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 hecouldspeak 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:Whohad 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.
