The Myths of Ophelia (The Curse of Ophelia #4)

Chapter 6

Chapter Six

Ophelia

A few miles north of the town we were staying in on the outposts, white sand sloped upward into a gentle hillside, giving way to lush green grasses that ruffled in the breeze and looked out over a calm, glassy sea.

It was a stark contrast to the Cliffs of Brontain where we’d battled slapping gray waves to reach Gaveny’s, the Seawatcher Angel’s, emblem out on those platforms.

Both were beautiful in their own ways, though. Rain-soaked fog nearly kissed the hills tonight, providing the perfect coverage for a flight.

A gentle nudge to one shoulder and a feathered sweep against the other had me laughing. Turning, I met Sapphire’s crystal blue eyes. My warrior horse, who’d been harboring a secret all these years. One that was revealed when something triggered the unfurling of those beautiful, massive, snow-white wings now flaring at her side in impatience.

“I miss you every day, girl,” I whispered, dropping my head against her side. “You know why it has to be this way.”

She huffed, but I knew she understood.

Prior to the final battle against Kakias, pegasus were no more than legends of bedtime stories. Until we knew more about how she had become a creature of myth and what it meant, we had to keep her a secret.

Her and?—

A warm breath traveled down my neck, and I spun, meeting the slitted, golden iris of one of the khrysaor. The one who chased us down in the forest all those months ago. But where I’d been terrified then, now I only rolled my eyes at him.

“He’s impatient,” Jezebel explained, stroking a hand down his silver mane.

A mane, because the khrysaor was so very similar to my pegasus. Two or three times as large, but a body of a horse with wings and legs covered in knife-sharp scales, and feet ending in claws. I’d gotten a closer look at those wings recently. Realized that beneath the scales, which were a defensive reaction that could retract, the surface was leathery. Nothing like Sapphire’s downy feathers.

The khrysaor appeared to be bred more ruthlessly, almost battle-ready, with a layer of armor and ferocious size.

“He’s not as fearsome as I once thought,” I said to Jezebel as we followed our mounts to a flat expanse of ground beyond the top of the ridge. We’d left Lancaster and Mora back at the cottage with our friends, sneaking out for some private flight time before our audience with Queen Ritalia tomorrow.

My sister avoided my eyes, quiet as she had been since they returned from visiting the human camps. I’d thought the excursion to Engrossian Territory yesterday to pick up Malakai, Mila, and Lyria would placate whatever bothered her, giving her extended flight time, but it hadn’t.

“No, Zanox is truly a large baby,” she said, distracting me. “He loves attention.”

“Zanox?” I asked.

Jezebel stroked the side of her khrysaor’s neck affectionally, his silver mane glowing in the moonlight. “He told me his name recently.” I raised a brow. “Or he thought it. I can’t speak to him, but one day last week I saw him and knew.”

“And the other?”

“Dynaxtar,” Jezebel said fondly, gazing at her khrysaor in a way that made me certain they were pieces of her soul the way Sapphire was mine.

“Have you ridden her much?” I observed the smaller female khrysaor already fluttering through the clouds high above, nothing more than a shadow from here. Hidden enough that no one would even imagine what secret was sliding among the stars.

“Dynaxtar is different than Zanox,” she explained, voice turning wondrous. “Zanox prefers me. There’s a rightness to it. But Dynaxtar? She likes to feel the mist on her hide, free of the burden of a rider.” Jez brushed her hair behind her ear. “Sometimes, I wonder if she’ll find her rider one day. If there’s someone besides me who’s meant for her.”

“Erista?”

“Dynaxtar allows Erista to ride her because of what Erista means to me.” She said it like it was a basic understanding of the nature of mystical beings. “Dynaxtar and Erista don’t share the bond, though.”

I couldn’t tell what was in her voice. Worry? Frustration?

“Do you wish her to find a rider?” I asked gently, Sapphire’s wing brushing the ground around me.

“I do,” Jez admitted, voice soft. “She deserves that.”

I didn’t know what that would look like—how to find someone meant for a khrysaor as Jezebel was.

“Let’s keep Dynaxtar company for the time being, then.” I swung up effortlessly onto Sapphire’s back, legs tucking in above her wings. Zanox lowered a wing for Jezebel to scale, and something nudged at my brain as I watched her settle.

