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

Chapter 38

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Ophelia

“They said…what?” Tolek asked. With my head resting on his chest—right above his heart—I couldn’t see his face, but the unease was clear in his voice.

“That I shouldn’t dig too deeply into the whims of the stars.”

“And that was Valyrie?”

“Yes,” I sighed, sitting up to face him. “Which only makes me more uncertain about all of this.”

Tolek’s head fell back against the pillows, and he rubbed his eyes. “Valyrie knows something she doesn’t want us to see.”

“And what could be a part of this Angelcurse that I’m not meant to know?” I bit my lip. My skin was still sticky from the sweat that had beaded during my dream, but the rain-soaked breeze from the open window was helping.

That storm would slow us down in the morning, though. The knot of worry in my gut tightened.

“Once she’s feeling better, we’ll talk to Vale.” Tol reached up, tugging my bottom lip from between my teeth and resting his thumb on it. “She got that emblem somehow. Perhaps she knows something about what Valyrie may want to hide.”

Taking his hand in mine, I traced circles across the back as I thought. “I’m supposed to be their chosen. The one to solve this curse, and yet…”

“Yet?”

“Yet lately, I’m wondering if Annellius was right.” Even saying the words felt dangerous. Damien had insinuated he was watching my every move.

I continued, “Damien warned me not to follow Annellius’s path. History remembers him as greedy, but when Kakias died, she implied maybe that wasn’t the case. She’d said he was a fool and gave up power. That he hid the emblems.”

All of Kakias’s last moments came back to me. History is written by the survivors, girl .

Annellius surely hadn’t survived his battle with the Angels.

“You think he devised the trials, then?”

I shook my head, enchanted corpses screeching through my mind. “No. Those reek of higher power. I don’t think Annellius was capable of it. But perhaps he found the emblems—found out what they did—and returned them rather than used them? Damien and Valyrie want me to complete these tasks, unlike whatever Annellius did.”

“It sounds like they would prefer you didn’t even know about Annellius.”

“Why, though?” I asked.

“Maybe what the Angels want isn’t what’s best for you,” Tolek offered. “It did kill Annellius.” His hand tightened on mine, pure terror in that vicelike grip.

“It did,” I mused, staring out the window to where those stars I was not supposed to question gleamed tauntingly, peeking through scattered storm clouds high above the earth. In them, I saw my ancestor staring back at us, and I wished he could speak to me again. “Why do you think Annellius’s eyes were brown when Vale saw him in a reading?”

“Instead of magenta?”

I whipped my gaze back toward Tol’s, remembering the time in Seawatcher Territory when I bled on the emblems as Vale read. She’d seen Annellius, then. “If my eye color is a sign of being chosen as we thought, why did he not share it?”

“I don’t know, Alabath,” Tol said, defeated.

Sighing, I crawled back into the warmth of his arms, allowing the nearness to steady both of us. “There are so many questions, Tol. So many things that haven’t been what they’ve seemed.”

He stroked my arm with gentle fingertips. “What do you want to do about it?”

“We’re finding that last damn emblem,” I swore, and he laughed at the conviction in my voice. “We’ve come this far, sacrificed so much, we’re finishing this. But then…then we’ll need to find answers before we act.” I sighed. “Perhaps giving the emblems to Ritalia would be best.”

“You think so?”

“I don’t know.” I nuzzled closer to him, my mind whirling though sleep beckoned after the ordeals we’d gone through.

“We’ll talk to everyone tomorrow,” he assured me. “Go back to sleep, Alabath.”

I kissed his chest, right over his heart, and watched the stars until my eyes grew heavy.

The storm returned ferociously in the morning. I was drenched head to toe after one minute outside, trying to visit Sapphire. She couldn’t fly in this; with how it was pelting down, her wings would be waterlogged in seconds.

We were stuck here. If someone from Titus’s manor found us…

The possibility made my skin prickle, fingers jittering over my tea as I sat before the fire in the dining room. Rain and wind lashed the windows, cyphers swaying. My boots tapped on the stone hearth.

“I give her one day,” Jezebel muttered where she sat with Erista at the table nearest the grate. The wooden surfaces had been cleared of the bloody linens, ointments, and satchels. Santorina was upstairs checking on her patients now.

“Two,” the Soulguider challenged.

Jezzie scoffed. “You have such faith?”

