamour threat and the fact that the female was the only glam among the fae present—and a powerful one at that—it was clear in the look Ophelia, Celissia, and Rina exchanged that they were concerned.
“Just tired,” the female said with an unconvincing nod. Dynaxtar’s wing curled tighter around her. “Tolek?” she called, voice weak.
I jogged over, Ophelia and Celissia on my heels, and asked, “What’s wrong?”
Mora extended the scroll with the coded language about Ascension Day. “I noticed something in the patterns. I think it’s mentions of warriors.”
“Of the ones from the age of Angels?” I asked, looking over the passage Mora indicated as Celissia whispered to Ophelia behind me.
“At first that’s what I took it to mean,” Mora said with a heavy breath. “But if the tense of the language works like our modern one, it’s speaking offuturewarriors.”
Future warriors? Was it about Ophelia bearing the Angelcurse?
I took the wrinkled parchment from Mora. “Thank you. I’ll continue on this.”
“Mora?” Ophelia asked crouching before the female with a much more tender stare than she’d given Brystin. “Can I look at your shoulder?”
The fae nodded, and I stepped back beside Celissia as Ophelia and the fae discussed in low voices. Ophelia pulled back Mora’s bandage to reveal?—
Fucking Angels. My stomach turned. The wound was…festering wasn’t quite the right word. Because it didn’t seem to be infected in any way, but it wasn’t healing nor did it bleed. A gaping loss of flesh stared up at us, an eerie blue swimming through Mora’s blood.
“It’s some kind of tainted magic,” Celissia whispered. “Her brother can’t heal it, so she’s trying to hide it. But…”
Ophelia could try to soothe the wound with Angellight, as she had after the catacombs.
She hated using the power. Feared what it would do, especially after how big it proved itself to be during the Rite.
But there, crouched in the sands of her grandmother’s land, Ophelia seemed to glow. That difference I’d noticed in her when she emerged from the gates, her eyes wild with a thrill, it was radiating around her now, almost a visible sheen to her skin.
No. Itwasa visible sheen—all around her. Similar to the Angellight wall she’d erected while fighting Kakias in the final battle, but now it wrapped her frame like the thinnest, softest silk.
With her hands gently braced against Mora’s arm on the borders of the wound, Ophelia pushed that light into the fae, and gold slithered around Mora’s shoulder.
I stepped closer to pick up what Ophelia was saying to the female. “This is the Angellight—the gift I can control because of the Angelcurse and the emblems. It’s different than the mythos magic. That’s the one I don’t know as well. The one we saw with the phoenix and in the catacombs.”
Thefel strella mythos…the one the fae and Storyteller had told us of? What else did she know of it?
I didn’t ask yet. Only watched as Ophelia glowed—both literally and figuratively. Because not only was her frame alight, but each word she spoke carried utter strength and dominance. Every blink and breath filled with wonder and ecstasy that crept along the sand and straight into me.
Angels, she was a manifestation of myth and power itself, and it consumed her.
“How’s that feel?” Ophelia asked after the thin sheets of magic formed a bandage. It was similar to what she’d done immediately after the catacombs, but it was somehowmore. Like she’d untangled the threads of power living inside of her and stopped being afraid to use them.
Mora nodded, but her face remained gaunt. “That venomous instinct is still there.” She closed her eyes, leaning back against the wall. “But it’s easing. I think I’ll stay here and rest while the magic takes hold.”
Celissia seemed satisfied. She squeezed Ophelia’s shoulder before heading back to the others.
“Damn phenomenal, Alabath,” I said, dragging her to her feet and walking a bit away from Mora.
She gave me a dazed smile I wanted to see every day of my life. “The magic practically has a life of its own. It wants things to be whole and pure; I simply willed it to achieve that.”
“Alabath,” I laughed, shaking my head.
She pulled her attention away from Mora, blinking up at me. “What?”
