And it felt fuckinggoodto burn.
“It’s okay, Malakai,” I said. “It was my turn to distract him.”
And with the magic of Angels?—
No. With the magic ofseraphs, I scorched the Curse mark from my body, unraveling the connection Echnid had built and burning his drugged control out of my blood.
Even as his claws retracted, his presence lingered. His voice in my mind, his actions in my muscles. The influence remained, trying to pull me back, warring with my seraph magic.
And I feared that while I may steal back my autonomy and get the poison out, I would never be free of him again.
Chapter Twenty
Damien
They escaped.
On the back of a gryphon wrenched from the tapestry in the hall above the trove, Ophelia and Malakai flew into the night.
And if the way Echnid screamed said anything, Ophelia had realized she had to burn his poison from her body with the healing properties of the Angellight her seraph gifted her. Despite the tainted control he had taken of her, the words I had repeated in our lessons stuck to her memory.
A cascade of emotions poured through me, still so wild and untamed from the centuries my Spirit was trapped. I maintained a stony expression before Echnid’s raging, but deep remorse and exuberant relief collided within my chest.
I met Valyrie’s stare as they fled, and her lips tipped up into the cruelest of smiles.
“It is not the chance we expected,” she whispered.
“No,” I agreed as they faded. “But it is a chance altogether. And we have been waiting so very long.”
Part Two
Bant
Chapter Twenty-One
Vale
“Please,show me where Echnid’s fury may lead,” I begged the Fate’s starfire burning before me.
Though the celestial beings rarely told us precisely what we requested, it wasn’t always futile to ask. And I’d been waiting days for this Fate in particular to wake, to stir in my chest and ignite that white fire that indicated a reading was waiting just beyond my bounds.
It had struck this morning, once I was back in Starsearcher Territory. I wasn’t sure if that was a coincidence or not. I’d shot out of bed with urgency, lighting a candle and burning incense to fuel the connection.
“Please, share whatever you may,” I asked again.
The trail of white fire burning behind the star flickered to life. No bodily shape was determinable, only the blistering celestial form, the outline of a helm upon his head.
And the rumbling voice of Arenothos, Fate of Wrath and Redemption, boomed through the swirling space carved out of the sky, as if from every direction. “The Warrior God is full of my first namesake and hunting the second.”
“He wants redemption?” I asked. “But that doesn’t make sense. Echnid wants revenge.”
“And by enacting that vengeance, he wishes to right his own name in history.”
My stomach twisted. Echnid would rewrite the past as we know it. Enforce a world that spoke of him as a victor instead of a conqueror. It was what many wars led to, wasn’t it? A wrongful ruler on a throne, legends written in their image. Titus flashed through my memory, and the edges of the vacant tear his death left within me pulsed.
I buried that loss deep down and implored the Fate, “Please, Arenothos, show me the paths that may lead to this foretold future.”
Starfire continued to flicker as the Fate sought. I knelt before him, clenching my fists.