“Four hours,” Lyria snickered as she leaned against the bar, a half-empty glass of whiskey in hand. If we’re stuck here all day, we may as well drink, she’d claimed upon finding us down here minutes ago.

I whipped my stare to the commander. “I can hear all of you!”

Tolek laughed and sat beside me, gently brushing my hair across my shoulder and massaging the back of my neck where the Bond was inked. The tattoo beat impatiently. “What’s your bet, Alabath?”

I crossed my arms, the tea in my cup sloshing with the abrupt movement. “I am not betting on how long before my patience snaps.”

“That’s because I’m right,” Jezebel chimed, kicking her boots up on the table and draping a thick wool blanket over her lap and Erista’s.

“Right about what?” Cypherion’s voice carried from the doorway as he led a pale-faced Vale by the hand.

I straightened, looking over the Starsearcher. She’d donned that powder-blue dress again, crimson stains splattering it, but her hair was washed and skin cleaned of gore. “How are you?”

Vale took a seat at my sister and Erista’s table, Cypherion claiming one beside her and slinging his arm across the back of her chair.

“I’m okay,” she answered. And I heard the words for what they truly said, recognizing something deep within them: I am breaking .

“We’re happy you’re back,” I said. I see you, and I understand .

“Thank you, Revered.” She looked around the group. “Thank you all, truly, for coming for me. I didn’t…” Her eyes flashed to Cypherion, the vacancy of losing her soul bond still clear. “You didn’t have to.”

“You’re a part of our family,” Tolek said without room for argument. His thumb stroked my knee. “We stay true to our own.”

“Our cabal of damaged warriors,” Jezzie suggested.

“Our troop of everlasting spirits,” Erista chimed.

Vale tried to smile, adding, “The fiercest core of relentless hearts.”

“And an incredibly attractive group to boot,” Tolek supplied.

I rolled my eyes, but despite his ridiculous contribution, the sentiment of our family settled over the room like an early morning mist. Something so natural and certain, you knew it would always be there to cool your skin when the sun rose, but a small, effortless wonder of the world, regardless.

That moment of bliss shattered when a knock sounded at the inn’s main door. Immediately, Lyria popped up, the rest of us tensing.

“Who is it?” Tolek asked, but his sister swung the door open, unconcerned, and a hooded figure stepped across the threshold. Rain dripped from their cloak as Lyria closed the door to the pounding storm.

The guest pulled their hood back, and Cyren—the general of the Starsearcher armies—smiled at us. “Heard we were strategizing today.”

“What are you doing here?” My concern threatened to unwind, but I remained on edge. Cyren was a member of Titus’s council.

“Lyria wrote to me when you got here, and again last night—” Their words cut out, scanning the room and landing on Vale. Taking in the stains on her dress. “I heard what happened.”

Vale inhaled, pulling up a trembling bravado. “It’s true. I did it. Are you here to take me?”

Cypherion stilled.

But Cyren shook their head. “I’m here to see how I can help ensure stability moving forward. And I brought you some things.” The general opened their pack to reveal soft, moss green fabrics.

Clothes. They’d brought Vale fresh clothes from one of the nearby markets so she wouldn’t risk being seen. They were on our side—would buy us time so everyone could heal before we had to travel. I relaxed into Tolek’s side.

Shocked, Vale blinked at Cyren. “Thank you.” She pulled out the chair on her other side and nodded to it.

Cypherion redirected the conversation, but kept one eye on Vale as he asked, “So what was Jezebel right about?”

“That Ophelia won’t hide in this inn for long,” Jez explained. Even Cypherion smirked, agreeing.

I lifted my chin. “I’ll wait out the storm. I won’t leave until Sapphire can travel comfortably.” Angels be damned, those eternal bastards could practice patience for once. I was so tired of following their schemes.

“And where are we going when we leave?” Jezebel asked.

For a moment, my heart inflated. At the steadfast assurance in the way she said we , in the assumption that no matter what or where, we’d all go together.

It extended beyond this room, too. Upstairs, where Malakai was still sleeping soundly under Mila’s care. To Rina and Celissia, who were tending to the fae. To the Engrossian Prince and his consort, our unlikely friends, who had disappeared after breakfast to write to their council.

“That’s what we need to figure out.” I blew out a deep breath, spinning so my feet were firmly on the floor and setting my cup on a nearby table. “Last night, Damien visited me in a dream.”

