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Basanti grinned at me and took a bite of her cake, which made me feel a little less guilty about digging my fork into my own cake.

Arina spoke up, “The angels politics’ and future soldiers are all very exciting, I’m sure, but how about you deal with the more immediate problems? Like my kids.” She shot me an accusatory glare. “You promised you’d help me rescue my kids.”

“And we will,” I said. “But we’ll need to break into the Guardians’ Sanctuary to do it.”

“Which we need to do anyway to stop the Guardians,” Cadence said.

“Right.” I licked icing off my fork. “I’ve been thinking about that actually. And I wonder if we can use Faith’s idea to find the Guardians.”

“I hope you’re not referring to killing anyone on Earth who has magic.” Nyx’s voice was humorless.

I waved her concerns away. “No, not that part of her idea. Faith said the passages to the Guardians’ Sanctuary are everywhere.”

“Yes, there are multiple ways in and out of the Sanctuary, spread out across the Earth,” said Cadence. “I have used several of them myself, but I know there are many more.”

“Ok, so Faith wanted to kill everyone with magic so she could silence all the magic on Earth, except for the magic of those passages to the Sanctuary,” I said. “Because Faith couldn’t wield enough power to find the Sanctuary when the rest of the Earth’s magic was chugging along at full blast. There is another way.”

I looked down at my cat.

“It’s just a matter of brute force,” I told them all. “If I could channel enough magic through Angel, I could find the Sanctuary without silencing all of the other magic on Earth. With Angel’s help, with that spell magnified by a million, I could find the passages into the Sanctuary and break my way inside. With Angel’s help, I don’t even need everyone in the world to stop using their magic.”

“Your cat could indeed channel enough magic to perform such a feat,” Cadence told me. “But, Leda, you yourself don’t have that much magic to channel through Angel.”

“And you would need a lot of magic,” Leila added. “It’s a relative matter. In Faith’s plan, the very low level of magic on Earth during her spell wasn’t just about using the non-turbulence to find the Sanctuary. It also meant she needed to push through less magical resistance in the surroundings to break down the Sanctuary barrier. On a world with no magic being used by others, your magic would also be more powerful. Because there’s less resistance in the environment. Fewer things to interfere.”

Leila was pretty smart.

“Like when you always run with weights, it’s easier to run when you do it without them; you’re faster,” she said. “It’s the same with magic. If you go to a world with little or no magic, your magic packs more of a punch.”

“Do any of the worlds in the Immortals’ former empire have much less magic than here?” I wondered. “I thought the Immortals created them all to have roughly the same amount of magic, even if the magic might be of a different kind.”

“They did,” Damiel said. “But there are other worlds out there where people live, worlds not changed and seeded by the Immortals. On some of those worlds, your magic practically explodes out of you. On others, you feel like every spell has to be forced out of you.”

“Yes.” Cadence turned to Leila. “I’m impressed you figured that out, not having ever been on any other world than Earth.”

“It’s logical.”

Cadence grinned, obviously very proud of her former protégé.

“Ok, but with Angel, I have a way to channel enough magic to break the Guardians’ barrier, right?” I asked, trying to bring us back on track.

It was Cadence who answered my question. “Yes. Angel is a magic vessel. She can hold pretty much infinite magic, allowing you to channel it, control it.”

“So the problem is I just don’t have enough magic?” I asked. “What about the way we defeated Faith? What if we all combined powers?”

“I spent a long time stuck inside the Sanctuary,” Cadence said. “The barrier is very powerful. It drains the magic out of anyone. Instantly. That is the Guardians’ magic, Leda, that of negating magic and magic users themselves. The Guardians use all the magic you throw at them, all the magic you throw at their barrier, in order to fuel the barrier. Getting out of the Sanctuary was next to impossible. I only accomplished it by using a potion that made me appear dead, for all intents and purposes, both physically and magically.

“But to blast our way into the Sanctuary.” Cadence shook her head. “Collecting so much magic that it overpowers the Guardians’ ability to redirect it…that’s more magic than all of us have together. No, even combined, all of our magic is simply not enough.”

“A trick. You used a trick to escape.”

“You shouldn’t have mentioned tricks to the Queen of Trickery,” Basanti told Cadence.

“I’ll forgive you for that comment, Basanti, if you promise to second my motion that ‘Queen of Trickery’ be added to my very long list of official titles.”

Basanti snorted.

“Surely there must be a way.” I looked around at all of them. “Surely, there’s a trick we can use to accomplish what we need. There’s always a loophole.”