Page 200

Gray light filtered through the air around me, thick and heavy as I writhed. I levitated in this chasm, no ground or sky, nothing but endless gray iridescence stinging everywhere it touched my skin, like it wasn’t sure I was supposed to be in this realm and needed to test me.

I’d thought my autonomy was stolen when Kakias’s poison built in my arm, but this was worse than the queen. This was my ribs being pried open, my spirit being disentangled from my body, the void filled with an unrecognizable power.

No—two powers.

There was the one from Kakias, that tainted opponent. The thing jerking through my body as it fought to vacate my spirit.

But there was also Angellight, the substance only those seven Prime Warriors were supposed to ascend to. The one that somehow was mine, pouring through my body. It pierced the gray in sporadic places, and I swam toward it through this murky plane. Desperate for its comfort and strength.

One endless beam of golden light sliced through the air, feet away. Squeezing my eyes tight against the pounding it sent through my head, I stretched toward it. Heat radiated all around me as my fingers brushed against the warmth.

But a spiral of darker power speared toward the light, and the sensation shot through my body like an anchor in my gut. My feet met solid ground I hadn’t realized had formed, but it took every bit of strength within me to remain standing.

“No.” The word left me in a growled plea, melting into the gray.

“Ophelia?!” A voice tore through the void, desperate, and a flash of white-blue illumination followed.

I whirled toward it. “Jezebel?”

The two powers collided behind me, the dark piercing the light, and the impact rocked through my body, sending me to my knees. A clap of thunder vibrated along my bones and throughout the void. Warring, incohesive, a rivalry.

It mirrored the battle occurring in my body between Daminius and cutting the queen’s power from my arm. Played it out physically for me to relive, as if I could forget it.

Wherever we were, it was bringing that feud to life.

And I was at the center of the cataclysmic undoing. A battle seeped through the air, as mighty as the Angels.

“Jez—” I gasped. My arms wrapped around my torso, my words tight. “What are you doing here?”

“I—I don’t know.” Jezebel shook her head, her hands gripping my arms to keep me upright. “I was on the lookout. I was using the departing spirits. And then I was here.”

Angellight cracked like lightning. Pressure mounted in the air. Jezebel’s frame glowed with white-blue light, like the heart of a fire.

“Ophelia, how did you get here? Where are we?”

“Kakias was winning,” I gritted out. “We reversed the ritual. It didn’t work. She sent her power to the mountains—ah!” My chest ached like it was being flayed open. “I used the power Rina cut from my arm.”

“You used it…”

The gray surrounding us shifted. Winged forms paraded across the sky in a dazzling and horrifying caravan, bodies like humans, horses, and things much larger. Stars burst around their heads, and slowly—in the distance—two tumbled to the earth. It was graceful and mesmerizing as they cascaded like shooting stars, legends whispered in their wake.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“I don’t…” Jezebel looked from those flying beasts to her own hands, the blue glow flaring. Her gaze snapped to mine, eyes wide and excited. “Ophelia, where are you now?”

“What?”

“Where are you outside of here? Your corporeal form.”

“My corporeal…Jez, do you think we’re in the Spirit Realm right now?” The plane between worlds where Spirits went to rest. Where Soulguiders led them home after their death and they spent eternity.

I looked around. Angellight forked through the sky and creatures soared above. The dark mass of power swarmed in the distance.

“There or somewhere else, I don’t know.” My sister shook her head. Her illumination called to my own Angellight, soothing it. “But I have an idea of how to help in our world.”

“We’re at Ricordan’s manor,” I explained. Pressure squeezed me tighter. “Trevaneth set us up. Kakias was waiting for us.”

Shocked sadness cracked across her features, but she wiped it away. “I’m going to go back, but hurry and get out of here.”