Page 28

T he passage sighed in rhythm, a slight wind nipping at my hair and clothes, as if the house was taking a breath.

My head swiveled to all sides, where the floor and ceiling should have been but swept over…

nothing. Nothing but a black, infinite depth.

I reached for a wall, anxious to grab anything that might help anchor me.

Air met my fingers. With the onset of complete darkness, a sudden chill crept around me, the goosebumps forming on my arms as pointed as the tip of a blade.

I spun around and shot back towards the entrance, but it had disappeared, along with everything else.

My chest rose and fell in short, frantic heaves.

Ryder was out there, and I was stuck here in this void, where there were no signs of life, let alone Madame Myrian.

Panic set in and my senses prickled on the cusp of turning silence into shrieks.

Clenching my fists, I gnashed my teeth and willed myself to calm.

I stood there, focused on each breath, until my eyes started to adjust. Tiny balls of light, the same purple-white as the markings on the door, dotted the black—as if the elemental symbols had fractured apart and now flecked this nebulous corridor like mini galaxies.

A scuttle came from somewhere in the dark, causing me to nearly jump out of my skin.

I turned on my heels, extra slow.

Hardly steady.

“Myrian?” I could have shouted it at the top of my lungs, and it wouldn’t have mattered.

My voice was a squeak in this expanse.

“Is that you?” My ears narrowed in on a steady hum, like a distant vacuum was on.

A brilliant orb appeared in the vastness, flooding the dark with a pearly iridescence that lit the space like a moon.

Rippling with the fluidity of a wave, it sat atop a tourmaline pedestal that seemed to have been carved out of the shadows.

I gravitated towards it with short, eager steps.

Resisting the urge to touch it, I paced around it, transfixed by the milky matter beneath the glass surface.

A draft swept the loose strands of hair from my face, and an outline emerged on the other side of the crystal ball.

Stirring the air, pulling from the specks of ultraviolet light, until a proper shape materialized.

Buried in her violet robes, her thick auburn hair piled high, Madame Myrian observed me, her indigo stare enlarged and unblinking through her fishbowl glasses.

She bared a near-toothless grin.

I was too shocked to return it.

Our relationship picked up right where it left off: in an epic stare down.

But I wouldn’t mistake frailty for harmlessness, petite for punchless, this time.

Beneath the sunken cheeks and grandmotherly features, Myrian hid the strength of a lion.

I reflexively rubbed my arm where she had grabbed me the last time I saw her.

“Hi.” Really? That was the boldest, baddest thing I could think of?

I almost facepalmed.

In answer, the psychic unclasped her fingers and pulled a stray thread from her clothes.

I should have known I wouldn’t get much out of her—she’d been a woman of few words at Grad Night.

But those words haunted me.

Myrian’s arms floated to her sides, the sleeves hanging off her sticklike arms cascading behind.

Her hands hovered above the crystal ball, the silver stitching on her cuffs reflecting its pale light.

A familiar pattern threaded the fabric—one that matched the charms on the crystal chain looped around her sun-spotted wrists and fingers.

One I had also traced onto the door: the four elements.

Unease grew in the pit of my stomach.

“Why did you call me the Fourth Watcher at Grad Night?”

She ignored me—shocker—and waved her hands over the sphere, just above its clear outer layer.

The interior’s cloudy liquid churned faster, following her wax-on, wax-off motion, gaining momentum as her hips and arms swayed in rhythm.

Spooky, for sure, but what was I going to do?

This —unprocessed truth, truth so raw it hurt, truth so mind-blowing it came at the expense of my known reality—this was what I came here for.

No more running. No more hiding.

No more thinking . From here on out, I was doing.

“Do you know who I am? Where I came from?” I nodded to the crystal ball.

“Or can you help me figure that out?”

A hum, similar to the eerie noise I’d heard earlier, came from Myrian’s thinning lips.

It intensified into sputters, progressing into consonants, finally harmonizing into language.

A faint bolt of light broke from the orb, shooting through the glass barrier, attaching itself to the roof of her mouth.

Her eyes flared with periwinkle lightning, each of her inhales draining a little more energy from the ball, then getting exhaled out as enchantments.

“Vultuuuus.” Her croaky vowels shook me down to my nerves.

“Looook.” She beckoned me close.

I relaxed my fists, my teeth, my shoulders, every part of my body that’d been strung, and leaned over the orb—ready to accept whatever story the magic wanted to tell.

The liquid in the interior had thickened to a syrup, swirling, roiling, and turning, as if stretched by invisible hands.

A flicker of color appeared, a flash of a place or an object, between its taffy-like folds.

