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“Are the burn marks from others attempting to enter?” Mila asked, pointing to one of the rings.

“Those are from a worship ceremony,” Gatrielle explained.

I rolled my neck and shoulders to try to relieve the pressure subtly mounting against my bones. My jaw ticked.

“What kind?” I asked Esmond, working to make my tone more friendly, but my eyes flickered across the scene. Impossibly thick clouds gathered in the distance above the eastern stretch of Gennium Forest, toward the Fytar Trench.

Gatrielle did not seem to notice and continued, “The nearest village is responsible for the chamomile harvest and processing before it’s transported to the infirmaries to be manipulated for tonics. I assumed that’s who was here.”

The melody of his voice rolled like the hills before us. Was that where the Bodymelder accent had stemmed from, a trait absorbed straight from the land itself?

“What are the other nearest villages responsible for?” I didn’t truly need to know, but I wanted to keep him talking. To distract me from the prickling of my skin.

Spirits, we shouldn’t stay here much longer. It felt wrong, the land teeming with a pulsing power. The others did not seem bothered by it, though.

“There’s ginger root and lavender both north of here,” Esmond explained. “There’s not much of a rhyme or reason to the pattern of fields.”

“The town south of the trench is in charge of textile production for stitching thread and linen wraps,” Gatrielle added. “It’s where I grew up until I moved to the capital to study and became an allure. Sutures are my specialty.”

“Have they all been having difficult growing seasons?” I remembered what Darell had said about their aloe fields luckily not being affected.

“Most have,” Gatrielle said, lips drawn tight. “Crops are dying inexplicably quickly.”

With interjections from Mila clarifying what she’d learned during the first war, the three kept up a steady conversation of healing practices. I tried to absorb what I could, but my focus was stolen by thoughts of Lucidius being here. Kneeling in the grass. Searching the weeds.

Was this insistent pull I felt toward this field nothing more than his mad ramblings? Was the pulsing presence a lingering remnant of the man who tried to ruin me, returning to claim me?

Please, Damien, I began, don’t make me like him.

As the concern wedged itself into my mind, we approached the pyre in the center of the field, and I took it in.

“Is that Ptholenix?”

It was not simply a pyre. There was an intricate frame of branches built around a stone statue, a nest for its bird, but those wings arcing out from either side were more legend than anything.

This was an Angel monument.

“Some swear they’ve seen him move,” Gatrielle said, looking admirably at the rendition of their Prime Warrior.

Esmond scoffed. “I don’t believe it.”

Mila crept around the statue, observing. “I don’t see how it could. It’s solid stone.”

“Some swear on Ascension Day, they’ve seen Ptholenix blink or flutter his wings,” Gatrielle said. No one knew what day the Angels truly ascended from warriors to their immortal form, but the holiday was remembered about a week before the end of the year.

“Because the minds of the drunk are always to be trusted,” Esmond drawled. I had to agree with him.

The air around the statue was thick with the remnants of smoke and whatever herbs the Bodymelders had offered at the last service. I got as close as the pyre would allow, blinking up at the almighty being depicted. The stone was worn after centuries, but I could almost make out the hair dropping to his shoulders and the long, pointed nose. His hands were open, tilted down toward the land as if calling it to him, and his stance and build were stronger than the most formidable warriors I’d seen alive. Even within his wooden cage, he commanded power.

I wanted to set him free.

Reaching forward, I rested a hand against the wood. It was no longer hot from the flame it had conducted, somehow not turning to ash during the ritual, but it still warmed beneath my palm.

Carefully, avoiding any weak spots that might send the structure tumbling to the ground, I reached through the crossed pieces of wood and brushed my fingers against the statue. A beat of recognition flooded from the stone into me. Something hummed in my chest. My breath stuttered, my other hand pressing against my sternum.

It crawled around my ribs, unnatural and burning. A beast seemed to raise its head within me, evaluating me. Expanding and testing and pulsing.

The earth trembled, the statue with it.