“You dream of your Angel?” Erista asked, head tilting, gold band glinting in the firelight.

“I don’t think it was a dream. I think it was actually Damien. With a message.”

“He hasn’t visited in months,” Cypherion said.

“I know, and I tried to ask him where he’s been but something cut him off. As something always does.” I sighed. That damn block on whatever the Prime Mystique wanted to tell me.

That warning bell rang in the back of my mind, shrill with temptation to walk in Annellius’s footsteps because I deserved to be more than a toy to the Angels.

Lyria, propped atop the bar now, asked, “What did he have to say?”

I recounted how Damien’s words felt like a warning. How he told me to become the master of my magic before it ate away at me, but to not allow it to fool me. Even here, away from wherever we were in that dream realm, my skin chilled at the memory.

“He’s right,” Erista said. “Power can become enthralling if unchecked. I’ve seen it happen with Soulguiders.”

“I’ve seen it happen on a battlefield,” Lyria added, shadows behind her eyes, “with a very different sort of power. When one is unprepared for the high, they often hit the lowest lows afterward.”

Jezebel countered, “Ophelia is prepared, though. We both are. We may not know what our abilities do, but we’re being careful.”

In my mind, Angellight whipped around her throat again. She struggled and struggled.

My stomach turned over. I pulled and pulled and pulled , but?—

Tolek’s arm wrapped around my waist, tucking me closer to his side as he said, “We’re being careful, but we need to stop waiting for answers to find us. At the very least, Damien’s warning made it clear that Ophelia has to figure out what this power does.” With a pointed stare at my sister, he added, “And I’d wager that extends to you, too, baby Alabath.”

“There was more,” I said when the room fell silent. My eyes met Vale’s, color slowly returning to her cheeks. “Valyrie was there, too.”

“ What ?” she and Cyren both gasped.

I nodded. “She was present and ethereal as you’d imagine, but not quite as vibrant as Damien.”

Vale leaned her elbows on the table. “What did she say?”

“She went on about listening to the stars, but to not dig too deeply into their whims because we may find things warriors are not meant to know.”

These balances the Angels presented seemed so delicate, so precarious. And truthfully, so terribly frustrating.

Find the emblems, but do not ask questions. Listen to the stars, but do not try to see too much. Risk your life, but do not fail. A series of contradictions that dug beneath my skin and pried at the slippery foundations of my own beliefs.

“Did Valyrie mention me?” Vale asked.

I shook my head, and—was that a flash of disappointment in her eyes?

“How did you come by her emblem?” I asked softly.

Rain beat against the window, filling the silence as Vale toyed with the ends of her hair. “When Titus said he could help fix my readings, he wasn’t lying.”

Cypherion, watching her intently, was silent, as if she’d already told him this.

“How did he do it?” I asked.

“He forced me into very powerful reading chambers like the one I was in when Malakai and the others showed up.” Vale’s eyes closed for a moment, and she shook her head as if fighting off a memory.

“The first time was the day after Cypherion left. It was…awful. I couldn’t fight it anymore. That chamber was too powerful, and it pulled the suppressed readings to the surface until everything cracked.” She watched the rain, her voice vacant. “A deluge. It slowed eventually. But that chamber snapped whatever lock was baring my way. I think Titus had it built out of stone infused with precious resins and powders.”

“To try to draw out his own power,” Cyren muttered like a realization had just dawned.

Vale nodded.

Cyren said, “I’m sorry he forced you into that.” Vale smiled appreciatively. Cyren tilted their head, braided coronet shining like a halo. “I wonder if…”

“If?” Vale asked.

“Perhaps that seeing chamber can be used to enhance Starsearchers of a normal power level.”

Vale considered, her first genuine smile spreading across her face. “Find a way to turn his deceit into something advantageous for our clan.”

“Why stop there?” Lyria asked. “Maybe that level of magic can be converted to weapons of some sort. A mobile strength for Starsearchers.”

“It’s something to consider,” Cyren agreed.

When there was a lull in their theorizing, I asked, “You can read again?” Vale nodded. “How has it been?”

“Intense,” she said. “At first, the sessions were painful and all-consuming. I wasn’t—I’m still not—used to it. This magic was always something I understood and embraced. Until recently, something I felt proud of.”

