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

Chapter 62

Chapter Sixty-Two

Ophelia

“Godsblood .”

The answer rang through the air, so confident and yet so uncertain. Because it shouldn’t be possible, not within the warriors or the Angels.

The sphinx’s teeth gleamed something ferocious as she grinned, and for a moment I thought that might be the last thing I ever saw. That I had been wrong in that guess and was now to suffer the tragic fate of a failed riddle: death at the maw of the sphinx.

Those teeth, the length of my hand, glimmered with predatory intent.

But then, she purred, “Very good.”

A relieved breath swept from me. “How is that possible?”

“To understand that, you must gaze upon the heart of the stream’s magic.”

Before we could ask what she meant, the sphinx rose. And behind her, stone grated against marble, another archway forming in the wall. The babbling of water returned, much louder this time.

The sphinx lumbered on her great paws through that door, a silent instruction to follow.

Uncertainly, Jezebel and I looked to Erista. She nodded, and despite the fact that she knew of something going on here that she hadn’t told us, I trusted her. Our Soulguider grandmother had instilled the importance of secretive predictions in us from a young age.

We crossed into the new chamber, waterfalls of all sizes and speeds cascading from spouts and gaping mouths up the sparkling alabaster walls, cut to look like craggy cliff sides. Through pockets in the stone, rivers rushed.

Cyphers dotted the room, a veritable abundance of magic pouring into a central pool taking up the majority of the chamber’s floor.

The sphinx sat in the bank’s long grasses, her tail swishing behind her, and tucked in her wings. “Step forward, sisters of myths.” She nodded to Jezebel and me, and with eyes carefully searching our surroundings, we did.

“Now bow over this core of magic and allow it to enthrall you and sweep you away, so you may find the answers you seek.”

I whipped my gaze to her. “How can we be sure you won’t hurt us while we’re distracted?”

“You can’t truly,” the sphinx purred. “But you must take my honorable, god-given word as enough.”

To trust a god-blessed creature? Never in my extended lifetime did I think I’d do that. But I didn’t have an option if I wanted answers. And I supposed, as a woken myth, she may not be so different from Sapphire, whom I trusted intrinsically.

“You okay with this?” I checked with Jezebel.

She cast Erista a look I couldn’t read, but there was hurt layered within. Later. We’d figure all of that out later. “We’ve come this far,” Jez said.

Together, we knelt at the pool’s edge.

“You do not need to submerge yourself,” the sphinx instructed. “Simply, look .”

Skeptically, I gazed into the waters. It reminded me of the pool in the cavern we’d kept Sapphire and the khrysaor hidden in, but much larger and flooded with a more potent form of magic. One that reached out to even me, with my meager Soulguider inheritance, and tugged on the possibilities of my power.

The dazzling water rippled gently, like a breeze wafted over it, and the crystal surface clouded.

The sphinx began speaking again, that same melodic tone as when she’d given us the riddle. “My mistress was always more than an Angel.”

A mural swirled—a story unfolding. Beside me, Jezzie inhaled and grasped my wrist as Xenique’s beautiful face filled the image. Her wings flared behind her and cast a sheen on her dark skin and kind smile.

“The blood of the gods beat through her veins, a daughter of Artale herself.”

What?

I meant to ask it aloud, but it seemed the sphinx’s magic had stifled our words as she spoke.

“Xenique, the Prime Warrior of the Soulguider clan, was a demigod. Child of the Goddess and a human consort, a powerful, powerful being born of true love.” Two shadows wavered on either side of the Angel, a golden tether between them. They stood in a chamber much like this one, cascading waterfalls and cyphers haloing their forms.

“The influence to see death ran through her veins, a magic straight from her Goddess mother. To Xenique, death was a portrait layered over the true world, a veil of sorts, through which she saw every fate that would befall those around her.”

The image shifted, Xenique’s surroundings blurring and dulling. Lives extinguishing. Everything but the Angel’s exquisite face took on that gray-tinged veil she saw through.

And the smile that had seemed so kind, so loving—it didn’t truly reach her eyes.

No, in those amber depths, fear and sadness lurked. Loneliness.

The sphinx went on, “Because she saw destruction everywhere she went, Xenique asked the gods for a defender.” The Angel fell to her knees in this very chamber, muttering unheard prayers to the waters. “But she made a mistake. She asked her questions too broadly. And instead of her mother or a more understanding God, Lynxenon answered.”

