Xenique’s smile was haughty, chilling my blood-and-sweat-stained skin. “I believe you have already seen how much more lies within your stories.” And her gaze lingered on the wings at my back.
“Sometimes,” a cool female voice added, “the Fates bear us more gifts than we realize.” An Angel with hair that gleamed silver and eyes swirling in depths of navy blue fluttered her wings as she drifted beside Xenique.Valyrie. The Starsearcher. “But never more than we can manage.”
“Holy cursed Angels,” Cypherion blurted out, and we all spun toward him. His eyes were locked on Valyrie. “That voice. I’ve heard your voice before.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Vale was blinking herself out of her reading, frantically scouring the cavern. She sought me out, but I gave her a grim-lipped nod.I know, it said. I know of Annellius.
My heart tore at the tear that slid down her cheek. At the fear blatant in her silvered eyes and how she wiped it all away. Vale cast a wary glance to Lancaster and Mora, but then, she forced herself to stand straighter and face Cypherion.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
He eyed her, clearly seeing through her front, but his expression softened and he answered, “On the night we went into the archives and you read—when Titus ambushed us—it was Valyrie’s voice that spoke through you, Stargirl. When we foundthe book in the archives written in Endasi, she said of course she knew the language. That she was there when it was created.”
“It happened tonight, too,” Malakai called down from the steps, striking the Angels with accusing glares. “In the Gates.”
“Valyrie?” Vale asked, her eyes still aglow but uncertain.
The Starsearcher Prime Warrior lowered herself to the ground before her warrior, her bare feet meeting rock.
And for the first time since the fated Ascension Day—since they’d gone within that prison—an Angel walked our soil. The impact of this great power returning to Gallantia rang through the stone.
“Child of many Fates,” Valyrie said to Vale, and my heart stuttered at the ownership in her tone. “It is so good to see you harness your power, Fatecatcher.”
“Fatecatcher,” Tolek whispered to me. “That phrase was in her scrolls.”
“Do you think it was talking about Vale?” I muttered, but Tol only shrugged.
Vale’s frame glimmered in starlight even within this chamber. Cypherion stood a step behind her, hands within reach of his weapons, but Valyrie paid him no heed. She evaluated her warrior with the pure satisfaction only immortality could birth.
“What does that mean?” Vale asked.
Valyrie dipped her head. “In time, you shall learn.” She looked around the cavern, eyes pausing on Mora and a small breath of shock leaving her lips before she stole herself. “We have much to discuss it seems. You may bear nine Fate ties and readings of higher powers, but I have not had access to my magic for a very long time. There is so much only I can impart.”
“What about the Warrior God?” I asked, shifting toward Damien where he’d been whispering with Bant. Hatred and betrayal curled through me when Damien’s eyes met mine.
As their muted tones slithered across the stone walls, the Engrossian Angel watched Barrett, Dax, and Celissia with unsettling curiosity. The trio stared right back, Dax still wincing over the scar to his gut, and I swore Bant’s head tilted curiously at the slight flinch.
“It seems the mortals have been playing such reckless games, brother,” Bant said to Damien. The Mystique’s scar twitched as his jaw ticked.
“What. About. The. God?” I clipped out. I was done allowing Damien to avoid me. Done being their toy.
But it was Bant, his hair and eyes as dark as the magic Kakias had manipulated from him, whose attention latched on to me, and he said, “You have cleared the way.”
And at our backs, in the wall the half-moon Angel statue bowed toward, white light carved a fissure through the rock, cleaving clean through stone?—
No. Itmeltedit.
But stone couldn’t melt. Not from any natural, easily accessible substance at least. We’d seen scorched rock before—during that first trial on the Seawatcher platforms. A result of burning Angellight, I’d thought, marking the path to the emblem.
But perhaps it hadn’t been the light of Angels after all. Because even Angellight did not contain this pulsing power, melting a door where none had been before.
Flicking a lock.
Unleashing a prisoner.
This was stone touched by the hand of a god. One long-contained and ready to devour what stood in his path. The wall melted into a river of molten rock as my weapons had, and I flinched at the reminder. But I couldn’t get lost to the pained memory.