“Does Elektra get jealous?” I asked of the warrior horse she’d ridden for years.

Jez shook her head, looking down from Zanox’s back. “She seems to understand. The bond I have with Elektra is a soul bond that we’ll share forever. But what I carry with the khrysaor…it’s different. I think the warrior horses grasp that better than we can.”

It was a satisfying belief, hoping the world around us and the creatures teeming within it understood the nature of existence and fate at an intrinsic level. In a sense, it was comforting.

Winding my hands into Sapphire’s mane, I indulged that pride and whispered, “Fly, girl.”

Constellations twinkled above as Sapphire galloped for the cliff edge, and I sank into the peace with my pegasus.

We plunged down, and Sapphire’s wings flared out, but we’d done this enough times now for me to be used to the dip of my stomach as her hooves skimmed the ocean surface. For me to relish the privacy as she disappeared into the low cloud cover and shot up above them. Where nothing and no one would see us save the stars in the heavens.

My fingers curled into her mane. And this feeling, this freedom of tasting the night air and the prickling of it against my skin, the thought of flying off into oblivion, trusting Sapphire to care for me, it was the most soothing sense of belonging to my restless spirit, here alone with her and the stars.

I’d always loved the stories constellations told as a girl. Loved the ancient tones of myths, the symbols and lessons they carried. I’d studied them with my father as part of my Second training. One of his many lessons: Any story could aid a leader.

But soaring through the clouds with Sapphire, the tales spun through me, weaving their own in my blood and bones.

Once we broke the fluffy surface and were surrounded by a dark sheet of sky peppered with stars, Sapphire hovered. I leaned forward, patting her neck. “Why are you stopping?”

Jezebel and Zanox broke through the clouds behind us. “I think they want us to talk.”

I looked between my pegasus and the khrysaor. Over Jezebel’s shoulder, Dynaxtar continued to loop freely through the sky, unbothered.

“Are you two scheming?” I muttered to Sapphire and Zanox, then met my sister’s eyes. “What is it we need to talk about?”

Something had been off with Jezebel since she returned, and I thanked whatever Angels put these mythical creatures in our paths to ensure we addressed the problem.

“Your Angellight,” Jez said, but Zanox huffed, his breath clouding the air. Jezebel cast him an admonishing look. “And my power.”

I sat straighter. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

Before I could respond, Jezebel lifted a hand, and a silver-blue light gathered in her palm. I froze. Certainly, that hadn’t been what I expected her to reveal. Quicker than a whip, though, Jez recalled the light.

Where it disappeared, a white ring echoed in the navy sky.

“What was that?” I asked, finally finding my voice.

Her face was ashen. “That light—it’s what we saw in the Spirit Realm. Ever since we’ve been back, it’s been manifesting physically, too.”

“Wh-what?” I stuttered, breathless. “You’ve been able to do that for weeks?”

Jez nodded. “I didn’t realize what it was at first. Thought it was a trick of the light. But…” Her fingers curled into Zanox’s mane as if for comfort, and though the soft beating of wings filled the night, her white knuckles were anything but relaxed.

“What happened?”

“It shot from me one day—I still don’t know how. It sort of took on a life of its own and blurred into this arc across the sky like a falling star. And it”—Jezzie’s voice trembled—“it killed something.”

My blood ran cold, my own Angellight quiet. “What?”

“A passing bird, but…I don’t even know how it happened.”

As if satisfied that we were finally talking about this, Zanox and Sapphire started a slow trail through the clouds. Dynaxtar followed leisurely.

“And you’re certain?” I asked over the breeze their wings created.

“Yes. Erista was there, too. We tried to figure out what could have caused it—if we may have been seeing things—but nothing else explains it.”

“Have there been any other incidents since the Spirit Realm?”

Jez shook her head, but the weight of her secret unfolded from her. Up here, with Sapphire, Zanox, and Dynaxtar as our guards, a sense of assurance wrapped around us.

“My Angellight has been different since the realm, too,” I confessed.

Jezebel chewed her lip. “What does yours feel like?”

“It feels like each Angel it stems from, rooted in me. There’s Ptholenix’s fire and Gaveny’s wild seas. Thorn’s is a living storm, and Damien and Bant are both…sublime power.”

