Suddenly, another heart began to beat inside her chest, a pulse she was so very, very familiar with because it was the only one she had ever felt besides her mothers’. It was a pulse she would have known anywhere.
It was Sera’s heart.
For a half second that seemed to last an eternity, she caught a glimpse of her friend, her hair done up strangely, her eyes lifted toward the night sky. Sera’s face was filled with hope, her irises brighter than Leela had ever seen them, and as she gazed at the stars she whispered, “I’m coming.”
Then the vision vanished, the pool becoming clear again, and Leela fell to her hands and knees, gasping for breath. All the pieces felt like they were falling into place. Those strange rooms and people these visions had shown her . . . they were from the planet.
Leela felt dizzy and pressed her forehead to the cold ground. If what she had just seen was true—and she was far past the point of doubting herself in the face of such overwhelming power—then Sera was alive. But she would not be found in this cold underbelly of her City, or floating in the wide expanse of space.
She was on the planet. Somehow, some way, she had survived the fall.
Shaking, Leela rose to her feet, her heart pounding forcefully as if it had absorbed Sera’s beat into its own rhythm. The fiery orb inside the moonstone pulsed along with her two heartbeats, connecting Leela with the very roots of the City that she loved so dearly. She felt a determination set in, a conviction as cold and strong as the columns surrounding her.
Whatever the High Priestess’s schemes, she had not managed to kill Sera.
And Leela was going to find a way to bring her home.