“Hana, please?” Leya sighed.
Her sister folded her arms over her chest. Waited.
“I did meet Aerén last night. But he isn’t from here. I mean, he’s not from this world but another, an angelic world called Empyrea.”
Hana’s eyes narrowed, then she shook her head. “Right. You know what? I’m gonna go—”
“She’s telling the truth,” Aerén said.
“Do you want to know why my bruises are gone?” Leya asked, setting her mug down. “It’s not because I’m wearing foundation, but because it’s healed. Aerén healed me.”
He stroked Leya’s back. “My abilities make it possible.”
Her skeptical sister just stared.
“Here.” Aerén held out his hand, and a dagger appeared out of thin air. Hana’s eyes widened. He sliced his palm, and blood beaded on his skin. Hana’s jaw dropped. Before their very eyes, the wound sealed shut.
He dismissed his weapon, moved to the sink, and rinsed the blood from his palm.
Leya rushed to explain. “The reason you see this closeness between us is because, while on Earth we just met last night, I was with him in his world for over a week. The portal you heard us speak of was how we went to Empyrea.” Leya didn’t mention the rebels or the threat to her just yet. After her sister started believing, she would lay it all out.
“Wait-wait-wait.” Hana flashed her hands up. “You went to another world?”
Leya nodded.
“And he’s an angel—oh, shit! Now I have to sit.” She collapsed on the armchair, facing them.
“I’m not a divine angel,” Aerén said. “But another species of angel. We are called Empyreans.”
Leya found the bottle of brandy she kept when she had a cough or sore throat, poured some into a glass, and handed it to Hana. Maybe it would help with the shock.
But Hana shook her head and set it on the coffee table.
“Hana.” Leya sat on the couch near her. “You know I wouldn’t lie to you.”
Hana blinked at her then her attention shot back to Aerén. “You don’t have wings.”
He smiled, that devastatingly charming one. “No. We don’t. But those of my kind who mate with the divine angels, their offspring sometimes tend to have them. My brother does.”
Hana reached for the drink and gulped it down. She gasped and wiped her watering eyes. “Okay. So, why are you in our world?”
Leya filled her in on the missing Stone of Light, about Empyrea dying, and as she ended with the search for the Chosen, Hana gaped at Leya. “Youhave their world’s magic?”
“It’s what drew me to Leya. But hers is just a trace of it, and it didn’t make sense. It caused the mystical scroll test, which can detect our world’s magic, to be inconclusive.”
Leya blinked. Why was Aerén insisting on this false hope when she didn’t house their magic anymore? He cast her a level look as if hearing her. “But you did at one point.”
“Why, what happened? Where did it go?” Hana demanded.
“It’s blood magic, Hana.”
“So?”
She inhaled deeply, then said, “I gave you my blood the day the artifact crashed on Earth.”
It took a minute, then her sister’s light brown complexion drained, leaving her ashen. “No, no way!” She leaped up, backed away, and she started pacing near the doorway.
Leya rose, watching her sister.
