She squeezes her eyes closed before opening them again. “Two days I’ve been researching and I’ve gotten nowhere! I was sure that there would be an answer in these books.”
Her lips press together in an unhappy line. “I’m certain now that Adriel wasn’t supposed to allow me to take the books I brought back today. I don’t think the other angels want us to find an answer.”
My response is a low growl. “They want us to perish in the light of their world. They sat back and let it happen without warning us. They were waiting for us to die.”
Betrayal burns hot within me. I didn’t expect the angels to welcome us into their world, but when they allowed us to stay in this forest, it implied that they would not actively harm us.
Now it turns out that their tolerance of our stay was underpinned by their knowledge that their world would slowly kill us. Without them lifting a finger.
“We’ve done what we could to work within the angels’ rules, but we can’t stay here a moment longer,” I say. “We came here to take my father back to Mortem and that’s what we have to do. No matter the danger.”
I raise my eyes to my pack—all of them, even Koda, who probably wouldn’t think of himself as pack, but he’s part of my family now.
“We’re getting Jareth out of here,” I say. “Tonight.”
“How?” Malia asks. “We can’t break his cage, let alone stop him from killing everyone around him if he gets free.”
“With your power, we can,” I say.
Her eyes widen.
My voice lowers. “Malia, you just cast a shield without thinking about it. I watched you harness the metal in the battlefield and stand between me and Esta. You defied the magic in the frozen lake, which is lined with the same metal that’s keeping Jareth in his cage. A cage of both metal and light. You control both. Are you willing to try?”
She’s pale as she stares back at me. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough.”
I take a deep breath. “I believe that you are. And we’ll be there to help you. We’ll do everything we can to give you the strength you need.”
Taniya steps up then, too, taking Malia’s other hand. We’re three sisters whose bond will never break.
“Whatever I can do to help you,” Taniya says. “I’ll do it.”
“Then I’ll try,” she whispers.
I rise and spin to my pack. “We need to stay together. The environment will drain us even more when we step outside into the moonlight. Koda—do you need anything from your cabin?”
While I speak, I take a quick mental inventory of the cabin Roman and I share. We didn’t bring anything with us, except Angelus Lux, so there’s no need to go back to it.
Koda shakes his head.
“Then we’re leaving,” I say.
My wolves leap forward, their growls filling me with resolve. At the same time, Roman strikes a rune—a sapphire light like the one he used to guide our way within the Scourge. It cuts through the soft glow of moonlight filtering through the windows, but it doesn’t escape me that his light is weaker this time.
I’m starting to see that if he hadn’t been sharing his power with us since we arrived, we might have perished sooner.
Fucking angelic realm.
A bitter anger builds inside me as I lean in to him. “We’ll share our power and take turns keeping each other awake.”
To the others, I say, “Let’s go.”
The minute I step outside onto the shaded porch, the cool air clears my mind, but the effect doesn’t last long. Moving into the full moonlight that shines across the clearing in front of the cabins makes my footsteps heavy and my bones feel weighted.
Roman’s ahead of me, quickly leading the way to the nearest trees and then picking a path around the clearing instead of through it, finding the darkest trail to the bamboo footpath.
There, the light is even more dappled and the weight lifts further from my head and shoulders—until we exit the path and the spreading trees become more sparse, giving way to the pines that fill the forest.
Pines that are tall and thin and barely cast shade.
