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“What can—we do?” I asked through gritted teeth.

“What can we do now?” Cypherion corrected, recognizing the need for a quick remedy. Tolek watched Rina intently, eyes begging for a way to ease my pain.

“If it’s…firm enough”—Rina swallowed—“I could try to remove?—”

“No,” Tolek cut her off, panic raising his voice.

“It’s still eating at me,” I said as a wave of nausea rolled through my gut. There would be no removing the poison while its claws were in this deep.

“I can give you a sleeping tonic,” Rina offered. I opened my mouth to argue, but she cut me off. “A small dose to allow you a few hours, but you’ll be fully lucid before we have to head out.”

I gritted my teeth at another burst of pain.

“We can afford to sleep an extra hour or so,” Cypherion added with a sincere nod.

“Take it, Ophelia,” Jezebel pleaded.

“Okay,” I relented. And when I met Tol’s eyes, the words burning and begging in those amber specks were clear: don’t search for Kakias.

Everyone was somber as Rina brewed the tonic. Cyph asked Vale to distract us with a story of some Starsearcher legend about fated lovers destroying one another only to wake an evil spirit instead, but all I heard was the clinking of vials in Santorina’s hands and the soft threats of a queen against my cheek months ago.

“Only a few hours,” I clarified to Rina with a raised brow, biting back a hiss as another wave of pain shot through my arm.

She handed me the tonic. “You’ll be up before the sun.”

I threw it back, its syrupy taste fruity and thick as it coated my throat. As I rolled out my sleeping mat and ensured Starfire and Angelborn were beside me, my limbs grew heavy, but the pain in my arm was already dulling. My vision blurred at the edges as the tonic kicked in. Curling up beneath my cloak, I settled against Tolek’s side.

“Is this yours, Ophelia?” Vale’s voice cut through the haze.

Forcing an eye to crack open, I found the Starsearcher across the mystlight. She held something between her thumb and finger. A small, gold charm?—

I shot upright, wobbling. “That’s from Lancaster.” The symbol he’d given me to string on my necklace when we’d made our bargain. “I can’t lose that.”

“It was on the floor over there.” Vale motioned to where she’d found the bargain charm, then returned to her bedroll. I thought I felt a glare from Rina on the trinket but was too dazed to be sure.

“How odd,” I said, already yawning again. “Help me?” I asked Tolek.

Silently, he returned the symbol to my necklace, hanging beside Angelborn’s emblem. “Back where it belongs,” he said, pulling me down beside him while he kept watch.

“Wish you’d sleep,” I slurred. My eyes drooped again, and I cuddled into my safest place.

“I’ll try,” he promised.

“Good,” I murmured. “And I’m glad Vale saw this.” Another large yawn as I grasped the charm. “I would’ve hated losing that bargain.”

And as I slept painlessly with the aid of Rina’s tonic, dreams of burning fields of flowers and shattering heavens played out in my mind.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Malakai

“Weapons at the perimeter,” Gatrielle said, unhooking his sword belt from his waist and hanging it on a rack at the edge of Firebird’s Field.

“What?” Instinctually, my hand went to my sword. Mila hesitated, too. We were entering near the capital, shrouded on all sides by the Gennium Forest, and though the sky was blue and the air crisp, his instruction sent a writhing beast of uncertainty through my chest.

“It’s a sacred site,” Gatrielle explained. “We can’t bring weapons into the field or we’re viewed as untrusting by the Spirits who rest here and the Angel they guard.”

“I’ve brought weapons into temples before,” I argued. “The Angels carried fucking weapons when they were mortal.”