“It’s how we held the line for the others to get on the sphinx,” Dax added, voice tight.
That surge of power from the Angel statue had saved us. How could this be the wrong choice then?
“I felt it with Valyrie’s,” Vale agreed. As she spoke, starlight seemed to glow from her. Her eyes swirled with silver mists, the contents of galaxies in her stare. Cyph stood attentively at her side, but fervently, Vale said, “Keep going, Ophelia.”
Two more. Only two more emblems.
“Thorn,” Tolek said next.
We circled back to the other side of the statue, and this time, our friends followed, filing onto the platform.
All but Malakai, who sat with an unconscious Mila and the khrysaor near the top of the seats. There was a gap in our ranks where Lyria should have leaned easily against the wall with a curious smirk, and that absence spurred me on.
I pulled both halves of Thorn’s broken crown from my pouch. One I’d retrieved from the pit, the other Kakias had found and manipulated for control over the Mindshapers. It was the second half that pulsed with a power unlike my Angellight or the rest of the emblems, as if when the queen had worn it and mingled that magic with the power of Bant’s spirit within her, something had snapped.
I fiddled with the two pieces, but Tolek squeezed my hand. The weight of the others’ eyes bore into me. Lyria’s voice wafted through my memory.Take care of him. Finish this.
Facing the headless statue before me, I took a step forward.
And I hung both halves of the Angel’s broken crown upon the spot where his head would have been.
The earth didn’t just quake this time.
A keening wail split the air, wind howling through every tunnel in the mountains. I clasped my ears against the piercing sound echoing deep within my own bones. It could have been my own voice screaming for how the shriek cleaved through me. Could have come straight from the heart of the pit in Mindshaper Territory and ripped through Gallantia.
Where the other reactions had fueled the threads of each Angel within me, Thorn’s tore at it. Like he wanted to claim that power back.
It was a reckless and wily sensation, but I gritted my teeth against the pain wrenching through my body and spirit, forcing Thorn’s power down into the deep hollows my Angellight flooded.
The Mindshaper’s power dug through all that I was, violating and cruel, but I could do nothing against it. My back arched, a cry slipping from my throat. My friends shifted around me, but no one else crumbled beneath the Angel’s clawing power.
I leaned into Tol. Was this how he suffered when captured by Aird? Was this his nightmare?
Thorn’s magic dug and dug, and as the assault wrenched through me, Tolek removed his hand from mine, bracing my back and cupping my cheek with the other. He tilted my face up to his and looked at me with a little of the concerned warmth and fury at the Angels I was used to seeing in his stare.
“One more,apeagna,” he encouraged, stroking my cheek.
“One more,” I repeated, through gritted teeth.
Then, his hands slipped behind my neck. He unclasped my necklace and held the Mystique emblem out to me.
Sweat dripped along my brow as that final shard of Angelborn swung, glinting in the light. Greedily, I wanted to keep it. To find a way to extricate the power within and return that to the stone rather than give over this small piece of metal.
But the time for selfishness was past.
Swallowing that heartache and forcing the pain from the Mindshaper deep within me, I stepped toward the final of the seven figures. My heartbeat pounded through my entire body, hands shaking. In that carved stone, I searched for any hint of the Prime Warrior I’d come to know. Of Damien’s lingering magic or dulcet tones. Of the wistfulness I’d seen in him once, or the scar I knew now marred the Angel’s cheek.
Nothing familiar looked back at me, but it beat in my hand.
For the final time, I reached for Damien’s hunched form, bowing the lowest of them all, and I clasped my necklace around his neck, the fit tight to the stone. And the shock that went through the rock, the magic surging among all of us, was as strong as a thousand lightning strikes.
It was pure, undiluted ether drenching the blood of every Mystique in that chamber. Of Tolek, Cypherion, Jezebel, and Malakai. Even Mila seemed to stir.
It burned along my muscles, through my senses, amplifying everything I knew as a warrior and all the might I’d garnered from the emblems. My pulses pounded, heart racing. The Bond at the back of my neck tugged and drowned out Thorn’s painful exploration of my spirit.
And for a moment, we all silently exchanged awed glances.
“Now what?” Santorina finally asked, looking around at all of the warriors thrumming with power. There was a shift in her, too, but I wasn’t sure exactly what.
