“Our prison is like one massive spiderweb,” Estelle continued. “Where we are all interconnected and yet individual threads at once. I feel the sadness and longing and anger of the ancient ones, as if through a blood bond. The High Priestess knows us, knows each of our names. She speaks to us sometimes and asks for forgiveness. She tells us it is all for the greater good. I do not believe she knows we can hear her.”
“How did you escape the first time?” Kandra asked. “When I saw you here, by the obelisk . . .”
Estelle closed her eyes, remembering. “I was still new then, still strong. She was feeding so many of us she forgot to seal my tomb. I remember the feel of air in my lungs again, the cold ground beneath my hands. And then I was walking and I didn’t know where I was going until I found a staircase. I began to climb. I felt like I was in a dream.”
“How did you move the obelisk?” Leela asked.
Estelle blinked. “I don’t know. I didn’t realize I had. I remember feeling desperate. I remember thinking, I have to warn them, I have to tell them. I had bright new fruit running through my veins. Though my muscles felt weak, my magic was strong.”
Elorin had moved Faesa’s statue as well, Leela thought. Perhaps the brightness of Estelle’s magic had called on the obelisk to move. Perhaps all Cerulean were as capable of moving the moonstone as they were of reading the doors. They simply did not know it. Or the High Priestess had siphoned that power along with their magic.
Estelle turned to Kandra. “You told me I was dead.”
A tear slid down Kandra’s cheek. “And you said no, and then yes.”
“I am sorry I did not tell you truly what was happening,” Estelle said. “I spoke in riddles, but it felt like everything was one big riddle myself. I have had more time now, to see, to feel, to listen. When you ran away, I tried to follow you. But my legs were so clumsy, my mind muddled. And then I felt the fruit begin to fade from my veins and I could not walk any longer and my lungs began to shrink and my heart beat slower. And that’s when she found me. She put me back and locked me away.”
“That must have been when she sealed the stairs beneath the obelisk,” Leela said.
“The obelisk,” Kandra muttered, her eyes faraway. When she looked at Leela again, Leela saw a small spark of blue. “I think . . . I think I saw her name. Written on the obelisk.”
Leela frowned. “Whose name?”
“Sera,” Kandra whispered. “I was bringing water to one of the midwives and I walked past the obelisk and I—I felt her presence. I felt as if Sera was watching me. And then markings appeared on the moonstone and I swear on my love for Mother Sun, the symbols spelled Sera. Then they vanished so quickly I thought perhaps I made them up, that in my grief I was seeing things. But you told me she was alive. And for a moment I wondered if I should have believed you.”
Leela bit her lip. She had spent so much time feeling confused and overwhelmed, but now she was seeing that there was some purpose to all these events, these changes, and that she was a part of it, and if she could just embrace that, maybe she’d discover a side of herself she never knew existed.
“Kandra,” she said, and her voice was infused with the steady thrum of her magic. “I’m going to show you something.”
She held up a glowing finger. Even though they had spent so much time together, and grown so close, they had never blood bonded. And this would be no ordinary blood bond, Leela knew. But Kandra would have to see that for herself. She would have to make the choice.
Kandra stared at her bright blue fingertip for so long, Leela thought she would balk and refuse. But she kept her hand and her gaze steady.
Please, she thought. Trust me.
At long last, Kandra raised her own finger, and as the two lights touched, Leela felt Kandra’s magic enter her, and though it was older than hers, wise and compassionate and crippled with grief, Leela once again felt her own magic was stronger. It wound around Kandra’s heart and she gasped as Leela held up the memory mirror inside her mind and showed her.
Sera.
Sera standing on the prow of a ship, gazing up at an unfamiliar night sky as the wind whipped her hair about her face. Sera’s form emerging from the pool of water surrounding the tether, her cry of joy at seeing Leela, her explanation of where she had been, her tales of the planet, her struggle to find the tether and return home. Sera’s smile, Sera’s voice, Sera Sera Sera.
“She’s alive,” Kandra gasped as the connection broke. “She’s alive.”
She collapsed into sobs, her hands clutching her face. “Leela, I am sorry,” she said, through jagged breaths. “I did not . . . I could not . . .”
“I know,” Leela said.
“What is this power you possess?” Kandra said.
“I ate the fruit,” Leela said, and Estelle let out a shocked cry. “I did not know what it was,” Leela explained. “Only that the doors told me to.”
“What doors?”
“The doors to the temple. Sometimes they form symbols that I can read.” Leela felt embarrassed all of a sudden, like she was bragging when she did not mean to.
Kandra and Estelle were staring as if they had never seen anything like her.
“Mother Sun has chosen you,” Kandra said. “Leela—”
“Elorin has read them too,” Leela said quickly. “And you yourself just admitted to reading Sera’s name on the obelisk. The symbols are not a declaration of a new High Priestess. They are for everyone.”
Kandra reached out and clasped her hands. “That may be true, but look at all you have done. You have freed Estelle. You have given me back my Sera.”
“I don’t have Sera yet,” Leela said. “But I will find a way to bring her home. That I promise.” Her stomach twisted with guilt. “As much for myself as for you and her other mothers. I miss her desperately.”
Kandra laughed and tears sparkled in her eyes. “There is no shame in wanting something for yourself,” she said. “And this is the second time you have brought me back from the brink of despair. If anything, I am indebted to you.”
Leela was about to protest when Estelle gave a great shudder.
“It is starting,” she choked. “I have stayed too long away. I can feel it . . . I have to go back.”
“No,” Kandra said. “No, you mustn’t go back there.”
Estelle touched her on the cheek. “I will die if I don’t.”
Her knees buckled and Kandra caught her before she hit the floor. “Help me, Leela.”
Leela supported her on the opposite side and they hurried out of the dwelling, Estelle stumbling between them.
“You are not meant to leave the birthing houses,” Leela whispered as they approached the sacred circle.
Kandra snorted. “I am not bearing another daughter until Sera has returned to this City. If Mother Sun truly did bless me, she would understand. As my orange wife once said, she is a mother, first and foremost.” She glanced at Estelle, whose breathing was becoming more and more ragged. “And you could not have gotten her back alone.”
They reached the Moon Gardens faster than Leela thought possible, and had to walk in an awkward fashion to get Estelle down the curving stairs. Kandra’s reaction to the Sky Gardens was much the same as Elorin’s had been.