I nodded, remembering everything the god had told me of his reasoning for his actions as I scratched my wrist. Though I still didn’t know how Echnid planned to achieve his goals, I was beginning to understand him more.
It had been four weeks, and the unnatural phenomenons across Gallantia had calmed. The skies were flooded with rolling gray clouds, but the Rites of Dusk had not occurred, the fires in Bodymelder Territory extinguished, and temperatures across the continent simmered. I didn’t know if Echnid himself was responsible, or if it was just magic balancing after his lock snapped, but with him here, things were better.
Damien’s light flared, and the fog cleared from my vision. The Prime Mystique’s brow creased as he watched me, but I found the trail of our conversation in my memory and asked, “Do you regret it? Killing him? Using me to get here?”
He bit out one syllable that pierced my chest. “No.”
“No?” I repeated, and my own light snapped around me with a visceral crack. I flinched, my bones jarring.
“This was the purpose of the loophole, to allow us to find—” He cut off his words. “No, I do not regret it.”
“You don’t regret how you manipulated me into freeing you?” My wings beat in heated aggression at my back, the ache it wrought through my muscles deep and worn and satisfying.
“I did not have a choice,” Damien snapped. “This was always meant to happen.”
“You are anAngel! You have more agency than any warrior, and yet you let fate control you.”
“Fate is beyond anyone’s control.” That was a difference between the gods and Angels, I supposed. The gods wanted to control fate. The Angels bowed to it.
Anger pooled within me, a molten thing that desired answers and repercussions. It boiled through my words as I yelled, “So you just wanted to use your warriors to achieve your own means! Like any entitled ruler—like Kakias led her clan to warfare. That’s all any of you do!”
Damien’s nostrils flared as the force of my words landed. But he sucked in a breath and said, “I will fly you back to the palace.”
“Forget it!” I raged. “Youneverintervene when it matters; don’t start now. You are supposed to protect us, Damien. We are your legacy—your cause runs through the Mystique Warriors, through every bloodline alive today. And you killed him.”
Damien’s jaw tightened, and an emotion I couldn’t quite decipher flickered through his purple eyes. I thought it was…shame.
What was the point? Believing in a higher power if they could do nothing to aid you when you needed it most? How many nights had I said prayers to the Angels as a girl, believed in them whole heartedly and was so damn proud to carry the Mystique name?
My wings beat at my back—strong, powerful pumps begging to carry me into that legacy, to write legends and wake myths. Seraph magic pushed at my veins, peeling the fog from my mind.
The Mystique name might have started with Damien, but it had become so much more. It was the boundless courage and determination of the warriors in Damenal and across Gallantia. It was their hearts and families. And for them, I would fight.
“You keep your gods and fate,” I said, eyes on the jutting peaks of the mountains beyond the Northern Quarter and the soft grasses that coated the sloping sides, all baring the passion of the clan who guarded them. “I’ll take my warriors.”
And with the blood of the Mystiques pounding through my body and pushing each stride further, stronger, I took a running start and leapt off the edge of a mountain, allowing my own wings to carry me.
They flared out, pulling at the sore muscles of my back as they caught the wind. I trusted the instincts of the seraph that had been waiting all these years to return to the skies and beat my wings when it seemed I was about to fall, coasting when I could.
I squeezed every muscle in my abdominals and back, my thighs and glutes, activating the ones Damien had been focusing on these recent weeks as he’d had me training with light while also working on control and strength. Training for this, teaching me so that I’d instinctually know what to do when I hit the sky.
It was a wobbly flight, quickly losing altitude I wasn’t sure how to gain back, but I breathed in the air from this height. The clouds filtered across the skies, and for a moment, the sun forced its way through, warming every inch of my feathers.
I wanted to soar, to see how far the ends of the world went and what gods and Fates waited there. I held that wish tight to my spirit as I dropped, bracing for impact. It wasn’t long before the ground was rushing toward me, and I landed in a sloppy run at the base of the hill Damien had trained me atop of.
With shaking limbs, a racing heart, and an invigorated spirit, I climbed back up to him, and I tried again.
And again.
And again.
When Damienfinally did fly me back to the palace, we didn’t speak. The closer we got to the white stone structure, the more my thoughts melted together, and my anger dissipated.
Echnid has a purpose. He is going to help the warriors. He is going to save us all.
Damien deposited me on the balcony outside my study as he always did. With one lingering glance at the mural on the ceiling—the one of the warrior dipping his glowing swords in a lake—he looked at me. “I do not regret it,” he repeated, stoking that betrayed inferno begging to roar within me again.
The fog suppressed it, and exhausted, I allowed it.