I craned my neck, my nose almost grazing the glass as I tried to make sense of the image forming within.

Heart jumping with the churning core, I lifted my chin to check in with the psychic.

She shoved my head back down—and into the glass.

Every muscle in me tensed, bracing for impact, but I went right through its glossy surface.

Although my head had made the initial plunge, every limb followed, like a dive into the ocean.

Neither sinking nor swimming, I was submerged, the air inside chalky and thick as Jell-O.

It densely draped over my nose and mouth, made each heavy breath feel like a swallow.

I turned to face the reality I had just left, wavering like a mirage behind a brumous veil.

I shot my hand out, trying to breach the barrier, but the swirling mist just thickened around it.

Retreating, I compelled curiosity to eclipse my anxiety and took in my surroundings.

This place—whatever, wherever it was—seemed to be the diametric opposite of where I had come from.

The light smothered the dark, swallowing the shadows before they could even form.

Similar to before, there were no walls, but my footsteps echoed.

No color, but the diluted sphere burned my eyes with stark, penetrating white.

It was so bright. So empty.

My senses revved into overdrive, bringing a wave of razor-sharp tingles to my skin.

If Madame Myrian’s home was the center of a black hole, this was the center of a starburst.

My legs slogged forward, each pull and shift lagging, leaving tracers in the air.

It didn’t take long for exhaustion to strike.

I had barely moved a foot, but my body quivered like I had been sprinting for miles.

When I collapsed into the nothingness, I swore others gasped alongside me.

But then I was free-falling and the hint of a voice or two flushed into the bitter wind stinging my ears.

At first it was nothing but that feeling of weightlessness.

But the farther I plummeted, the more my back arched, the more I felt like a cold, leaden slab of stone.

I was spinning, twisting, screaming, with absolutely no control, as a force pulled me further down, until even just taking a breath seemed impossible.

It was like trying to fly without wings.

A brutal pressure slammed into my spine.

Fierce, radiating pain shot up my back, across the scar tissue on my shoulder blades, down to my tailbone.

The breath whooshed out of me, and I gasped fruitlessly for a full thirty seconds while my brain attempted to register that I’d landed.

Hard .

The ground indented beneath me like a crater, dust wafting and settling onto my skin and clothes.

A sharp inhale shocked my achy body, my muscles jerking at the sudden motion.

Groaning, I rolled to my side and tucked in my knees, peering at the world around me.

I’d landed on a desolate mesa so high it was surrounded by sheets of clouds.

To my left, a tundra stretched into the horizon—no greenery, just miles of soil and rock.

To my right, an eroded edge to a sheer drop-off.

The icy wind roared with a hostile howl that chilled me to my bones.

I’d never seen anywhere so gray and inhospitable.

The fog blanketed the view and seemed to suppress my emotions so the only thing I felt was sorrow.

I drummed up the confidence to stand and when I reached my feet, a gut punch of hopelessness almost knocked me down again.

What was this place?

The ground vibrated with a seismic shock that trembled in sync with my nerves.

Cracks as thin as hairlines traveled across the dry earth as it splintered beneath me.

I lost my balance, my already bruised tailbone catching my fall, the pain pulling a sharp cry from me.

I didn’t get up. Not as the air at the edge of the ridge distorted into putty.

Not even when four distinct wormholes appeared, spinning in unison, like floating whirlpools carved into the sky.

There was nowhere to escape.

Plus, my ass hurt too bad to run.

I shrank into myself, hoping to blend in with the rock.

The vortex on the left started to speed up, sparking as if into overdrive.

Ruby rays pierced its translucent helix, painting the gravel at its base in the dusky tones of an alpenglow as it spun faster, burned brighter.

Thinking it might combust, I nestled my face in my arms, lowering them only when a dark silhouette rapidly blotted out its center.

Red regalia blazed into being as a hooded figure stepped into a world of mist and sorrow.

That wormhole dissolved to ash, scattering around the mysterious person’s feet.

The figure entered towards the tundra, cloak billowing behind, her graceful gait simulating the dance of a flame.

A runic design in a color that reminded me of moonlight was etched onto the lining of her puff-sleeved crimson shirt and full skirt, flaring with every swing of her arms.

Lean sable fingers clasped the edges of her hood before it could blow back and reveal her features, the movement riding up the hem of her shirt, revealing the tight band of skin around her belly button.

But that’s not what stole the breath from my lungs.

What must have been a thousand feathered wings of the purest white outstretched from her back, gleaming in the desolate landscape.

I gazed after her like I would at a fire: mesmerized and unmoving.

I was staring at a literal angel.