“And you don’t anymore?” Tolek asked.

“It’s not that I don’t, but I’m relearning it. The first few sessions were excruciating. So many images flooding by after being suppressed for far too long, I still don’t know what to make of them all.” Vale swallowed. Cypherion gripped her thigh, squeezing gently, and she met his eyes. “Once I adjusted to it, I found out I can do something no other Starsearcher in known history can.”

“What?” My skin prickled, Angellight stirring.

“I can read the fates of higher powers.”

Stunned silence fell across the room like a sheet of ice. “An actual reading?” Cyren asked.

“Yes.”

Erista said, “Aren’t you only supposed to be able to read the fates of warriors and beings of similar power levels?”

Vale’s lips pressed into a line. “Exactly.”

Cypherion interjected, “It seems like what Vale saw in Seawatcher Territory—with the Angels and gods and Annellius—was part of this sect of power she has and possibly why her magic was malfunctioning.”

“Which started when I first came to Damenal,” Vale added.

“When you were first around the emblems,” I muttered, gripping my necklace. It couldn’t be a coincidence that Vale’s magic initially stopped working when she was near a potent source of Angel power.

“And when I first read about your future, Ophelia,” Vale said. “That reading that spoke of darkness without a cause.”

“Why, though?” I considered.

Vale stole herself. “I don’t only have one Fate tie,” she said of the connection Starsearchers have with the beings who transfer them readings. “I have nine.”

My eyes widened. Jezebel’s jaw unhinged, and Lyria nearly choked on her drink.

“ Nine? ” Tolek repeated. Cyren and Erista both blinked rapidly at Vale.

“Nine,” she confirmed.

And it all made sense. Why Vale had been taken to that temple as a child, why Titus was so set on keeping her, why her magic seemed to work differently than any other searcher we knew of.

Lyria, chin propped in a hand, utterly rapt, asked, “And there’s never been another Starsearcher with that many?”

Vale shook her head. “Not to my knowledge.”

Cyren elaborated with an awed look at Vale, “Even two is uncommon.”

“I think the way it manipulates my magic is why I was able to see Annellius in the past.”

Tolek asked, “And that’s how you found the emblem? You read Valyrie and saw where her emblem was?”

“Yes,” Vale said. “She was in the catacombs with a brass telescope?—”

“A telescope?” I asked, looking concernedly up at Tolek. “There was no telescope there.”

“There wouldn’t have been,” Vale confirmed. “It was where the heart was stored, within that glass box, but I had to wrench it from its fixture.”

Tolek’s brows flicked up. “Had to?”

“The dead wanted the telescope,” Vale deadpanned. “But it didn’t seem to care about Valyrie’s heart.”

Shivers danced down my spine. “You escaped them? All of those corpse warriors?”

“All of…There was only one?” Her words turned up at the end like a question. “When I gave it the telescope, it fled, and I was able to leave with the heart. I hid it from Ti—” Her words cut off in a choke, but she sniffed and lifted her chin. Beside her, Cyren’s lips twisted in disgust at their chancellor. “I hid it. My plan last night was to get it to Barrett. To ask him to pass it along to you so you could do what you must while I remained here to keep the chancellor distracted.”

Cypherion leaned forward, tugging Vale from her seat and into his lap. His hand stroked her hip, right over the bloodstained fabric. “Doesn’t matter now. And we have another emblem, regardless of how.”

Though he was only trying to keep Vale from having to relive everything, he was right.

“We have one more left to find.” I stood from the fireplace, pacing in a slow circle. “When I spoke to Valyrie, she said to go to the ones who recount the histories in the land of your ancestors, and find out the truth .”

“The mountains?” Jezebel asked, brows scrunching together.

“That’s what I thought she meant at first,” I answered, “but I don’t feel like there’s much in the mountains that can help us. Who are our other ancestors, Jez?”

Jezebel grinned, and that—the camaraderie, the flutter through my gut as we prepared a plan—it all chased away the chill wrought by the unknown. “Grandmother’s side of the family…”

With a smile, I turned to Erista. “Are you ready to return home?”

Erista’s feline grin was dazzling. “Oh, Revered. I thought you’d never ask.”

“I assume we should start at the capital?” I asked, mentally mapping how long it would take to get to the Soulguider capital, Xenovia, near the Mystique Mountains. “It will be a bit of a journey.”

