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I stopped walking. “How can you know that?” How could anyone know what the dead wished for? It was one of the cruelest parts of them leaving. Had any of them been ready? Had they died with regrets? With final messages?

Even if I gave my heart to those still here, there would always be a piece lost on Daminius.

Jezebel gnawed her lip again as I walked up the stairs alongside her. Sitting on the highest point of the city, in the Northern Quarter, our home was one of the few places where you could see all of Damenal. The view was now bittersweet.

“I suppose I can’t know,” Jez finally said, her shoulders sinking. “But you’re draining yourself by trying to restore this city. I don’t want to see the end result of that.”

It was the only way I was keeping myself together these days because my father and the council had died in my stead—hundreds of warriors fell that night—and Tolek still had not?—

No.

My fingers shot to my emblem necklace, locking around the shard that had broken from my spear months ago. One of the seven tokens of fossilized Angel power I was meant to unite, thanks to an ancient prophecy from the Prime Warriors themselves.

I breathed over the pain, summoning strength from the emblem. Restoration aside, we’d spent every spare moment these past two months searching the archives for what these tokens might be and where they were hidden. The chancellors of the minor clans were doing the same in their territories.

What did we have to show for it? A pile of history on the Angels and no hint of answers. It made my fingers twitch. That was how I’d ended up at the Sacra Temple this morning, needing to do something besides thinking of all we did not know.

The metal heated beneath my hand. It once burned and blistered my skin, but now, it steadied me. It soothed the thoughts I couldn’t handle today.

I swallowed all those feelings bubbling up within me. All the grief that split my chest right open. The memory of a smirk I missed so deeply, the longing for a hug from my father, and the fear for what came next.

“I don’t want you to worry over me,” I told my sister as we turned down the corridor to my suite. Marble floors gleamed and artwork framed the walls, beautifully out of place. “I’m doing what has to be done.”

“Maybe,” Jez countered. “Or maybe you’re sacrificing pieces of yourself each day. You only have so many.”

Pressing my hand to the door, I froze. My nails curved into the wood. Maybe it was because of what today signified or a wound dug open by the Sacra Temple, but I admitted what I’d been hiding for weeks, “I’m running out of pieces, Jez. I—I know there are more of them. I can feel all these desires and dreams buried within me, but it’s like I don’t know how to reach them beyond this pain. Every time I try, they all blur together.”

And there was so much to be done. A war to fight and a prophecy to decode, emblems to hunt for and a city to rebuild. How could I focus on my own pieces when the external ones were so much bigger?

Jezebel removed my hand from the door and held it between her own. “I know how it feels. I know how dark our minds can get. Today is a day to celebrate, though. It is a day about you and this magnificent future you’re going to have. You’ve waited for this—you made incredibly hard decisions to get here. Don’t let it pass by because you’re digging up those pieces.” And though her words were encouraging, her voice was flat. Like she had to say it but did not believe it for herself.

Knowing that only added to the devastation wringing my bones. If I wasn’t careful, I’d exist solely of it soon.

The door to my suite swung open before us, and Santorina propped a hand on her hip.

“There you two are.” Her eyes dropped to the already healing blisters on my hands and back to my face. “Come on, I’ll have those good as new faster than a god’s breath.”

Rina’s hair was braided—two small plaits stopping halfway back, the rest falling in a sleek onyx sheet—and she’d applied a modest amount of products to her eyes.

Ready. She was already ready for today. I could be ready, too.

As I quickly bathed and sat before the mirror in the dressing chamber, gratitude welled in me for Jezebel and Santorina. For them helping me stand before our people each day, my sister even through her own loss.

And Rina had supported us both, being the focused guidance we needed when the grief became too much. Like now, as she ensured we both looked presentable. As she tightly laced the corset of my leathers and fastened on my sky-blue cloak. As she flurried around the room, maintaining grace despite the cloud of melancholy Jezebel and I were trying to stifle.

My mind was somewhere else entirely as they prepared me, my body limp and doll-like. Until suddenly, I was standing before a mirror, waves cascading around my shoulders and matching the gold lining my eyes. Leathers pristine—not the worn set I donned earlier—and pale scars catching the light.

The darker one Kakias had left on my forearm at the battle pulsed, but I didn’t react. Didn’t care enough to. I’d become used to the dull, radiating pain.

Another worry I would not indulge today. Another piece shoved down as a knock sounded on the door to my bedchamber, and Cypherion and Malakai appeared. The former held my spear, Angelborn, and short sword, Starfire, both freshly polished.

“Thank you,” I said. Sliding my sword into my belt and slinging Angelborn across my back, I released a slow breath. Their weight rested against my hip and shoulders, and some of my tension eased. It was not only due to the defense they offered, but also because my weapons were like limbs I was incomplete without.

“You’re welcome,” Cyph said, but he did not return my forced smile.

If Jezebel and I had been swimming through our grief these months, Cyph was battling a different kind of loss. The kind when you allowed yourself to want something you never had—something that slipped through your fingers. He refused to talk about it with any of us, but finding out Vale, the Starsearcher apprentice, had been lying to us all summer by suppressing her readings had flipped something in his heart, like he’d been a current flowing south and was unnaturally redirected north.

Since then, Vale had conducted sessions to assist us, seeing nothing helpful. She resided in the palace still, somewhere between prisoner and guest to all except Cypherion. He had yet to speak with her.