The next vortex in line was the only thing in the world that could grab my attention.

Emerald sparks erupted from its inner rings and showered the ground, some catching the backdraft and singeing the earth around my feet.

I curled my legs in even more as mossy wreaths of energy coalesced into the flesh of another being.

Green finery came to bloom as the figure ducked to exit, a muddy mound the lone trace of her journey here as the wormhole crumbled in on itself.

Cool platinum hair slipped out from the cover of this ethereal being’s short, hooded cowl as she marched onto the dusty terrain.

Her hand, so fair it popped against the stale, stark world like snow falling on an overcast day, twirled at a loose strand.

A circular pattern in a metallic identical to the other angel’s adorned the sides of her breeches and ribbed tunic.

The soil speckled the heels of her knee-high boots and clung with a magnetic attraction to the tips of her untucked wings.

“Akosua, I should have known you’d be the first to arrive,” the newcomer said with a bite of sarcasm that made my ears perk as she joined her comrade in red.

“And here I assumed you’d be the last.” Akosua’s smoldering tone hit me like déjà vu.

I racked my brain, but where would I have heard it?

She inclined her head.

“Cute boots.”

The angel in green pretended to squash a bug.

“I’m not the one whose ass is on the line. And thanks,” she added, sticking her leg out, admiring them herself.

“Every time you cuss, Gaia, I swear a baby cherub dies.” A playfulness lined Akosua’s words.

Gaia exhaled heavily.

“You say that about all my vices.”

A gust carried their banter, blending their laughter with its sighs.

I watched in awe, a curl of familiarity growing in my stomach and practically banging on the back of my head.

Plumes of daytime protruded from the third vortex, sheathing them in a buttery light.

Like a rising dawn, it illuminated the sparse plain, near blinding as the helix accelerated and a winged human frame eclipsed the light.

A breeze fanned her knee-length cloak, revealing the silvery white insignia stitched onto her amber bodysuit and matching leggings.

She drifted out to join the others, lithe frame and feathers clad in rays from a sun that wasn’t above her.

Gaia turned. “Fei, we almost thought you wouldn’t make it.” The shadow from her cowl still blocked her face, but I sensed the teasing in her tone.

“Please, I’m always on time. Some idiot released a demon over Shanghai.” Fei stalked towards them as the wormhole released to the wind, she too shielded by the contour of a hood, aside from the slightest dip in her neckline that revealed her light fawn collarbone.

“I’d never miss a meeting with my favorite Watchers.”

The three of them together, and I knew in an instant.

These were my Voices, in the flesh.

Holy sh—maybe I shouldn’t finish that thought; I was in the presence of angels.

But the realization hit me harder than my near-back-breaking landing into their realm.

I was in complete shock and at the same time…

I wasn’t. I wished I could say it had never occurred to me this was a possibility—that the voices who hijacked the sounds of the world, and in turn my senses, weren’t just a manifestation of my grief.

That they were more than the darkest parts of my reflection that I was literally killing myself to keep hidden.

I’d silenced those ideas because it seemed like a way out of facing my reality, my grief.

But deep down a piece of me had always known a greater meaning existed beyond their words.

Beyond me.

Watcher .

Every whisper, holler, murmur…

every spoken variation of the word over the last ten years replayed in my mind.

Dizziness rocked me forward and my palms planted me firm as I stared at the loose pebbles, inches from my nose.

I took a ragged inhale and looked up.

There was still another vortex left…

Azure ribbons poured out of the maelstrom, sparkling like the top of the sea, surging with the swell of its inner workings, crashing against invisible boundaries.

It sprayed the rocks with a salty vapor and pattered the soil with rain.

Rearing back, it strained under its own tidal influence until a figure was released with the small break of a wave.

Her drawn feathers shuddered, glistening as if touched by a spring morning’s dew.

The layered slip of her ultramarine dress flocked beneath her rich blue robe, submerging the rest of her body in loose, flowy fabric.

Similar to the first three angels, I couldn’t see the face beneath her hood, but I felt her purpose—a clear spark of recognition I felt deep in my fluttering heart as if it were my own.

Something in me pushed me to my feet, and I stumbled towards them, ignoring the intense burst of pain in my back.

As Akosua, Gaia, and Fei shifted to acknowledge the newcomer, the emblems on their seams reflected off the overcast sky.

Emblems I’d passed off as standard patterns in the fabric, but these were something more.

These were the Empyrean symbols for the elements—the ones I’d drawn on Myrian’s door: fire, earth, air, water.

A cool, jagged surface worried against my fingertips.

I glanced down, not even knowing when my necklace had made it into my palm.

