Page 207 of The Legacy of Ophelia
The scar lit up, Thorn’s answering laugh and chilling glee singing as he soared all the way back to the capitol building. He crashed into the facade, stone rumbling, right as the army of indentured foot soldiers he’d amassed roared to life.
And they charged straight at me.
I lifted my hands, Angellight of swirling colors gathering, the purple lightning glinting. Seraph magic roared to life around me, but before I shot, a wave of soldiers surged from behind, meeting the opposing forces with clashes of steel and cries of war.
Malakai and Dax. Santorina and Lancaster and Mora. Celissia and Erista. And hundreds of warriors for each of them. They charged into the collision without a hint of fear, taking on their own in order to clear a path for me to get to Echnid.
Vale and Jezebel swept overhead on their khrysaor, blue fire spitting from the creatures’ jaws,burningdemigods, gorgons, and the beasts the god brought. Sapphire soared among them a trail of shimmering gold falling from her wings and helping Bodymelders quickly mend the injured.
And my heart sang with the song of the Gallantian Warriors.
“Ophelia!” Cypherion panted, racing up behind me. Relief forced a breath from my lungs at seeing him whole and in control of himself. He looked to the sky where purple lightning still flickered. “What’s happening? Is it Xenique?”
“Xenique? No, it’s Thorn.” Erecting a shield of Angellight around us, I rushed out the explanation, and a sob launched in my throat. What if we never got them back?
No.That was a future I refused to accept. Tolek would find me across any realm, and I was the last fucking seraph. I’d fix this even if it used every ounce of my power.
“Why did you think it was Xenique?” I asked as more warriors rushed around us.
He pointed toward the sky. “Because she did that. Using this.” He held his scythe between us, the steel reflecting the flashing purple lightning. “Said it’s a way to finally end all of this. Something about her mother and Echnid thinking it would help him.”
“Unexpected,” I muttered, trying to decipher what the Angel could have meant. But a body slammed into the wall of seraph magic around us, and I shook my head. “We don’t have time.”
Cypherion’s jaw hardened as his quick-thinking gaze assessed the melee raging around us. He glanced to my hand, where the Vincienzo dagger was tightly gripped. Waiting.
“You need to get to Echnid,” he said, tightening his hold on his scythe. “Leave Thorn to me.”
“Thank you,” I said, throwing my arms around him before dropping the shield and dashing into the heart of the battle, my Second unleashed with his scythe at my side. And for that brief moment, I allowed the gratitude for Cypherion’s skill—for the fact that he’d had a plan and had been so quick to communicate it so I could breathe for a single moment—to flood through me.
The Vincienzo dagger burned in one hand. I summoned bolts of Angellight, splintering the cobblestones beneath the feet ofcontaminated warriors to trip them up for our forces. Dodging duels breaking out, I leapt over fresh pools of blood, slid across debris.
And as I ran, light flared to life in my empty hand. I honed it into the shape of a brutally beautiful sword, gold and shimmering with the light of the Angels and feathered wings carving the hilt. I avoided any killing blows but used the heated blade to swipe through opponents’ defenses and kept my eyes on the gleaming bronze statue in the center of the city.
I was halfway to Echnid when a feminine form crashed to the stone before me with a force of power larger than life. I dug in my heels, holding my glowing sword aloft. Her delicately flowing gown unraveled around her, brown skin bathed in moonlight rather than the bloodshed currently unspooling across her city.
“Xenique,” I growled.
My distant ancestor, the one who had passed blood of the Goddess of Death down my mother’s line. Who had given me the agent that activated the fucking Angelcurse in the first place. Who had been completely absent ever since.
“Daughter,” the Angel said. Purple lightning flashed overhead again, illuminating the amethyst skies and their swirling black heart.
“What—”
“When you strike,” she interrupted, lifting her massive wings higher, “strike true, for the sake of us all.”
I blanched, my sword dropping a few inches. She wanted me to believe she was on my side.
“You left us toruinthese months,” I growled.
“We have always had a plan,” Xenique admitted. “We have not been able to show it until now. I am sorry for what it entailed, for how selfish we have been, and for how it has used you. But this”—she gazed around the capital, the massacreturning her gaze cold—“was never what we wanted. Not I, at least.”
Her curls blew across her face as each of the Angels swooped overhead, but Xenique kept her stare intent on me. Her heart-shaped lips and deep-set eyes gave nothing away, but the pure focus alone rattled me. The fact that she’d risked telling me this when—if the Angels truly did have their own agenda—it could expose them to Echnid.
It meant they expected this to end tonight. One way or another, they really were standing against the god.
And the time had come for them to use me to finish their final battle.
I lowered my sword, shoving my shoulders back and taking a deep, steadying breath. “Where?”
