Chapter 55 #2
“One for each Angel,” I confirmed. “If my guess is correct, every Angel left one of these tokens behind. For the Chosen—the warrior with active Angelblood—to find and unite them. Based on how the metal ignited during my fight with Kakias, I think my blood activates it somehow. These shards are a part of me.”
“It certainly burned with the radiance of the revered bastards,” Barrett recalled. Reaching out a hand for Cypherion to pass the emblem, he and Dax looked it over together.
“And if I’m right, we have a second, too.” I held my hand out to the Engrossians. “Your sigil ring, Barrett?”
Understanding spread across his face like the dawn.
He removed his family heirloom and placed it in my hand.
My pulses quickened again, a promise this time.
The ring rolled over, the stone pressing into my palm, and I hissed in recognition of the heat singeing my skin, quickly dropping it to the table.
It bounced, landing face up, looking at me.
“The Engrossian emblem,” I grunted. “When Barrett helped me against his mother, my blood spilled on his ring. More Angellight. Another token.”
“Shame there isn’t a less painful way of identifying them,” Rina mused. I shrugged, not caring much about what pain I had to endure if it meant being certain.
“Okay, assuming your theories are correct,” Erista started, “what are these tokens for?”
I shook my head. I had no answer for that. Since I’d woken up and started piecing together the scraps of information I had—the Storyteller’s tale, Annellius’s history, and Damien’s cryptic words—I’d been struggling to decipher the why.
“Damien said to unite them.” I shrugged. “I suppose that’s a reasonable place to start.”
A golden glow bathed the room, the maps lining the wall shining. While many of my companions gasped, I raised my brows. There were mutters and curses around the room, including Barrett’s exclamation of “Bant’s cock,” to which the Angel smirked.
“I will tell him you inquired about it,” Damien joked, turning from the Engrossian to me.
“As requested, I have worked on my timing.” He floated along the windows.
With his large wings extended at either side, the sun haloing his figure, he brought legends to life.
My pulses stirred, wanting to write them with him.
“It’s appreciated.”
The guests in the room watched me converse with the Angel, awe radiating from them, but nerves flitted through my body at Damien’s sudden appearance. Based on my friends’ tense stances and keen attention, they felt it, too.
“To what do we owe the honor?” I asked.
Damien raised his eyes, looking around the room, likely cataloging every person around me. When he finally turned fully toward me, I gasped.
“What happened?”
A jagged scar cut down the left side of his face. From his hairline, across his sculpted golden features, disappearing down his neck. Damien usually appeared unmovable—an ancient statue against our mortal forces.
But even marble could crack.
For a moment, his purple eyes showed something I didn’t recognize in him. Sorrow.
“My own actions,” he drawled, shoulders tense. A tic in his jaw. Then, eyes sweeping about the room and landing on the necklace, he proclaimed, “You’ve figured it out.”
A proud smile split the Angel’s lips and—was that relief I detected? It pulled against that fresh scar he wouldn’t explain.
“Seven Angels. Seven emblems,” I answered, basking in that pride, allowing it to warm a bit of the chilled uncertainty within me. “I’m meant to unite them.”
“Good work,” he said. “This does not end here, though.” The warning crept around the room like a silent fog.
“What does all of this mean, Damien? What’s the purpose of it?”
He opened his mouth, gaped, then shut it tight, wings ruffling behind him.
“There are things you can’t tell me, aren’t there?”
Everyone else in the room remained silent, as if only the Angel and I existed. Perhaps in this moment we did, our own reality where prophecies were spun.
He nodded tightly.
“Like the warning you gave? Why I couldn’t tell anyone about the prophecy?”
“It didn’t mean what you thought,” he muttered, as though pained, searching for another thought he could speak on. “Beware the warped queen.”
My gut sank, and I exchanged a look with Barrett. “She’s alive, then?” he asked.
Damien nodded.
I’d been toiling over Kakias’s confession for days now, and one question stood out to me: Who had given her the puzzle to achieve immortality?
The dark pools may be sentient, but Barrett and I agreed the ritual seemed too precise, the path too knowledgeable.
But I didn’t ask Damien. From the way his wings flared and jaw clenched, I knew he was at the end of whatever leash it was that held him. Knew he must have something he was meant to share if he was still present.
“Why are you here?” Exhaustion weighed my voice, my bones, my being.
“Your curse runs true,” he confirmed. Then, as I’d seen him do twice now, Damien swelled. Purple eyes swarmed with power, and the archaic voice that haunted me was cast over the mountains, “The time is near, Cursed Child. Paint the shards with vengeance. Awaken the answering presence.”
Angellight coated the room in a pulse of heated gold.
We stared at each other, two promised beings, two sources of indefinite power.
After a moment of prolonged silence, I muttered, “It will be done,” as if I had a Spirits-damned clue what he meant, and the Angel vanished.
The truth hung heavily between our group. I swept my gaze around the table, the loss of the previous Mystique Council a gaping chasm.
This was our reality now; time for us to step into the roles we’d been training for. The last generation was gone. It was our turn to rise up.
We’d been preparing for our rule, we’d earned the positions, but this was not how any of us had wished they would fall onto us.
And I was formally claiming my position as Revered.
The Soulguiders, Seawatchers, and Bodymelders all gave their blessing.
Regardless, after the recent betrayals that were exposed, I was done waiting.
I’d proven my loyalty to the Mystiques through strength on the battlefield and purity of heart in my defenses.
Not only that, but I was chosen by the fucking Spirits, had been prophesied and cursed by an Angel.
When I’d first been told of my right to the position, I’d been shocked, but a deep recognition stirred awake within me. A spark ignited at the purpose I’d lacked for so long.
I’d been broken, my heart existing in only shards.
In the months since, though, that spark had been nurtured, raised to a roaring fire that forged those shards into a formidable strength.
It wasn’t the future I’d ever envisioned for myself; I wasn’t the girl I’d once been.
This was something new—something beautiful, learning to heal, striving to fight.
While this meager, battered group around the room may be all the continent was left with in this mission, I swore it would be enough.
“Looks like we’re following you into the unknown, Revered,” Mila chirped from her seat at the end of the table.
Beside her, a red-eyed Lyria smiled softly, fighting off a worry I shared. It was an effort to meet her chocolate eyes that reminded me so much of Tolek’s. She didn’t have to speak, only nodded to tell me she’d be with me.
“And so your hunt begins,” Cyph muttered, holding my necklace before me.
I wrapped my hand around the emblem. The heat burned through me, greeting my cursed blood like an old friend.