“Who recounts the histories, though?” Lyria inserted, hopping off the bar to stand beside me in the middle of the room. Her eyes brightening at the choice to strategize—to hold a position on this council—warmed my spirit. “Are there some grand historians to the chancellor in the capital?”

“Or,” Tolek blurted, shooting up, “perhaps it’s not Xenovia.” Without further explanation, he hurried up the rickety, creaking staircase.

Erista continued, one eye on where he’d fled, “We don’t have historians beyond the usual of any clan. But we do have a wealth of Storytellers.”

Storytellers .

Warriors who abstained from associating with any clan formally when feeling the call of a particular rare brand of magic. They instead joined the cult roaming freely across Gallantia, giving life to the tales of antiquity. They kept them sacred and preserved by word of mouth alone.

I’d seen one once, in the Wayward Inn when I was on my way to rescue Tolek. She’d spoken of the foundations of the Angels. Of their feuds and struggles and eventual succession, all things I’d now seen firsthand.

Storytellers were increasingly rare, though.

“You have many?” I asked.

“Compared to most territories.” Erista shrugged. “Some claim they listen to the stories they share from the souls of warriors past, so they flock to our deserts. They are to be trusted more than any historians.”

“And I bet the ones we need aren’t in the capital,” Tolek said, racing back down the stairs with a journal in hand. He flipped open to a dog-eared page, displaying a shoddily sketched map of Ambrisk.

“What is this?” I asked, noting the random markers he’d drawn across Gallantia.

“This is a poorly copied rendition of the map Dax and I found in the forest during that final battle. When we were separated from you, Santorina, and Barrett, and you all went to Ricordan’s manor, Dax took me to one of Kakias’s old camps. She kept this map there—something to do with the proximity to the mountains—Dax was never highly ranked enough to know the exact reasoning—but this is how we were going to find you before I called Lancaster for help.”

Lyria shook her head. “I’m not following how it’s supposed to help now.”

“Because, dear sister, something about this map has been bothering me. It was clearly imbued with magic somehow.” He grimaced, but went on, “For a while, I thought the nagging feeling was only because of that, and I told myself to forget it. But maybe it can help…”

Tolek dumped the map on the table in front of Cypherion, and everyone gathered closer.

“When we’re done with this hunt, don’t go into cartography,” Cyph muttered, leaning around Vale’s shoulder to study Tol’s handiwork.

“I’d be wonderful after I learned properly, and you know it,” Tolek argued. “But that’s beside the point. Kakias had these markings on her map. I copied them down, see?”

He gestured to small X’s strewn about the continent randomly. “Do any of these locations seem familiar?”

“That could be Palerman. Maybe Brontain.” I searched the scattered markings for any other familiar areas, and my second pulse sped. “Firebird’s Field?”

Cypherion pointed to one in Mindshaper Territory, an inch south of the mountains. “That could have been where the pit was. We were below ground, so we can’t be sure. And there’s one in Valyn.”

“Kakias’s map charted the emblems?” Jezebel gasped. “But why? Or how ?”

“Kakias was once supposed to search for them,” I recalled. “It’s why Bant shed his spirit into her. It didn’t work properly, but Kakias wanted power and knew if the chosen found these, they could stop her. She may have been rotten and twisted, but the queen was smart. She must have narrowed down ideas, so she could stop me from getting them when the time came.” I shook my head, tired of playing the game of our dead enemy. “What’s more important now is, where are the Soulguider ones?” I leaned closer, searching the desert on the small rendition.

“What’s in that region?” I asked Erista, pointing to an X that was far west in the desert. I knew some about Soulguider terrain, but not enough to specify something so important.

Erista’s brow furrowed for a beat, then her mouth popped open. “Valyrie said to visit the land of your ancestors?”

I nodded enthusiastically, something finally, finally , coming within reach.

“She may have meant it literally.” Erista looked between Jezebel and me. “Your grandmother hails from the Lendelli Hills, does she not?”

“She does,” I said.

“This mark looks to be in approximately that area.”

“The Lendelli Hills,” I muttered. Where our maternal grandmother was born, a land she’d told us stories of our entire childhood. Of sand dunes and whispering secrets on the wind.

I stared at the map, wings fluttering in my chest as the group moved around me, and wondered what tales the spirits held for us there.