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Then, I scooped her up and pulled her into my lap. I didn’t care that there was a war council waiting for us. That death was knocking on our doors. We sat there like that until her small breaths stopped shuddering, her demons easing.

And even then, a piece of me did not want to let go.

Chapter Fifty-One

Ophelia

“Ophelia!” a voice called through the stirring camp as I left Sapphire in the stables. She’d been slightly skittish, which was unusual, but then, she and the other horses hadn’t known why we were underground for days. It had set even my nerves on edge, the Bond soothing now that we were back among our mountains.

“Hello, Vale.” I smiled at her easily, picking my stride back up as she fell in beside me. Lyria wanted us at her cabin as soon as possible. “Where have you been?”

Snow dusted the tops of cabins and tents, powdering the ground. The start of a storm. I wrapped my cloak tighter around me, willing the Angels to make it an easy one.

“The temple,” she said.

My step nearly faltered. Flicking my gaze to her, I caught her rolling her lips between her teeth. “How was that?”

“It was…not as bad as it has been. Perhaps because I was actually in a temple this time.”

“Has that been known to happen? To falter when you’re in other locations?”

“Well, no.” We walked between two single-occupant cabins belonging to a couple of the generals, I believed. Vale fidgeted with her cloak. “Typically, we can read wherever. The sessions are stronger in temples and strongest in our own territory.”

That made sense. The Angels all had boundaries to their power, a scope they and those who wielded it were confined to. Like Thorn’s restriction of Ricordan to not manipulate my mind as I dropped into the pit. Still, Vale seemed unsettled.

With a hand on her arm, I stopped her outside of Lyria’s cabin. Pools of buttery light poured through the windows and warmed the icy ground beneath our boots. The last blades of the year’s grass withered in the encroaching-winter air.

“Have you been feeling okay otherwise?”

She scuffed her boot across the slush of dirty snow lining the stairs. “You noticed.”

I nodded. She’d been crouched against a wall as I emerged from the pit, her head in her trembling hands, fighting to stay conscious. I’d caught similar ailments a few times on the remaining journey. “Did you try to read while I was down there?”

“No.” She shook her head softly, the light emphasizing the purse of her lips and her wide olive eyes. “I think it has something to do with the emblems and this Angel power.”

I twirled the ends of my hair between my fingers, leaning against the banister. “The first time it happened was when we tried to summon Damien, correct?”

She nodded. “It happened again in Gaveral, and there had been other spells, but nothing as drastic until the Labyrinth at breakfast that morning. While you were in the pit, I thought I saw…”

I stood up straighter. “What did you see?”

“I thought I saw them again. Your ancestor. Angels and…and gods shrouded by their own light.”

Had that been who I saw behind the veil in the pit? Angels? Gods?

“And during the interrogation, when Jezebel and I used our power at the same time, they seemed to…converge.”

I chewed my lip, watching the ground as I considered. I had an obvious, explicit connection to these emblems, but Malakai had found the Bodymelder token—not me—and now Vale’s readings seemed to be disturbed by them, too. And Jezebel…none of it was adding up.

“I have an idea, though,” Vale interrupted.

Lifting my chin to see a hesitant smile, I nodded. “Whatever you need.”

Vale and I were some of the last to enter the war council. Barrett and Dax both crashed into me before the door had even shut fully behind us. After releasing me from a crushing hug, the former prince took my arm in his hand, gently turning it over to look at the spot where his mother’s poison had once puckered my skin. The creeping black tendrils were gone, a fresh pink scar fading in their place.

“How does it feel?” Dax asked as Barrett gently dragged his thumb over it.

“Like new.” I smiled up at them. Though there were still questions hovering around us, I’d take each small win. “And Santorina saved the…whatever came from my arm.” I wasn’t sure what to call the thing—that poison. “It’s dissolved into a tar-like substance, but she’s studying it now.”