The God of Mythical Beasts . Lynxenon had heard Xenique’s plea, and in return?—

“That is how I came to stand at her side. He chose the sphinxes for our tie to Artale. A defender. A protector who kept all others away, something which may have actually made her lonelier and less understanding of her own magic.”

Sure enough, as Xenique sat in her revered seat above the desert, the rest of her warriors were nothing but blurs on the landscape. And that murky veil remained around her.

“Of all the Angels, she most longed for the connection of the seven to return after their inner feuds caused them to split. Because while she may be distanced from her warriors and guardians, at least those higher beings understood her.” A dignified scoff. “Or, she hoped. She was always different than the others, thanks to her status as a demigod. It is why she demanded the secret never be spread among all seven clans. That only her people may know.”

Flashes of images sped through the rippling waters. Of Xenique, isolated and alone, wings drooping behind her. Of her attempting to reform relationships with the other Angels and being handed denial after denial. Only Ptholenix and Valyrie deigned to meet with her after many years of pleading.

“I, and my sisters, were her companions,” the sphinx went on. “Until that wretched Ascension Day.”

Wretched?

The water splashed like an explosion beneath the surface, shooting high above us, and the entire scene dissolved into seven Angels gathered in a field of burning flowers. Six others stood at their sides.

Are those ?—

The image went up in flames.

No—not flames. It was a flaring, golden light streaked with different facets of power. Turquoise and orange and lilac wove without, more colors there and gone too quickly to name.

“That day, the Angels were forced to sacrifice all the might they bore on this continent, in order to uphold another.” The light burned and burned. The sphinx’s voice rose, crashing through the chamber. “They left behind stagnant pieces of magic, meant to be uncovered so that the chosen may break the curse the Ascension locked them away in. So you may free my mistress and the others from that horrid prison.”

It is their spirits locked away? That is what I need to free?

The sphinx ignored my silent questions. “It is that curse which runs through your blood, the Angelblood the marking of it. Activated by the blood of the gods.”

That final sentence rang through the air, and the water stilled, the light fading.

The vision released its hold on me, the chamber swarming around us in a rush of cypher-and-magic scented air. I fell backward onto the bank, panting. Dozens of questions bombarded my mind.

“The agent that activates the Angelblood.” I met the sphinx’s gaze, my breath shuddering from my body. “The answer I’ve been searching for as to how I was struck with this curse—it’s Godsblood?”

The sphinx sat, her tail swishing behind her proudly. “That it is.”

“How did I—” I swallowed. “How did I get Godsblood?”

“Your grandmother hails from Lendelli, the home of Xenique when she once lived. After the Ascension, the capital was moved east, nearer the mountains. But this land, these dunes, they were of my mistress’ own soul. They are where she lived, where she bore her children, and where they bore theirs for many generations to come. Until one strayed, falling in love with a Mystique, and abandoning her home here.”

Chills spread across my skin, and I swore I could feel that ancient thread of Godsblood beating through my veins.

“Are you saying our grandmother is a descendent of Xenique?” Jezebel asked. “Of a demigod? That the blood of the gods runs through our mother’s line?”

The sphinx nodded.

“But…we were always told her family was of the lower Soulguiders,” Jezebel argued. “An unimportant line.”

I let out a breath, my eyes falling closed. “Of course, we were.” I turned to my sister. “Xenique went to lengths to hide her Godsblood. Probably tampered with the histories and ruling classes to elevate other lines above her own.”

“Why?” Jez shook her head, but I didn’t quite understand her denial when I could see in her eyes she already knew the answer.

“It made her feel isolated. Why would she want her descendants to experience that, too? Something as powerful as the blood of a god could cause problems between clans.” I looked to the sphinx for a confirming nod. “It sounds like Xenique wanted peace between them all. She wanted her people to feel included, so she wove the secret of the Godsblood into their magic, their history, so no one could know.”

Did our own mother even know what ran through her blood?

Jezebel whirled on Erista. “Did you know?”

“Not everything.” The Soulguider’s eyes were wide and pleading. “I’ll explain later, I promise.”

Something stiff passed between them, and the fear clearly played out on my sister’s face. Had Erista known secrets about her throughout their entire relationship? Had that been the impetus for their bond in the first place?

Spirits, I hoped not. The heartbreak was already cracking across Jezebel’s features.

She shut it down, though. A coolness I wasn’t used to took its place.