Gaia curled her knuckles against her rounded hip.

“Well, look who decided to show up.”

“Sorry, I—” the fourth figure began, her gossamer sleeves rippling as her hand, a honey beige all too similar to mine, parted the front of her robe.

“Was doing ungodly things with lover boy?” Fei crossed her arms. “We know.”

The woman in blue sighed loudly, ignoring the digs.

“Akosua, you called this meeting. Why are we here, of all places?”

Akosua’s voice rang with conviction.

“Because some of us need reminding.”

Tripping over my feet, I approached the conclave, my nerves, let alone the uneven rock, enough to mess with my equilibrium.

The four of them kept talking, unmoved by my clumsiness.

As I crept around the side, precariously close to the edge of the cliff, to try and get a better view of their faces, it started to sink in.

They weren’t just unmoved—they were completely unaffected by my presence.

Because this was a memory.

A storm encroaching upon the mesa captured their attention, their conversation curtailed by the thunderous wails of its swift, dense clouds.

“Look at them.” Akosua tsked and peered beyond the ledge.

The fierce wind flapped long twists of her hair, a rich oak brown a shade darker than her skin, out from the hood of her cloak.

“Their bodies have landed but their souls will always fall. You go mixing with mortals and you drop alongside them.”

Them?

I shuddered in sync with Fei’s wings.

“A testament of fate you— we —could also succumb to.”

Akosua’s voice was a whisper over the pitch of the screaming storm.

“Which is why you cannot interfere the way you intend to, Mira.”

I’d been waiting for someone to unmask the person behind the blue.

But even if my gut had already told me it was her, I hadn’t been expecting to hear my mom’s name pierced by the same icy resentment Akosua usually reserved for me.

Fei clasped a gloved hand on Mira’s shoulder.

“How is an eternity of suffering worth a fleeting moment?”

My mom twisted to the woman in yellow.

“It isn’t fleeting. I’m in love.”

The others groaned, shaking their heads.

“Love. Since when do the Watchers get to partake in such mortal pleasures?” Gaia’s last phrase struck me—she’d used it against me for enjoying far less important things.

Unease bounced around my insides like a pinball.

“What about the souls you’ve sworn to protect?” Fei took my mom’s hands.

“What about your sisters; don’t you love us?”

“Of course, I do.” The others didn’t seem super convinced.

To be honest, neither did I, no matter how sincere she tried to sound.

Not that I didn’t think my mom cared but…

I gulped, acid stinging my throat.

I knew how this story ended.

“This temptation was written in Apocrypha. We knew it would come, yet you still give in to its lure.” There was no denying the frustration in Akosua’s words—it was her tone that gripped my chest, an aching, cauterizing sadness that no level of candor could conceal.

“If you decide to pursue this, you will lose your place not just among the Watchers, but in Empyrea. It is Law, Mira. The greatest love won’t change that. Three upsets the balance, and when you take away water, the elements, life…they simply cannot thrive. Neither can our Source or protection over the People of Earth, and that gives Chthonia the advantage.”

A deep-rooted fear pooled in my gut like an iron shackle chaining me to the bottom of the sea.

The gravity of this information swirled around me.

I knew certain types of relationships were forbidden between angels and humans—and if they crossed that line, it was goodbye magic and immortality—but Akosua made it sound like there was something else to it…

I eased closer to the ledge, my footfalls not disturbing the gravel or the ears of those gathered on the path.

“The world won’t unravel because of this.” My mom’s laugh was like a playful splash of water that no one else engaged in.

“We’re not star-crossed lovers. We won’t end up like them.” It sounded a lot like denial.

It surprised me to hear it.

Judging by Gaia’s, Fei’s, and Akosua’s bowed heads and slackened shoulders, it killed them to hear it, too.

“We can only hope you’re right.” The Angel of Air released her grip, but the steel in her voice didn’t soften.

“She’s right. The world won’t unravel.” Gaia’s voice was stale, no trace of the earlier snark.

“It’ll end up so much worse.”

Akosua’s gaze didn’t waver from the inbound storm.

“Chthonia will strike. Hell will truly be unleashed. And we’ll be archangels without powers or purpose.”

As I reached the mesa’s rim, shadows intertwined with the sheets of hail and hurricane-force winds—the forms within the rain flailing, bending at awkward angles, shooting downward like stars.

The tempest swarmed the cliffside, its unruly gusts kicking up dirt and whipping my hair in my face, the frigid cold stinging my eyes.

Erratic wails barreled into my ears, so unnaturally loud and thrashy, igniting every inch of my body in shivers.

