Page 38

THE CURE

W hen I arrived at the Palace, Cadence greeted me with a cookie and a question. “Sierra? What are you doing back here so soon? Did you forget something?”

I took the cookie and told her all about how my parents had joined the search for the sixteen rings—and left me behind.

“It’s just as well,” she said when I was finished with my story. “You don’t want to get in the middle of a conflict between gods and demons.”

“I can take care of myself,” I said, standing taller.

“Of course you can,” she chuckled. “This isn’t about your magic or martial prowess. It’s about politics. Do you really want to stand there while the gods and demons trade insults and debate who should get the rings?”

“Not really,” I admitted. “That sounds boring.”

“Exactly.” She handed me another cookie, which I of course accepted. Cadence really was in full-out grandma mode right now.

“Is Eira around?” I asked.

“No, she’s gone hunting for mushrooms with her father in the forest. He wanted her help to make a show of force.”

“A show of force? To what?”

“To the mushrooms, of course,” replied Cadence. “They are quite aggressive in these parts. Would you like to join them and help out?”

While the idea of aggressive mushrooms was certainly intriguing, that wasn’t why I’d come.

“Actually, I came here on another matter,” I said.

“Oh?”

“To speak to you about…” It was hard to say the words. They were so embarrassing. “About angel fertility.”

“Oh, I see.” She went into the kitchen and came back with two cups of hot chocolate. “So, what’s his name?” she asked as we sat down on the sofa.

“Who?”

“The boy.” She peered over my cup at me. “ Your boy.”

“My boy?” Oh. That. I blushed.

“There are herbs that can prevent pregnancy?—”

“You’ve got me all wrong,” I cut in, my whole face burning. “There is no boy. This isn’t about me.”

“Of course it isn’t.” She winked at me.

“It’s about my parents.”

“Oh.” She set down the cup. “I see.”

“Aunt Bella told me they want to have more children, but they’ve been unable to. Because of the Nectar.” I poked the marshmallow bobbing on top of a sea of hot chocolate. “You have all this knowledge, all these books. I was hoping you knew of a way to help them.”

“Oh, Sierra, that’s so thoughtful of you,” she said.

“But I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do about that.

Their power comes from Nectar—and Venom and Life.

Those are all poisons. Those poisons give you something, but they also take something away.

Your parents have to regularly consume it to keep their powers. ”

“And if they were to stop consuming it?”

“It isn’t just about magic, Sierra. Their bodies would wither, grow weak. They are dependent on the poison, not just for magic but to survive.”

“Like Regin,” I said.

My parents had told me about the rogue god Regin. He’d been imprisoned for many years, completely cut off from everywhere, his body starved of Nectar. He’d turned into a weak, shriveled husk of a man. He’d also turned insane, though he might have been that way before his imprisonment.

“I need to find a way,” I sighed. “I just want my parents to be happy.”

“Well, Regin found a way to have ten children,” Cadence pointed out.

“By sacrificing people.” I shook my head. “No. That’s not the answer. My parents would never do that. I would never do that.”

Cadence slowly stirred her chocolate. “There might be another way.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think the answer lies within the book called Transformations. The djinn thief who stole the psychic ring from the Legion’s research facility had a copy of it. I borrowed another copy from Eva and Jiro’s library.”

“But what does that book have to do with this?”

“I’ve been studying the book. It describes the Immortals’ early experiments.”

“I’m listening.”

“Nectar and Venom have been around for a very long time, long before the gods and demons learned how to use them to give people magic,” Cadence said. “But this book is even older. It predates Nectar and Venom. It tells of the early Immortals’ experiments with magic.”

“Like how they made the sixteen rings and the original sixteen supernaturals. Monsters.”

“Yes,” she said. “And after the monsters, they moved on to creating supernaturals in human form. Then they created gods and demons. They created Nectar and Venom, potions that could give someone magic or increase the magic they already had. The Immortals changed themselves too.”

“They took the potions?” I asked.

“They did. At first, they thought they’d invented a miracle potion,” she said. “Until a rather large side effect came to light.”

“Infertility.”

She nodded. “The Immortals tried to reverse the effects, and when that failed, they stopped taking the potions altogether. But it was too late. The potions had changed them. The Immortals could no longer live without them.”

“What happened next?”

“The Immortal scientists continued to work on the problem. They were so sure that they would come up with a cure. They worked on this until the very end.”

“The end of what?” I asked.

Cadence sighed. “The end of their civilization.”

“And did they?” I swallowed. “Find a cure?”

“When the Immortals’ civilization collapsed, most of their scientists died. But one of the scientists who survived came up with a solution.”

I perked up. “So there is a cure?”

“A cure with a catch.”

“What is it?” I said eagerly.

“The cure is a very clever, very powerful spell,” she told me. “But it is also very permanent.”

“What do you mean?”

She set down her cup. “The cure is a spell that would destroy all Nectar, Venom, and Life in the universe, Sierra. It would completely wipe them out, unraveling the spell of their existence.”

“So it’s an all-or-nothing sort of deal?”

“Yes, no one is cured.” She paused. “Or everyone is cured.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” I said. “Unless it takes away people’s powers. The gods and demons wouldn’t go for that.”

“According to the book, everyone who already has powers would keep them,” she told me. “And they would no longer be dependent on the poison to survive. And since they were no longer being constantly poisoned, they would soon become fertile once more.”

“Why does this sound too good to be true?” I asked.

“Like I said, all Nectar and Venom would be spelled from existence. That means no more angels or dark angels could be made. And no more humans could gain magic by drinking the Nectar of the gods. Sierra, it would be the beginning of the end of the Legion of Angels.”