Moirenna explained, “Power beyond the bounds you warriors understand exists in the Angels.” The goddess cast Valyrie a harsh glance that the Angel returned. “She cannot hold the weight of Fatecatcher in addition to all her other magics and responsibilities. It would upset the Balance of power too greatly.”
“Then what am I to do? Am I—Do I become the Goddess of Celestial Movements now?”
“No, sweet thing.” Another delicate brush against my cheek, her fingers tucking hair behind my ear. I felt like a child again, four years old and being cared for by my mother. “You are notthe one meant to replace me. You are born of great strength and a well of hidden magic, but that is not your fortune. I will waft among realms, and she will come to surface, but you—you are more similar to a conduit.”
“A conduit?”
“AConduice—it is a word of another realm. One that has no meaning here.” Valyrie’s wings shifted at the mention, but Moirenna only kept her concerned eyes on me. Worryfor me, I realized, despite her fading existence. “In that realm, theConduiceseek and distribute magic. Here, you will harness what I am leaving behind in death. You will carry it so it can exist beyond me, and it will be passed to Starsearchers and Fates as it has since the world began. But you are not intended to create fortunes, only maintain the magic.”
As she spoke, it was almost as if that hole I’d ripped in my spirit when I killed Titus was flooded with power. The one Cypherion’s love had solidified the edges of while I forged myself into something new.
Now, I was not only somethingnew. I was someonepowerful.
“What lies in Ambrisk’s future then? Will Echnid…destroy it? Wage another war of gods?”
“He will try,” Moirenna confirmed gravely, sitting back and crossing her legs. It was almost easy to convince myself she was not a goddess, that we were truly equals. With the power expanding within me by the moment, with the way my blood churned with the stars, I could believe it.
She gestured to Valyrie, and the Angel did not think twice before she settled down beside us, the goddess, the Prime Warrior, and the Fatecatcher sitting in a circle in this unearth-bound palace.
“There are ways to stop him,” Valyrie answered. “I cannot dictate Fate, and I do not know the answers, but the only trueway to stop him lies in the heart of the seraph with her volatile power. Help her, Fatecatcher.” Valyrie took my hand, begging. “Push the bounds of that magic. Your friends may be the answer we lacked so very long ago. Ophelia can confirm a finality to the Balance.”
I studied her for a moment. Her wide navy eyes softly swirling with galaxies. Her posture almost identical to mine, hands folded in her lap and leaning forward earnestly.
“You are truly on our side?” I asked softly, not daring to hope.
Valyrie nodded. “I am doing everything I can from beneath his thumb.”
Some of the others in my group carried disdain for the Angels, and I understood why. Thorn had tried to kill Tolek for sport, Damien had betrayed us, the whole lot of them had used Ophelia for their nefarious needs. But the one before me now seemed so genuine, and the Fates whispering through my body—the power I now held as the Fatecatcher—screamed to believe her.
Daringly, I placed my other starlit hand atop her own, our silver-ring-clad fingers twisting together. “And we will do everything we can. Please, be careful, Valyrie.”
The Angel nodded.
I turned my attention back to Moirenna. “Why am I the Fatecatcher?”
“Because you have earned this honor,” the goddess answered.
“Honor?” The power grasping my spirit and soothing its edges reared its head at the word, and though it was natural, it sparked a hint of worry. Was it an honor, or was it a pressure? Another weight after Titus used my magic for so long? Another thing to control me?
“You have never failed to embrace your magic. You have loved the Fate ties as they are intended to be, and you haveflourishedwiththem—not in spite of them. Many who are given the gifts you have been given crumble beneath the weight, but you own them. Theyare you.”
Her words landed, but I didn’t understand them at first. My magic was simply who I was. I neither chose to embrace it nor push it aside, I simply lived with it.
A smile spread across the goddess’s beautiful face as if she heard that reasoning, and I supposed that bone-deep assurance was exactly what she’d meant.
I breathed in that truth now—that fate. I had always been meant for more than a chancellor’s grasp. I’d been meant to break free of those chains, to live beyond them. Now, I would do so with the power of a goddess flooding my veins.
“Now that Echnid has”—I chewed my next words carefully—“gotten rid of you, do you know what his next move will be? Now that he’s won…”
“He has not won,” Moirenna reminded me. “As long as there are warriors on Ambrisk to stand against him, the god has not won. No matter how dark the nights seem.”
Valyrie’s eyes gleamed with the goddess’s assessment. We could still end him. There was a chance—we only had to find it.
Moirenna went on, “I do not know precisely what magic he used to kill me—it did not happen as any of the times I had seen it play out—but I allowed that fortune to pass because in finally doing so, he exposed something pivotal.”
“What?” I asked.
The goddess and Angel both grinned, and these were not the comforting, soft smiles they’d given me before. These were ruthless and cunning. Female deities who had survived for millennia on their own sheer will, daring to do what others would cower against. Daring to fight.
