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That was the one Damien had revealed last spring when we’d already been in Damenal. But there was another—the first he’d ever delivered to Ophelia. That one I hadn’t read before, and it was recorded in snippets rather than in full:

The time of thy reckoning…twentieth year…warrior with blood of two…try thy spirit…

The pages were crowded with notes of her musings.

“We know what some of this means,” Ophelia said as I copied everything down into my own journal.

“Shade of heart and seek the seven,” I said. It had to mean her eyes and the Angel emblems, respectively.

“Blood of fate likely means my Angelblood.” The rare substance threading through Alabath blood that needed an agent to activate it—one that, somehow, Ophelia had and Jezebel didn’t.

That wasn’t the part concerning me, though. It was what came next: spilled in sacrifice. Anger was a riled beast in my chest, but I swallowed it down.

“And these are the files on Annellius?” I asked, grabbing a stack. Flipping through them, I scanned the pages documenting the life of her ancestor, the only other warrior known to carry the Angelcurse.

“All right,” I said, pulling my notebook and a book Rina had found that addressed the Angelcurse toward me, “I’ll work on these since you’ve been staring at them for weeks. Is there anything else I can help with?”

Ophelia blinked at me, surprised. “No. I’ll…” She searched the table. “I’ll go over these notes from your sister.”

I wished she wouldn’t. Wished she would get some sleep, but I knew better than to push her. “Tell her I say hello.”

I’d exchanged a letter with Lyria to assure her I was okay, though, truthfully, I was surprised she’d written. Surprised she had shown up here when I was captured, too. I was beginning to think our father had poisoned that relationship more than I’d realized.

“I will,” Ophelia said, sitting down. “And thank you, Tol.” A bit of the weight already seemed to lift off of her.

“Of course.”

We’d been working for nearly an hour when I caught myself unable to look away from her, taking in the harshness of her face that hadn’t been there before. Still as beautiful as ever, but the lines had shifted these past few months as her grief and the pressure she’d put on her shoulders had settled. Like the final strings of the innocence we all retained when this began were wiped clean during the battle.

“Why are you staring at me?” Ophelia asked without looking up.

“I’m only appreciating you, Alabath. I missed you.”

Her eyes lifted, and for a moment she bit her lip, fidgeting with her papers as if unsure what to say. Then she said, “Yes, well, I was told the Angels would write sonnets about me.”

“I’ve changed my mind about that.” Her brows shot up. “Nothing they write would do you justice.”

Ophelia sucked in a breath, lips parted, and again I couldn’t look away. Boundaries. She needed boundaries. I’d respect that, but damn did the air thicken between us. This was going to be more difficult than I expected.

There was a slight stir of the air, and a small piece of paper appeared before Ophelia. Mystique ink.

“What’s that?” I asked, my voice low even to my own ears.

And Ophelia’s face lit up as she read the note, eyes glowing as bright as Angellight. “You’re going to need to get in riding shape quickly.”

Chapter Seven

Ophelia

We’ve found it.

Three words. Three words that offered the thing I’d been needing these past two months: progress. Action that would demonstrate my purpose and capability. Answers in this fight for retribution stirring beneath my skin.

As the sun crested the mountains, Rina stood on my left in the Mystique Council chamber, Jezebel on my right. The boys lined the table across from us, pale dawn light warming the dark wood and brightening the map-covered walls like it was pointing us toward those wild lands.

“Nothing else,” Tolek commented.

“I told Ezalia not to write too much when we last spoke.” Though the bottles of Mystique ink I’d given the Seawatcher Chancellor should ensure the message was delivered to me, we couldn’t risk information falling into the wrong hands. “But she has it—or she knows where it is.”