The lie was so obvious it was almost sad. Wyllin looked at Ambrosine for a long moment, her eyes clear as dawn, revealing nothing. At last, she said, “I will show you. But it will destroy you.”
Ambrosine’s lips curled. “I’d like to see it try.”
Wyllin sighed and waved a hand over the fountain. Ambrosine gasped. She must be able to see the tether, Leo realized with a start. But he couldn’t, and judging by the way Agnes was squinting, she couldn’t either. Wyllin’s words from before came back to him.
I am the tether and the tether is me.
Ambrosine’s eyes grew round and bright—a dark hunger crept across her face and spread throughout her body, making her back hunch and her hands curl like claws.
“Yes,” she hissed. “Yes, I see. I see it now. Oh, it’s beautiful. Magnificent. It’s . . .” She licked her lips. “It belongs to my family. It’s mine. Mine . . .”
One claw reached out and Leo realized what she was going to do a moment too late.
“No!” he cried instinctively, having no love for his grandmother yet not wanting to see what would happen once she touched the chain of Cerulean magic. But Ambrosine had already reached up, wrapping her hand around the tether that Leo could not see. For one endless second, nothing happened.
Then she let out a choked cry, and her whole body was illuminated in a silvery-blue light—it shone out through her eyes, from the tips of her fingers, from each strand of her hair. She began to scream, and the light poured from her mouth in a torrent of brilliance. One long, high-pitched wail that pierced Leo’s heart and rang over and over again in his ears. The light coming from inside Ambrosine grew brighter and brighter, until she was engulfed in it, until her body was a mere shadow, an outline, and then there was a flash like a solar flare and Leo had to shield his eyes against it.
When he looked again, all that was left of Ambrosine Byrne was bits of ash floating through the air.
“She would never have let it go,” Wyllin said. “She would never have let it be until she saw it. It was consuming her thoughts and so it consumed her.”
Agnes looked too shocked for words, which was exactly how Leo felt. Eneas was rubbing his eyes as if that would somehow help make sense of what had just happened, and Matthias wore an expression of horror. Hektor looked like he was going to be sick. The spear clattered to the ground as the other Misarros released their captives, staring numbly at the spot where Ambrosine vanished. Vada rushed to Agnes’s side.
“She’s . . . gone,” Agnes said, her breath hitching in her throat as Vada held her. There was another loud boom and this time the wall shook, sending chips of rose stone down into the courtyard. Ambrosine may be gone but the Renalt was still very much here and very much a danger to Sera. She could not lose this chance to return home.
“You’ve got to go,” Leo said, finding his voice at last and turning to her. The words tore at his throat on their way out but he swallowed down the pain. “You’ve got to get back to your city.”
“I can’t just . . . leave you,” Sera said, looking helpless and torn.
“You can’t stay here,” Agnes said. “You can’t let the Renalt get her hands on you. You’ve got to go home, Sera.”
Sera blinked and a tear fell on her cheek, glittering like a star. “But—”
Another blast from the cannon and this time it found its mark. A whole section of the wall crumbled, causing the Misarros to run for cover.
“Sera, go!” Leo cried. “Go home!”
Sera gripped the moonstone pendant in one hand. Her face was tender as she looked at him—he wanted to tell her how much he would miss her, how much she had changed his life, but the words wouldn’t come. Sera pressed her lips together, another tear following the first.
There were two brilliant flashes of light.
And when Leo looked again, Sera and Leela were gone.
34
Sera
SHE’D WANTED TO SAY GOODBYE.
When Sera had gripped the moonstone, she’d felt her heart pulled apart, her mind in knots. Leo was right, there was danger on Braxos and she needed to go, but the thought of leaving him made her chest ache and her lungs shrivel. Besides, she didn’t know how to get home—Wyllin had said it was about intention, but Sera didn’t know what she was supposed to do.
But it seemed her moonstone remembered—it went cold in her hand and suddenly the thought of her City became bright and writhing inside her, and she could see it as clearly as if she’d called up a memory. She could see the banks of the Great Estuary and the glow of the moonflower fields, could hear the buzzing of the bees in the Apiary and smell the rich fruits of the orchards.
Home, Sera thought with purpose, and her magic stirred in a way it never had before. The word was more than just a wishful thought. It held the power of a command.
Then the world was spinning and her feet left the ground in a disorienting whirl of color at first, then fire, then she was in space and the stars were bigger and brighter than she remembered them. Leela was beside her, encased in a pearly mist, and Sera realized she was too. She hadn’t noticed it forming, hadn’t been able to make sense of anything. On her other side, the tether glinted and they were following its brilliant line, shooting upward at an incredible speed. It was the opposite of falling. It was like flying.
But she had left them. Leo. Agnes. She had left them behind.
Then she caught sight of the City, its cold stalactites reaching out for them, and they burst through the pool she had appeared in when she first spoke to Leela, landing on the icy floor and gasping for breath.
She was back. She was home.
But this was not the home she knew, this cold underground garden with Cerulean imprisoned beneath circles of ice.
Leela helped her to her feet and hugged her close. “We’re back,” she cried.
But Sera found she could not melt into the embrace. This was not the homecoming she had expected. This was not how it was meant to be. She was supposed to be happy, not torn. She was meant to feel as if her upside-down world had righted itself.
“Leela!” Elorin’s voice cut through the silence. Sera turned and Elorin’s mouth fell open. “Sera,” she gasped. “You’re here. You’re here! Oh, but you both must come quick. The High Priestess has called for another choosing, and this time there was no ceremony. She has chosen you, Leela, to be sacrificed. She is saying you caused the sleeping sickness! She has called the congregation back to the temple, to announce it—even the purple mothers and midwives from the birthing houses. I only just snuck out. I was hoping I would find you here.”
A piece of Sera’s heart was still back on the planet, but her own City needed her too. “We have to show them I’m alive,” she said. “Leela, we must show them the memories the way Wyllin showed us, all of them, hers and yours and mine . . . the memories that live inside us now. We can share them. Every Cerulean in this City must see the truth.”
“Yes,” Leela agreed. “But there is something else they must see as well.” She turned to Elorin. “I need to bring Sera to the temple so that all can witness the High Priestess’s lies. I need to confront her myself. But there is another, deeper lie.” She gestured to the circles covering the floor. Sera saw markings on one that read Plenna and another that said Estelle. “You’ve got to release them, Elorin. You’ve got to feed them the fruit and bring them back to the surface. They deserve to be free. They deserve to face the woman who did this to them.”