Silver streaked through the air, Jezebel urging the dagger on with her own power. As my magic collided with my sister’s in the air, the two wrapped around the small knife, surging it forward.
But right before it landed—right as the steel pulsed with spine-tingling magic—the god gave me a victorious smirk.
The light consuming the air was siphoned into Echnid’s waiting palms where his mists gathered and swallowed it whole.
My stomach flipped, a wrench twisting in a way that dragged me back to the ballroom, when Echnid had convinced me to try to turn Malakai into a seraph.
“STOP!” I screamed, time seeming to slow.
In the god’s hand, my magic pressed and condensed, crackling and booming. Morphing until nothing but a solid white meteor hovered before him, silver and gold lights woven through it. The Warrior God extended his arms out, palms splayed, and with a deafening force, he clapped his hands.
That ball of power shot forward.
Beside me, Jezzie pummeled Echnid’s back with bolts of silver magic, but it did nothing to derail him. Gods were beyond myths. They were the foundations of entire universes.
Moirenna’s eyes slipped closed, her chin lifting high as if in acceptance, and the meteor collided with her chest.
The blow rang through the desert. It sank the dunes and bent the skies. Stars—the constellations I could restore—screamed. The goddess hung suspended as victory smeared across Echnid’s rotten features.
“Take care, my Fatecatcher,” Moirenna’s melodic voice echoed along the air.
Then, the goddess—the only one who had come to our aid, to try to dissuade her brother of this very thing—she wasn’t just banished from the realm.
Moirenna died in a burst of flaming white light that resembled two stars colliding in the sky. The remnants rained down to the sand, coalescing around Vale.
Power exhausted, Echnid fled through another veiled rip in the air, the Angels following. Before he sealed the gate, Echnid gave me one last glare that promised this wasn’t over. There was a haunted ownership in that stare, a threat compounded by his victory.
But he was gone, and the desert roared to a stillness.
Aside from a slight sizzle and crackle of starfire.
And like vipers following a rhythmic song, the silver beads that had showered the earth in the wake of Moirenna’s death trailed around our Starsearcher. They gathered at her feet, then across her body, and sank into her skin one drop at a time.
Vale’s eyes flared the brightest silver.
And in a moment that had my wings shivering, the magic of the Fates became the Fatecatcher’s.
Part Three
Damien
Chapter Forty-Three
Damien
We had not seenan Angel fall ill in the millennia since we walked Ambrisk. In much longer than that, truly, since our power kept us strong. But when the Goddess was slain, Valyrie crumbled in the skies.
“The transfer of power is likely taking its toll on her, as well,” Ptholenix explained to me in a hushed whisper outside the room we had been monitoring our sister in.
“She will wake?” I asked.
“Oh, I am certain she will wake.” The orchid tattoo between the Firebird’s wings caught the light as he peeked back around the curtain at Valyrie. Turning back to me, he explained, “Now more than ever, the Balance will need powerful Starsearchers to retain the Fates’ magic.”
That thought settled on my Spirit. My teeth ground together. “This will have deeply stretching repercussions.”
Ptholenix nodded in grim agreement. In all the time we had existed, nothing of this magnitude had occurred. The War Among Gods that locked Ambrisk from other realms happened so long ago, we had been young at the time, still indulging in theproclivities of our immortality. Not present for the worst of the battles.
And any other godly disputes…well, they had not been within our realm.
