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A chill worked down my spine as I watched those three tokens, nerves worming through my stomach.

Carefully, I pricked my thumb; red blood bubbled along the slice.

Angelblood.

The word clanged through me with the force of Damien’s wings. And it all echoed—every prophecy he’d given me, the Angellight at my induction ceremony. Everything hung in that first drop of crimson sliding down my hand.

“Ophelia…” Tolek’s hand was on my shoulder. “You don’t have to.”

But I did. I’d sworn to protect the Mystiques as Revered. I couldn’t do that without answers. I needed to at least try.

Paint the shards with vengeance, Damien said.

I slammed my hand across the first token—the pearl.

Light burst forth. Blinding and all-consuming, streaked with ocean hues. It flooded the corners of the room, bounced off the turquoise sea glass dangling from the chandeliers, sending them clattering against each other like wind chimes. The room became an array of aquas and ceruleans, like sunlight through crashing waves.

Quickly, I pressed my blood to the dark gem in Barrett’s ring. A channel of light shot upward, but it was different from the other. Still white and heated, but it gusted like a tunnel of trapped wind, dark and curling at the edges.

And the scar along my arm burned. I bit back on the cry clawing its way up my throat.

If I let it out, Tolek would pull me back. His hand was already tightening on my shoulder. But holy fucking Spirits the scar felt like it was going to rip open. Pour out whatever darkness lurked inside. It crawled along my bones searching for release.

Finally, gritting my teeth against tainted power and blinding light, I pressed my thumb to the final token. My emblem.

And the light exploded. Scorching.

Pain lanced through the cut on my thumb, but I clenched my eyes tightly against it and called out to Damien.

Help, I begged. Send a sign, anything. Use that damn eternal power of yours, please.

As the words flowed through my head, I saw my friends battling the alpheous. I saw Barrett and myself facing down Kakias. I saw every moment we’d almost lost so far.

Something warm crawled through me as the tokens blazed together. A tingle along my spine and a radiating pulse of heat everywhere.

“Vale!” Cypherion shouted, but I couldn’t open my eyes.

Calamity rose around us, all of their voices mingling together in shouts for both of us.

I wrenched my eyes open, and for a brief moment I thought Vale was sprawled on the ground, seizing through the fog. Then, light burst overhead, and I swore—for a fraction of a second—three outlines of golden figures hovered at the top of the room. Large and domineering, but only a shadow of true power.

Heat tunneled through me and out of my skin, thickening the air around me.

They reached out—and I stretched up, up, up.

To grab them. To touch them.

A hand tightened around my arm. The opposing power roared through my body like dark fire, Angelblood fighting it.

My crimson fingers clawed at burning air. A deafening pop echoed through the room.

And they were gone.

A syrupy thick silence wrapped around us, a dull hum piercing it.

I collapsed to the ground, panting harder than I’d realized. Vision swimming and ears ringing.

Tolek knelt before me, callused hands on my cheeks, tilting my head up. He spoke, but I couldn’t hear him. Just watched those lips move and tried to steady myself through the brush of his thumbs across my cheekbones.