Page 22

The sky didn’t seem as dark here. In Damenal, the mountains sometimes swallowed up the light, and the stars peppered a black sheet. But here, the space between them seemed to melt into their glow. Deep pockets of navy faded into lighter and darker blues effortlessly, all of it softening together like weaving a story.

After tonight, I wasn’t sure what tale they told.

I tried to decipher it from the tiled roof outside the window of the room we’d taken at the tavern in Lumin. After getting Vale back here and swiping the sweat from her face with a damp cloth, I’d sat beside her bed for a while. She wasn’t stirring, though, and the room was stifling. Choking me.

Instead, I’d crawled onto the first story roof our room overlooked. I sat against the wall beside the open window so I’d hear any noise she made and watched the stars.

Why had they given her this fate? What had they written for her that was causing such torment?

She deserved better. Every time she was taken by her sessions’ seizing, I’d thought that. She was only trying to help my friends. No matter how angry I was with her, no matter that she would leave, I could acknowledge that she was going out of her way—endangering herself—to assist in the emblem hunt.

“Fucking Angels.” I dragged a hand down my face.

As I asked the universe these pressing questions, I tried to wave off the thought that Vale might be doing this for me, too.

Because she knew how much I depended on my friends. Months ago, on the eve of Daminius, I’d torn down my walls and shown her how much I needed them all to survive this.

There was only one place I could go right now. One person who could find some kind of answer to the desperation that had been clawing through my chest since Santorina shared that passage about the Angelcurse a few days prior.

There is no cure but blood for seraphs kissed by Angels. Death is the ultimate sacrifice.

Death. Ophelia’s death.

She couldn’t fucking die. That wasn’t an option.

Malakai had lost any semblance of control when Rina read that aloud. Jezebel had nearly devolved right there on the floor of Lucidius’s study, rage and denial bursting from her small frame. Santorina went quiet, and that was almost the worst one. I didn’t know how to help silence.

Erista had taken Jezebel, and everyone else who was not as personally tied to Ophelia left, so it was just Malakai, Rina, and me.

They were near opposites in their fear. Mali stormed and huffed around the room. Rina reeled every drop in, answering with a sharp tongue when prodded.

And I’d held on to them. We sat there trying to find answers for hours, until we were too exhausted to continue, then began again the next day. We’d found nothing. But I held on because it already felt like Ophelia was slipping away from us all with this Angelcurse. We couldn’t lose someone else.

And Tolek…

Damien’s cursed fucking Spirit, I didn’t know how Tolek would respond to Ophelia’s approaching doom, but it wouldn’t be good.

That was why I was knocking on Vale’s door now, hours after the sun went down, on the eve of Daminius.

“Cypherion?” she greeted, surprised.

I didn’t think the curiosity was about me being here—we’d been sneaking into each other’s rooms for weeks, because I didn’t want to answer my friends’ questions yet.

No, it was likely no surprise that I was here. But a surprise that I was here now.

“I need your help,” I confessed.

Vale stepped aside and let me into her suite, leading me straight to the bed chamber and the couches forming a semi-circle before the fire.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, immediately adding, “Sorry, that’s a stupid question.” She tugged her silk robe tighter around her shoulders.

I slumped into a seat, my elbows braced on my knees and my head in my hands.

“Cypherion,” she said my name again softly. Always my full name. I loved the way she said it, any way she chose to, but when she said it in that quiet voice, it felt intimate. Like she wasn’t only saying it but looking at me. Truly looking.

“I need you to read about the Angelcurse.” And then I was pacing before the fire, the words fast and uncontrollable. “I need help—I need an answer, to be able to go back to my friends with a plan because they are all fucking losing it, and I need to hold them together right now.” I shoved my hands through my hair, tugging at the ends.

“Ophelia definitely knows about this Angelcurse if she had Santorina searching,” I said, “but I also know she doesn’t have a plan or she would have come to us. So, I need to find the plan.” I stopped, bracing both hands on the mantle and watching the fire. “I need to give them a way to keep their pieces together or we’re all going to disintegrate along with her.