“Xenique,” I confirmed. “It’s wrong.”
Cypherion’s and Vale’s conversation cut off. Jezebel drifted to stand by my head, studying the rendition of the Angel. Her ancestor. This damned demigoddess was Ophelia and Jezebel’s ancestor and had birthed Godsblood into their mother’s line, suppressing it for millennia to hide her descendants. It had been that Godsblood that caused the Angelcurse to surface in Ophelia.
That Godsblood that resulted in all of our suffering. In us hunting for the emblems.
In my sister being in the mountains the night she fell to the fae queen’s knife.
The Angels were at fault forall of this. I hated every one of them. If Xenique had kept her Godsblood a secret, what else had she hidden from the warriors?
The artist’s curiosity—at who we might be and what answers we may have—tensed between us filled the parlor with a beat of heavy silence.
Every warrior on Gallantia felt the return of their Angel to this realm when Ophelia freed them, but most hadn’t figured out what that calamitous shift had been. And those who guessed couldn’t know what it meant or that we had been present for it.
This man’s stare flicked between us, but he bent down again, not asking anything else. We didn’t offer.
But theyhadgotten Xenique’s expression wrong. Each Angel of the Gallantian Warriors was burned into my brain: their colossal magic, eclipsing wings, and tangible thirst for freedom, all emboldening and threatening as they gasped down the air of their continent—the air fueled with the ether of their very core—after being imprisoned for millennia; their abundant, burning power after Ophelia replaced the emblems into their statues and bled on them, fulfilling the Angelcurse.
Tilting my chin up, I silently observed CK, who was studying the portrait of Xenique, too. Did he notice how her chin was slightly elongated and eyes much too narrow? That she was shrouded in a black cloak when the true being wore draping skirts as if she was one with her desert-bound warriors?
How did we end up here? How had I ended up anywhere these last three days?
All I could hear over and over again, even now with the needle buzzing, were my sister’s dying words to me. The echo of her last breath rattling through her chest. And Ophelia screaming my name as the Warrior God grabbed her. As he pulled her through a veil in the air andtook herto Spirits knew where.
As I failed both of them.
“Done,” the artist said, stretching his hand after the hours we’d been here. He hadn’t wanted to finish the piece in one sitting.
I didn’t give him an option.
Skin tender, I sat up carefully, ignoring the Soulguider as he recited instructions for the care of the new tattoo. Instead, I crossed to a mirror in the corner while Cypherion and Vale noted the advice and collected the prescribed oils. I angled so the light caught the glimmering ink.
Jezebel stepped to my shoulder, eyes locked on my tattoo in the mirror. “It’s beautiful,” she claimed, ghosts in her stare.
“It’s perfect,” I agreed.
An unfurling pair of wings spanned my back, wrapping around my shoulders and ribs. They were incredibly detailed, down to the last feather. And near the top arch, aligned with the curve of the left wing between my shoulder blade and spine, were the wordsI love you, baby brother, the script taken from one of Lyria’s letters to me.
Red skin kissed the edges of the gold ink, soreness blistering through my muscles with each flex.
But I relished the hurt.
Finally. Something worn and worthy of how I felt on the inside. Something that woke against the drowning grief and guilt. The pain clawed at my vacant self the way only haunted memories could.
You should have saved them both.
Lyria did not deserve to die.
Ophelia trusted you to scorch the Angels with her.
On the accusations went, until the voices in the back of the parlor pierced through.
“Yes?” I interrupted.
In the mirror, Vale’s gaze sliced to mine. “The meeting has begun.”
I nodded. “Let’s go.”
Our Commander of Weapons and Warfare may have been killed, but vengeance for her loss was a map of my next steps. Our Revered may have been taken by a god, but I was promised to her for all the days to come, and I’d dive into the Spirit Volcano before I let her down again.