I tucked the sides of my head between my elbows as the shadows grew sharper, and it became clear these were far more sinister than ice pellets.

They were people, angels, and the sound wasn’t the wind echoing off the ravine: it was screams from them, endlessly falling.

Sentenced to a punishment worse than death, stuck in a vortex with no end or beginning, their broken wings and writhing bodies sent shudders up my spine.

It was no wonder this mesa was so dead and gray.

Their sorrow blanched the realm of all hope, drained the color from my face.

Some angels fought against this unholy force, but it proved resistant to every punch, plea, and prayer.

Others wept. A lot of them fell in a horrified stupor, limbs limp, skin raw and ruddy, as if they’d been plummeting for centuries.

I almost collapsed, my legs were shaking so badly.

Somehow, I gathered the strength to scoot to the edge of the precipice and peer over.

I choked on my breath at what coated the ground, some hundreds of feet below.

Feathers, so many torn, drifting plumes, tinged with blood and earth.

Skeletons crushed and fractured, skulls with bits of shredded muscle.

Piles and piles of bones.

The putrid stench of decay singed my nostrils and burned my throat.

Akosua was right. These weren’t their bodies falling—those were already in rotten ribbons at the bottom of the ravine—these were their souls, trapped in eternal free fall.

Crumpling to my knees, I heaved beside the doomed, palms mixing with the dirt and bile.

Most of my life I’d felt ungrounded.

Now I knew where it came from—where I came from.

The fallen Angel of Water.

A stabbing sensation dug into my scars as if ripping them open, stripping me of my senses and the ability to latch on to anything but the pain.

I dug my blunt nails into the ground until they bled, panting while the anguish gradually weakened to a prickle.

“I’ve seen enough here.” It could have been my own proclamation, but it came from my mom’s lips.

“Have you?” Akosua pressed.

“You truly know what’s at risk? To the Kingdom? To the Earth? To us?” Each syllable rocked me like an aftershock.

There was so much more than love at stake, and my mom still sacrificed herself for it.

Was love worth risking everything for when it triggered the end of the world?

That, I did not have the answer for.

No wonder the Voices—the Watchers—were so hard on me.

I was a walking reminder of Mira’s betrayal.

Yet they never gave up on me, until recently, and my world felt more upside down without them.

What had happened to change their course?

There was no way our spat at Grad Night—now, looking back, I realized it was Akosua’s voice I’d gone head-to-head with—had been the final straw.

“I do know what’s at risk,” my mom affirmed.

When her hands slipped between the part of her robe, I swore they rested on her belly for a second before clasping together.

Red flared as the Angel of Fire swished her cloak’s sleeve, summoning an escape route with a simple flick of her wrist. “To your watchtowers then.”

The others did the same, the sky twisting into funnels after their subtle gestures.

Akosua left first, followed by Fei and Gaia, disappearing as soon as they stepped into the swirling airflow, the vortices spinning faster until they folded in on themselves.

Ash, mud, and floating specks were all that was left to mark their presence.

One angel remained, her aqueous robes flowing like a river against the dry landscape.

On the brink of departure, she glanced behind her, removing her hood.

Haloed by the hydro-powered rays, she drew in her wings, then extended them like colossal sails.

For ten rapid heartbeats I locked eyes with my mom.

Not the version stitched together by dreams and washed-out photos, but her in her truest form: flushed with passion, fishtail braid flipped over her shoulder, with a close-lipped smile that didn’t reach her blue— flaming-blue —eyes.

Even after she’d gone, the cerulean fire that flared behind her pupils burned in my mind.

I waited for the dust to settle, for land and sky to bend, for the portal she’d gone through to turn to vapor, but it continued to undulate without its maker.

Or maybe it was waiting for its new master: me.

I took a step closer, a salty drizzle kissing my cheeks as I reached its opening.

Slowly flipping my hands, I gazed at the lines in my palms and the veins running through them, down past my wrists.

When my mom died, did that mean I…

did that mean I inherited her Source?

I’d seen no trace of any such abilities up until recently.

Fei had mentioned a transfer of power was near complete around my eighteenth birthday.

Was that what was happening here?

My hand inched forward, timid and slow, until it grazed the cool barrier of the swirling vortex.

I twisted my wrist, moving it further in, and thicker droplets splashed my palm.

When I drew back my skin was damp but still intact—a small part of me had worried it’d be acid rain or something equally gruesome to my half-mortal touch.

Glancing around, I hoped for a sign of what to do, but aside from the cursed…

I was alone.

There was only one path out, and it churned in front of me.

Willing my pounding heart to calm, I took a shuddering breath, and stepped into the watery whirlwind.