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“Ezalia,” I said softly, looking at the chancellor where she lay over her partner. Tolek’s stare burned into the side of my face, but I wouldn’t break. I couldn’t. We still had a task to complete. “Let us help you take him back to the ship.”

“No,” she responded, wiping her eyes. “He’s okay, he’s sleeping.” She’d wrapped his wounds with seaweed. I didn’t know what it did. A Seawatcher tactic, I supposed. “He’s better here, by the water.”

“You don’t have to come with us,” I offered.

Her answering stare was determined. “I do.”

Tolek carried a sleeping Seron away from the tide, resting his limp but breathing body against the rocks. As long as our island stood, he’d be safe here.

And if it didn’t…then we were all at the Angel’s dismay.

“Let’s go,” I said, turning before I could let fear work its way any further within me.

When we got back to the top of the ridge, Cypherion, Jezebel, and Vale were waiting anxiously on their island.

“Seron’s alive,” I said into the horn. They knew what it meant for the others.

“Sticking to the plan?” Angels bless Cypherion for knowing we needed to stay focused in this moment. We’d already lost so much time, the clouds on the horizon now rolling above us.

“Yes. But move carefully.”

I didn’t let myself say any more than that. I didn’t want to think about what could happen. Couldn’t say goodbyes.

Hesitantly, I stretched a foot out. Tapped a toe on the rock ahead. Nothing happened.

I chanced a jump forward, landing lightly on my feet. No reaction.

Looking over my shoulder, I nodded at Tolek and Ezalia for them to follow in my steps. And I trailed the subtle residue of scorch marks as they painted a blackened pattern across the rocky surface.

With each step, I sank further into Angelborn’s pulse. It wasn’t hers, though. It was the shard of Damien that swung on my neck. The piece of fossilized Angel power that reckoned with my own beating heart and instilled a second strain of life. I didn’t know how it worked, another piece in this great puzzle, but I allowed it to take over my instincts now.

It was a part of me, a part of the Angels. It could guide me to one of its missing seven.

There wasn’t any vegetation or soil for roots on this small island. You could see clear over the circumference from the center. And when we got there, a starburst of burn marks radiated from it.

“There’s something,” I breathed, standing in the central point of the island and watching my feet. Slick gray rock stood impenetrable beneath my boots, but something was alive here. It called to me.

“Do you guys see or feel anything?” Tolek called through the horn.

“There’s indentations in some of the rocks,” Cyph yelled back. “And those burn marks on the side of the island facing yours. But nothing else.”

“Is anything warm?” Ezalia asked. They volleyed questions back and forth, but I studied the pattern of burn marks beneath my feet.

Spikes burst out from the center where I stood. Eight in total, every second one longer than the first.

Like a four-pointed star with smaller ones between them.

The longest stretched to my right and up diagonally. Crouching down, I pressed a palm to the ground. I cursed when the rock burned me.

“It’s here.” I lifted my palm to show Tolek and Ezalia the already healing blisters.

Bending back down, I traced the star again, relishing in the heat this time. But?—

I screamed out, the sound rough and from the depths of me.

Something writhed beneath the flesh of my arm. Squirmed along that scar from Kakias’s dagger and pulled at my skin. As I clutched my arm to my chest, something else shot toward the pain, an opposing force within me.

“What is it?” Tolek’s eyes were frantic.