As we coasted across a thick bank of clouds, Jez muttered, “Mine doesn’t feel like any of that. It’s…cold. Like a great loss.”

I didn’t say it aloud, but if Jezebel was able to communicate with departing spirits, that sensation of loss didn’t surprise me. It all had to be connected.

“But there’s a new instinct within mine, too,” I admitted, wanting her to know she wasn’t the only one feeling lost. “A vibrance even the five strings of the Angellight can’t match. Like something seeking life and breath. I assume it’s how they’re merging within me, becoming mine. But I’m not really sure.”

Jezebel was quiet for a moment as we flew. Then, she asked, “Can you summon it?”

And the uncertainty in her eyes was so uncharacteristic that I did. Starting with Damien’s, I slowly unraveled the Angellight. The first thread pulsed, reaching from some archaic source right down into my very soul, golden and effervescent and wondrous.

One by one, I awoke each of the other four. Ptholenix’s fiery orange and Gaveny’s tempest of turquoise came first and easiest, the most controlled. The bright phenomenon of flame reflected and undulated against a glassy ocean.

Next, Thorn’s erratic silver power rose like scattered storm clouds, the only one hard to wrestle into its strand, but still tethered to that source deep within me. Whatever power it was I didn’t know I commanded. Something rooted to being the chosen child of the Angels, I presumed. To retaining the agent that activated my Angelblood, though we still were unsure what it was.

Finally, I engaged the last shred of power I held. The most unfamiliar and eerily sentient. Bant’s.

With my eyes sealed tight and the other four patiently waiting, I prodded the Engrossian Angel’s light. It was threaded with ink as dark the valley’s pits and so reminiscent of those whips of tar the queen had wielded; it glowed and pulsed within me.

It had changed when Bant’s Spirit disappeared into the mountains, like a beast raising its head and turning aware eyes on me. That connection was a little harder to fight for than the others.

But I caressed it, coaxed it to trust me. And I turned them from five buds of power into one solitary essence. A might unlike each of the Angels they stemmed from.

A magic wholly and intrinsically mine .

And as a singular force, the strands shot forward in a whirl of shining light, hovering high above the glassy sea. Warmth bathed my skin in a gust, and my eyes fell closed as I breathed in that strength.

Sapphire whinnied as the mass of power grew, a sound of pure encouragement and glee. Forming an effervescent braid, the light wound its way around my wrist, up my arm, teasing and tasting me. It sparkled against my skin, catching the reflections of the stars and winking to each.

Turning my face to the constellations, I swore they winked back.

I directed the Angellight to dance through the air over to Jezebel. Hesitantly, she pulled up her magic, as well. A delicate silver orb flickered in her hand, mist curling around it, twin to one of the stars plucked from the sky above.

For a moment, the magics mingled peacefully. I dug up more of that life-seeking source and fed it to the light.

Then, Zanox reared up, the scales on his wings snapping out. He roared, and I swore the back of his throat burned the same blue as the heart of Jezzie’s magic. Sapphire bucked beneath me.

And my sister’s power and mine careened into the sky like shooting stars falling from the heavens. The cold haunting sensation of loss combined with the vibrance of light.

“What’s happening?” Jez shrieked.

“I don’t know!” I gasped. “It’s out of my control!”

Twin trails of gleaming gold and silver-blue collided with the force of meteors crashing to earth, and chills spread across my skin even as something within me burned. A shower of sparks rained to the thick clouds below, reminding me of both the dawn and the end of the world captured in one impossible moment—reminding me of the balance of power that held Ambrisk in its palm—shattering.

Both lights fizzled away into the dark sky, the night’s silence heavy in the wake of crashing powers.

“Ophelia?” Jez said.

“Yes?”

“I don’t think I want to use this magic anymore tonight.” Starlight paled her features. Her eyes were wide and frightened in a way I rarely saw.

“We don’t have to, Jez,” I said, shoving all my fear aside to assure her. “We’ll figure out what it means another time.”

“Can we go back to the cottage?”

I wasn’t sure if she was asking me or her khrysaor, but I nodded, and we coasted back toward the beach, clinging to the clouds.

Neither Jezebel nor I spoke—neither had anything worth saying—but the constellations and their legends wrapped around us. And I couldn’t help but replay the golden light reflecting off Zanox’s armored scales—the ones deployed when he sensed a threat.