“How? There are only two of you.” I stopped when she raised an eyebrow, then corrected myself. “Okay, like two and a half.”
“We have to summon the Angel of Air,” Gaia mused.
“What about,” I said, gulping nervously, “the Angel of Fire?” Akosua’s voice of fervor and flame, her words—spitting and passionate—shot through my mind.
Our gazes drifted to the symbols behind the falls: earth, air, and fire. I narrowed my eyes, swearing a faint blue flickered alongside them—but it was probably just a trick of the light and the rushing water.
“We…” She trailed off, pulling at a silver thread dangling from her clothes. “We don’t know.”
“You don’t think she joined hell like they claim she did?”
“I think that realm is founded on lies.” Gaia curled her fingers, and a translucent wave of Source broke through her tight fists. Dirt shook loose from the walls. Ferns fluttered. The force of it rustled the air in my lungs. “Akosua wasn’t thrilled with your mom’s decision—none of us were—but she wasn’t evil. She was steadfast in her loyalty to Empyrea. This switch to suddenly fight for the enemy, it just… doesn’t make sense.”
As if Gaia had turned on a faucet, all of a sudden the details from that night at the Boardwalk flooded me. And I let myself watch them, let myself feel the shock, the pain, the betrayal all over again. Facing Ryder and Leif. Surfing the concrete wave. Seeing Javi on top of the wreckage. Smoke and shadows and crooked limbs. Serpentine and avian, evil, gruesome. It was only when Finis had me alone that she revealed the reason why they hadn’t just outright killed me.
They wanted my powers.
Desire and desperation are different things, the Coffin Seeker had told me deep in his haunted, wet dungeon.
I hated to think of him, hated even more that he might be right. Again.
“What if,” I said carefully, “this is all just a ploy to try and get us to join them? You said yourself, Chthonia is built on nothing but lies.”
It’s true. Gaia’s voice barreled into my mind. They thrive on deceit.
“When Chthonia’s lackeys almost captured me earlier this summer, one of their Greater Demons told me they wanted my powers, that they needed them in order to bridge the realms, to rule Mortal Earth.” As I spoke the words out loud, exhilaration grew in my chest. “What if that’s what they have planned for all of us?”
A beat. To siphon our powers?
I nodded. “And they’ll do it by whatever means necessary. Whether that’s false promises, kidnapping, threats, violence, or straight up lies.”
Which means Akosua didn’t join Chthonia willingly. A white moth fluttered on the damp air. Gaia held out a finger.
“What if breaking our telepathic connection was a last resort?” I said, the idea unfolding like a winning hand. “Not to destroy us but?—”
To save us, she finished, her answer coming through the foliage as a slight tremor in the earth. And now… The moth drifted in the cool air, closer, until it landed on her pointer. We need to save her.
“Alright.” I rubbed my palms together. “What are the magic words?”
“Excuse me?” The warm light radiating from her wings bounced off the dainty insect’s.
“You know, to summon the Angel of Air?” Was it hot in here, or was it just me? “That was our first task, right? I assumed there was a spell or incantation.”
Squinching her nose, Gaia patted my shoulder. The moth took flight at the movement. “We call upon Fei the same way you called upon me. Walk into her lair with an open heart.”
“Where’s that?”
“On the outskirts of a village just outside one of my favorite cities on Mortal Earth: Ho Chi Minh.”
My jaw fell. “Vietnam?” I hardly had enough money, enough excuses, to pull off coming here. How the hell was I going to go on another trip, let alone one on the literal opposite side of the world?! “Can’t you just go back the way you came and grab her?”
“Empyrea’s fortified. You know, threats of war and all that. Once you leave, you can’t go back in. At least for now.”
The pale lighthouse on that mossy Icelandic bluff whipped across my mind.
If Gaia was here, we could just go there right now. It was a portal.
“Those are also locked,” she quipped.