Godsblood , I repeated to myself. We needed to figure out the rest of what the sphinx had to share, then we could leave, find the Soulguider emblem, and free the Angels—or their spirits—from their prison.

I plucked another question from the waiting line of them in my mind. “If we both have Godsblood, why is only my Angelblood active with the Angelcurse?”

“Twentieth birthdays are so important for Soulguiders, are they not?”

I blinked at the creature. My mother had always instilled that in us. When a Soulguider turned twenty, their true purpose was revealed to them. Twenty is an important year in your heritage, Ophelia , she’d said again and again as my birthday approached last year.

We’d shirked the idea, my sister and I, choosing Mystique traditions, but for half of our mother’s side, it had been an important year. And it was precisely that night, following my birthday celebration, that Damien appeared to me for the first time.

When I’d been drunk off sparkling wine, drowning the thoughts of what the night should have been. Only days after finding Malakai’s spear. Heartbroken and longing and so damn naive to the workings of the world around me. To what was waking within me at that very moment. When I’d stumbled upstairs to my room in my family manor and crawled into my bed only to be awoken by blinding Angellight for the very first time.

The magic within the Godsblood must have been potent enough to overrule my claim on the Mystiques and initiate the Angelcurse. Little could, but the will of a god? Not much could trump that .

But…twenty?—

A new fear lodged a breath in my throat. “Will Jezebel receive the Angelcurse when she comes of age?” I gripped my sister’s hand tightly, her cold front remaining up. I’d been ravaged by this damn curse. I wouldn’t let that happen to her.

But the sphinx shook her head. “Not if you complete it. Finish the task, and the curse will never touch another again.”

I released a breath.

“We thought the Angelcurse was the cause of my magenta eyes. If Jezebel has the potential for it as I did, and the fate wasn’t activated until my twentieth birthday, why were my eyes always a sign of it?”

Spirits, it was such a frivolous thought, but my mind reeled.

“Only one life can harbor the curse at any time.” She shrugged those powerful shoulders, her wings ruffling. “It is my suspicion that if you fail, the curse will transfer to your sister upon her twentieth birthday, and the signs will show, as well. Now that the bloodlines of Angel and Goddess have merged naturally, anyone born unto you will know the same fate. Always the oldest first.” She added again, voice dark, “Should you fail.”

Should I die , she meant.

If I failed, Jezebel would be left with the Angelcurse. My chest hollowed at the consideration of it. I’d been uncertain if I even wanted to complete the thing or if perhaps Annellius was correct in hiding it. That the Angels had toyed with our lives enough and it was time to fight back.

This wiped all possibility of that from the table.

“If we have Godsblood from our mother’s line, how did Annellius get it?”

The sphinx answered, “Annellius discovered the curse within Alabath Angelblood and activated it himself. He tracked down a descendant of the goddess and drank from the source.”

My stomach turned. So desperate. He was so desperate and greedy for power, he took a warrior’s blood in the worst possible way to activate this curse. One he turned his back on in the end, anyway. It was a cruel kind of irony.

What could have been that bad? What did he learn that made him decide he didn’t want to complete the curse cast when the Angels ascended and instead doom future generations of Alabaths to carry on a cause he was too cowardly to face? Especially when he had already gone to such egregious lengths.

Could freeing the spirits of the Angels truly be that bad?

There was only one way to know for certain. I looked up at the sphinx, steeling myself to ask the question.

Briefly, a part of me faltered—didn’t want to know.

A scared, shriveled piece of my wayward spirit wished to remain in denial for a moment longer. To hug naivety because certainly, certainly , it would be easier to face than whatever I learned next. To hear the reason I’d been exploited.

But I knew, deep in my soul, that was never truly an option. I was saddled with this Angelcurse and the heavy decision that would follow once I heard the truth.

I took a breath, and it weighed down my lungs like it was a life-changing inhale. One that would alter the trajectory of everything that followed. The last innocent one of my existence before I was forced to make choices no mortal should be responsible for.

With my sister’s hand locked in mine, the Godsblood and Angelblood and Spirits knew what else pumping through my veins, I asked, “It isn’t only the Angels’ spirits that need to be freed, is it?” A shake of the sphinx’s head. A squeeze of Jezebel’s hand. A breath through my traitorous, dry throat. “Then, what is the purpose of the Angelcurse?”

The sphinx smiled all those sharp teeth. “The purpose of the Angelcurse is to free the Warrior God.”