Page 218 of The Myths of Ophelia
Magic flooding my veins, Angellight bursting from my skin.
Beat.
Each Angel trial.
Beat.
Kakias’s death. Sapphire’s downy wings carrying me through the night.
Beat.
The raising of the sphinx.
Beat.
I pressed my hand to the weathered statue, and the beats went silent. And unlike all those months ago—when I’d touched the stone and it had seared my skin—this time, it flourished.
Warmth spread through my palm, seeping out along my veins, and a halo of effervescent white light radiated from the place my flesh met stone.
A welcomingHello, Chosen Child, it has been so long, rang through my ears. My eyes slipped closed, and I breathed in that power, that calling.
With the inhale, the light ebbed. With my exhale, it expanded.
It was an energy unlike anything I’d felt before, the ether of the earth’s core burning molten. Through it, I heard every shuffle in the massive cavern, felt every slight breath of Tolek at my back. My muscles tensed with an unusual strength.
It was warrior instinct, warriorpower—magnified.
“Like the scrolls said,” I muttered, gasping as that new sense rolled along my bones.
And if this was only a bead of it, a trigger released since I stood before the site with all emblems on my person, but the curse left unfulfilled… I shivered at the power that must lie within this stone prison. What that could do for the warriors…
My eyes snapped open, the light siphoning back into me, and I grinned over my shoulder at Tolek. “This is it.”
The amber in his stare ignited at the confirmation. Could he feel the magic trapped here?
I pulled another bead of Angellight from within me and sent it twining above the statue. “It’s all seven Angels,” I confirmed.
“They’re bowing or rising,” he said.
“See this one.” I pointed to a figure with its head missing, sliced clean from its neck. I remembered that identifying feature from the last time we were here, though I hadn’t understood it then. “I’m certain that’s Thorn.”
Tolek swallowed. “He lost his head. Like a crown had ravaged his mind.”
“And this here,” I continued, running a hand over the deep moss covering only one Angel, “is Bant. A symbol of his deal with Kakias.” The dark plant crept across the stone like thoseclaiming, inky tendrils. “It’s like the shedding of his spirit and the havoc that ensued because of it.”
Tolek circled the statue, to where the Angels faced the wall in their crescent-shaped huddle. “Look at his hand.”
I followed, pulling my Angellight in closer. “He actually has a hand,” I observed.
“All five fingers, perfectly formed where others are worn.” Tolek nodded. Sure enough, Bant held one arm out as if reaching for the wall they faced, but that hand remained bare. “Ready to host a ring.”
Opening the leather pouch I kept tied to my belt, I willed my hands not to tremble. To not show a bead of fear.
I removed Bant’s ring and held it up. The stone set above the axes pulsed in the glow of my Angellight, seeming to sing near its rightful home. As the emerald refracted the light, a piece of me wished Barrett was here. That he could give his permission for what I was about to do with his family heirloom.
But I was the chosen of the Angels, the descendant of a demigod, and the raiser of myths.
The power of this choice laced my blood and bones.
