So, I turned, casting one last look at the wings in the mirror.
And this tattoo, this gold ink that now marked my skin for eternity, it was a symbol. A small piece of the promise of my sister’s future taken too soon. Barely five words, but the only ones that mattered. A sign of the healing we’d undergone, the mountains we’d climbed to restore our relationship, and the vow I’d made to carry on her cause.
And the wings sprawling across my body were a promise reaching just as deep. Every line was a stamp of my allegiance to Ophelia—a seraph among warriors and a ruler among Angels—defining a love that would last just as long.
A reminder to anyone who saw it that I would tear every realm to shreds to get her back, gods and Angels be damned.
Chapter Two
Ophelia
Everything was on fire.
The silk sheets beneath my cheek burned from the inferno my skin had become.
Outside the window, the clouds over the Mystique Mountains flamed with a setting sun. One pane of glass was shattered, but the peaks flickered red in my wavering vision. Where they’d once been my freedom, now, they were the sharpened teeth of a bared jaw threatening to swallow me whole.
The muscles along my back roared.
My wings—the glorious pair of wings that had broken through my flesh, feathers unfurling and bloodstained—sent waves of fire rolling along my body with every slight movement.
“Ophelia?”
Malakai. He had barely left my side since we landed in the Rapture Chamber of the Revered’s Palace days ago. At least, I thought it had been days. I couldn’t be sure with how I slipped in and out of consciousness. I remembered him tenderly cleaning what blood he could from my wings and back. Each moment had been excruciating, but Malakai had remained attentive.
He crouched before me now, blocking the flame-dancing mountain peaks from sight. Familiar green eyes swam in my vision.
“Are you awake?”
I wanted to answer, but my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, throat bone dry.
I wanted to answer, but it hurt.
It allhurtdown to the very marrow of my bones, every drop of Godsblood and Angel-given-magic incinerating.
The worst pain of all was knowing I’d done this. I’d unleashed this plague on Ambrisk. I’d fallen for the trap the Warrior God and the Angels had laid by fulfilling the Angelcurse. I’d thought I’d been doing good for our warriors, but how could I have been if they’d taken Malakai and me? How could I have been if the Angels had attacked my friends as I left? How could I have been, with those malicious words Echnid had breathed when I asked him what he’d do next?
Now we get vengeance.
It clanged through my mind again and again, the bell a death toll.
And Tolek…he was out there, swimming through the grief of his sister without me. I’d promised her I’d take care of him, and yet within an hour of her death, I’d broken that vow.
My sister, Santorina, Cypherion…they were all facing the aftermath of fulfilling my prophecy. And I was drowning in fire, my spirit a crisped husk.
My body shivered involuntarily, sending my wings twitching. A cry wrenched up my throat at each tremble, fire licked along my flesh, and I thought my bones might crumble. Malakai placed a hand to his chest as if feeling it, too.
Used.
I’d beensoused, my skin was foreign. My mind tainted.
The Angels, the gods, even the sphinx. They’d all used me to achieve their end. Used the blood I’d been born with and the prophecies I had no control over. Withheld information until the last possible moment. They’d preyed on my desire to restore the Mystiques after the first war against the Engrossians had ravaged our territory.
I’d been going over it in the moments I swam into consciousness, trying to piece it together, and each realization wrung my heart out more. Damien had given me that first prophecy on my twentieth birthday and led me to believe I’d be saving the Mystiques. Back then, I’d have done anything to see my people return to true power. To reinstate the Undertaking and send our warriors on their rightful paths. To find Malakai.
Was it that determination that made me the perfect toy for the Angels? Or had the Spirits instilled that drive within me because they knew what prophecy would fall on my shoulders? Had the Fates guided me to it, or was it all inevitable?
No matter how it began, I was certain of one thing. The Angels had seen that eagerness—those desperate dreams—and they’d taken advantage of them.
