Besides, she would have her mothers and Leela back. Surely that would be enough.
“How are we able to speak, though?” Sera asked.
“The moonstone,” Leela replied. “I’m sure of it. It contains so much power that has been forgotten over the centuries. But Cerulean had to get down to the planet somehow, didn’t they? Before the Great Sadness, I mean. I think perhaps the pendant I gave you saved your life.”
“But then, why can it not return me? Why not take me back now?”
Leela frowned. “Well, I think it sort of has. You are here, but also not here. Perhaps this cone of moonstone is connected to all moonstone. Maybe this is the place where Cerulean would talk to those who were visiting the planets in the days of old.” She rubbed her temples. “I don’t know, Sera. I don’t have all the answers.”
“No,” Sera said grimly. “But the High Priestess does.”
“I do not think she will relinquish her secrets easily.”
Sera agreed. How strange that her world had turned upside down and yet she accepted it without hesitation. But then, it was almost a relief, to think that there had been some reason that the ceremony had failed, some purpose to this no matter how dark.
“How are you to prove her lies to the City?” Sera asked. “What is your plan to . . . to . . . overthrow her?”
Leela’s eyebrows knit together. “I had not thought of it like that. I do not—I am not doing this to rule. My only goal is to set this City right. It is up to someone older and wiser than me to lead it.”
But Sera was seeing the change in her friend, the girl she used to tease as a scaredy-cat, who she had to cajole into sneaking out at night. The way she carried herself now, the ferocity in her voice, the passion . . . Leela was growing up just as much as Sera was.
“I must go,” Leela said suddenly. “I have stayed too long. The other novices will notice my absence. I will see you again. We are connected, you and I.”
Sera’s throat grew too tight to speak. She drank in Leela’s face, memorizing every line, every strand of hair. Leela gave her one last smile before she turned and fled down the paths and through the columns until Sera could not see her any longer. She felt herself dissolving, the tether and the cone of moonstone and the vines swirling and melting in her vision, and for one panicked second, it was like she was falling again. But then she was back in the cabin on the ship with Leo beside her, and no place had ever felt smaller or stranger or less real.
For a long moment, Leo and Sera just stared at each other. The expression on his face left Sera in no doubt that he had witnessed that entire exchange.
“What . . . was . . .” Leo couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence, his chest heaving.
“I can talk to her,” Sera said, because she didn’t quite have an answer to his almost-asked question. “I can see her. Oh, Leo!”
She threw her arms around his neck and let out a wild cry of joy. Leo’s arms wrapped around her waist. He was all biceps and forearms, a hard flat chest and broad hands with strong fingers. Sera felt an unexpected shiver run over her skin and a pinch in a place just below her stomach. He held her tight as if fearing she might dissolve.
“That . . . was . . . insane,” Leo gasped, releasing her and stepping back, taking a quick physical inventory of himself, patting his thighs and his chest and running a hand through his curls.
“Were you there?” Sera asked. “I thought I could feel your emotions sometimes but once I was in the City, you vanished.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It was like I was a part of you, connected to you, seeing through your eyes. But I didn’t have a body. And I was somehow aware of myself here on the ship too. It was all . . . incredibly confusing.”
“It was confusing to me too,” Sera said. “I have never experienced anything like that before. I didn’t know it was a thing to experience at all.” She looked down at the moonstone in awe. “I wonder what else this stone can do.”
The door burst open then, Rahel entering triumphantly, carrying a platter that brought the scent of peaches and cream.
“Peach cobbler!” she declared, her eyes fixed on Leo as if seeking some kind of reward. Rahel seemed mostly harmless, but something about how she looked at Leo irritated Sera in a way she could not quite explain. Her magic was bubbling, prickling and sharp, as if her talk with Leela had opened some sort of secret door inside her that had long been locked, the key only just discovered.
“I’m afraid I’m feeling awfully tired, Rahel,” Leo said, and Sera was impressed at how normal he sounded after such an otherworldly experience. “Perhaps my friend and I could retire for the night?”
Rahel frowned and her gaze flickered unwillingly to Sera. “Well, you can’t sleep in the same room together,” she said. “That’s not allowed. It’s my ship so I make the rules.”
Tears of frustration pricked Sera’s eyes—she had not just visited with her best friend and discovered the woman she had trusted all her life was a liar only to be separated from her one companion by a silly girl who was used to getting everything she wanted.
The moonstone was a bright sun against her chest, a connection between her City and this planet, like a tendon with synapses on either end, and Rahel gave a little squeak of shock as Sera stepped toward her. Leo gasped too.
Sera’s magic began to sing inside her, a song she felt she finally understood, though she could not explain how or why. Something had shifted within her, something that said this is how it is supposed to be, and a fire was lit in her heart, its heat spreading through her body. It felt like a blood bond except there was no one she was bonding with but herself. The heat began to climb, crawling up her chest, twining around her collarbone, curling into her throat, until it reached her eyes and a sudden clarity came upon her, a brilliant flash like a star being born, and she embraced the force of power coursing through her from the tips of her toes to the ends of her hair. The strength that had been building within her since they left Old Port was finally released and found it had purpose.
“I am a Cerulean,” she said. Her voice rang and shimmered in the air and she felt as if the whole world stopped for a moment to listen and obey her. “My blood is magic. And you will not take my friend away from me.”
Rahel’s mouth fell open. “You can speak Pelagan,” she said, but Sera had no time to acknowledge that she had finally cracked the secret to communicating on the planet because she could see Rahel, see her whole life laid out in a veil that draped over her body, shimmering threads of gold and pink intertwined with a dark meaty red. Her eyes burned in her skull as she turned to Leo—his veil was different, a patchwork of greens and blues laced with sad stormy grays. But she had seen Leo’s memories before and would not think to intrude upon them again without permission.
It was Rahel she wanted to see. Without quite understanding how she was doing it, Sera plucked a thread from Rahel’s veil with her mind, one of the red ones, her fiery eyes locking the princess in place as the memory unfolded before her.
Rahel was a little girl, playing with a jumping rope in a large opulent room. Another girl her age, a servant, stood watching her.
“Be careful, Princess,” the girl said. “You’ll break something.”