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Inhaling, I pictured the Angellight expanding, ebbing, and becoming a solid force.

Exhaling, I let it seep along my skin. It was unnatural and natural all at once, to breathe with a power that manifested itself outside of my body.

But it wasn’t wild like the queen’s. It was peculiar but pulled at my bones with a deep understanding. It whispered along my skin, telling stories of things ancient and primal and trapped and living.

I tried to control it—pictured it before me—and breathed out. The Angellight pushed back harder against Kakias’s power, forming a curtain between us. Protecting me, obeying me.

It was the same sensation from the induction, the same from the test I’d conducted in Gaveral, and from the fight at the trench. Each time, the flashes of Angellight I saw had been coming from me, not the emblems. And now I was taking control.

As the queen staggered to her feet, those dark whips collected around her.

Kakias growled at my veil. Blood-red lips pulling back against sharp white teeth, she pressed a hand to her slowly-healing wound.

Behind me, someone shifted, but I focused on maintaining my tenuous control on this newfound power. I gritted my teeth, trying to ignore how it already curled at the corners under my unpracticed hand.

Barrett’s voice cut through the courtyard, over the gentle sizzle of the Angellight and the darkness pressing against it. “This seems familiar.”

“Oh, you brought my son,” Kakias ground out. “How lovely.”

“The family reunion of my dreams, I assure you,” Barrett deadpanned.

“Pity,” Kakias said. “I did not want to fulfill any traitorous dreams of yours tonight.”

Barrett rolled his eyes, but I caught the tightening of his jaw. The comment had struck deeper than he showed. “Then you will be pleased to hear you’ve been a disappointment since I was born.”

Flicking a glance over my shoulder, I couldn’t see Santorina, but I heard her moving in the shadows.

“Likewise.” Kakias nodded. She lifted her chin, almost seeming pleased by her son’s accusations. Her hand dropped from her side, fingers stained red.

As she spewed vitriol at him, I thought back to the version of her we’d battled on Daminius. The one I thought might have retained a sliver of something human, of the young girl who had mourned a child and went to unimaginable lengths to avenge that death.

Whatever had nearly stilled her hand then was gone now, absorbed as she committed crimes against the Angels to achieve eternal life.

Kakias tilted her head, and something glinted among her dark curls. I gasped—a broken diadem of thorns sat daintily atop her head.

Thorn’s broken crown, the other half of his emblem. Ricordan had warned me not to wear it. That was how she’d been controlling the Mindshapers. Not secrets she’d won from Bant, but that twisted crown.

All this time, she’d had it.

“Where did you find that?” I asked, accusation burning in my words. Even now, warped as it was, that emblem called to me. It belonged to me.

“It’s rather special, don’t you think?”

I was tired of her games, her taunts. Fury burned along my veins, and I sent out another burst of Angellight to appease it, solidifying my shield.

Untethered, a tendril of power smacked against my veil. I gritted my teeth, the impact rocking down to my bones, an assault to my very being, but I didn’t miss Kakias’s wide eyes.

“Fascinating,” Barrett breathed.

“What?” I muttered, straining against the pressure.

“Her power. It truly is like tar.” He looked pointedly at me. “Like the Blackfyre.”

The location where he thought Bant’s ring came from. A direct tie to the Angel in the physical, visible form of Kakias’s unnatural magic. Was that where she’d gotten it, then? Was I correct in my guess that the queen had Angelblood?

Before I could ask, a lash of power slipped against the veil, and Kakias released a surprised groan.

I smirked. “When did that happen?”