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

Chapter 69

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Ophelia

Let’s wake a god .

Tolek’s words rang along my bones as I gripped the pouch containing the emblems at my side. As I turned back to him to pull him down to kiss me one more time, seeking his strength, and ran my fingers through Sapphire’s mane.

Her ice-blue eyes bore into mine. “Let’s wake a god, girl,” I repeated to my pegasus.

Like I had in the other cavern, I summoned a strand of Angellight and sent it whirling above our heads, a chandelier worthy of an Angelic theater ruined by time.

Power buzzed beneath my bones—all the way down to my ravaged spirit—as I approached the front of the theater. The magic of myths brought back to life, of prophecies fulfilled and legends trapped within stone, thundered. My second pulse—the one rioting in my veins since the day I first found Malakai’s spear in our clearing back in Palerman—sprang to a gallop.

It was a rhythm in the dark cave, roaring over the breathing of the man I loved and mythical creature woken beside him. Between each frantic beat, the journey that delivered us here played out in my mind.

Malakai and I, young and naive, sharing such innocent, blissful love in our clearing.

Beat, beat, beat.

Crashing to my knees in my parents’ kitchen when they told me he had died during the Undertaking.

Beat, beat, beat.

The tundra wolves and the Spirits that challenged me through my own ritual.

Beat, beat, beat.

Finding Malakai…then losing him again.

Beat, beat.

Daminius and the immortality ritual, the toppling buildings and losing my father, hearing of Tolek’s injuries and my heart crashing inside my chest. The time his heart stopped beating so briefly, the silence echoing in the infirmary.

Beat, beat .

Magic flooding my veins, Angellight bursting from my skin.

Beat .

Each Angel trial.

Beat .

Kakias’s death. Sapphire’s downy wings carrying me through the night.

Beat .

The raising of the sphinx.

Beat .

I pressed my hand to the weathered statue, and the beats went silent. And unlike all those months ago—when I’d touched the stone and it had seared my skin—this time, it flourished.

Warmth spread through my palm, seeping out along my veins, and a halo of effervescent white light radiated from the place my flesh met stone.

A welcoming Hello, Chosen Child, it has been so long , rang through my ears. My eyes slipped closed, and I breathed in that power, that calling.

With the inhale, the light ebbed. With my exhale, it expanded.

It was an energy unlike anything I’d felt before, the ether of the earth’s core burning molten. Through it, I heard every shuffle in the massive cavern, felt every slight breath of Tolek at my back. My muscles tensed with an unusual strength.

It was warrior instinct, warrior power —magnified.

“Like the scrolls said,” I muttered, gasping as that new sense rolled along my bones.

And if this was only a bead of it, a trigger released since I stood before the site with all emblems on my person, but the curse left unfulfilled… I shivered at the power that must lie within this stone prison. What that could do for the warriors…

My eyes snapped open, the light siphoning back into me, and I grinned over my shoulder at Tolek. “This is it.”

The amber in his stare ignited at the confirmation. Could he feel the magic trapped here?

I pulled another bead of Angellight from within me and sent it twining above the statue. “It’s all seven Angels,” I confirmed.

“They’re bowing or rising,” he said.

“See this one.” I pointed to a figure with its head missing, sliced clean from its neck. I remembered that identifying feature from the last time we were here, though I hadn’t understood it then. “I’m certain that’s Thorn.”

Tolek swallowed. “He lost his head. Like a crown had ravaged his mind.”

“And this here,” I continued, running a hand over the deep moss covering only one Angel, “is Bant. A symbol of his deal with Kakias.” The dark plant crept across the stone like those claiming, inky tendrils. “It’s like the shedding of his spirit and the havoc that ensued because of it.”

Tolek circled the statue, to where the Angels faced the wall in their crescent-shaped huddle. “Look at his hand.”

I followed, pulling my Angellight in closer. “He actually has a hand,” I observed.

“All five fingers, perfectly formed where others are worn.” Tolek nodded. Sure enough, Bant held one arm out as if reaching for the wall they faced, but that hand remained bare. “Ready to host a ring.”

Opening the leather pouch I kept tied to my belt, I willed my hands not to tremble. To not show a bead of fear.

I removed Bant’s ring and held it up. The stone set above the axes pulsed in the glow of my Angellight, seeming to sing near its rightful home. As the emerald refracted the light, a piece of me wished Barrett was here. That he could give his permission for what I was about to do with his family heirloom.

But I was the chosen of the Angels, the descendant of a demigod, and the raiser of myths.

The power of this choice laced my blood and bones.

Stepping up to the statue, I searched Bant’s form for any indication of what had driven him here. Of what—beyond an ancient, jealous feud with Damien—had dragged that moss along his skin. Weren’t Angels supposed to be incapable of such feelings? Of trivial, mortal emotions?

Yet here Bant was, the features of his expression worn over time, but the foliage creeping along his facade symbol enough.

I stretched onto my toes, reaching high to match the Angel’s massive form, and slipped that ring upon his finger.

And as metal slid around stone, a surge of power bolted through my veins, and the towering walls of the cave shuddered. A second tremor rolled through the land, moving like a slow, thick sludge, and sending me stumbling back into Tol. He caught me with arms around my waist, sheltering us both as small chunks of rock rained from above.

It was like those Barrett had reported during the war—the quakes in the mountains that lined up with each time I used the emblems while hunting them.

But I hadn’t even bled on them this time.

The magnitude of that power settled a rock on my chest.

My eyes locked with Tol’s as the shaking ceased. He nodded in encouragement.

Next, I took Gaveny’s pearl from my pouch, walking along the half-moon of Angel statues.

“That one,” Tolek whispered, placing a hand on my hip. I followed his gaze to a rocky figure that was broad and halfway down on one knee, what could have been a bow and arrow aimed at the ceiling.

And right at the head of that weapon, a smooth round notch waited.

Rolling the pearl between my fingers, I relished in that Angelic heat, let it fuel this choice. And I lifted the emblem.

I was about to push the second token home when a familiar cruel voice warned, “Do not replace any more emblems, Seraph Child!”

Immediately, my boots hit the ground, and Tolek and I had weapons in our hands. Lancaster stood with his queen, stoic. Not a blade in sight.

“ Why , Ritalia?” I spat.

“Finishing this task will unleash a horrible plague upon the land.”

“A plague for the fae, perhaps,” I bit back. “Because in the millennia since the Warrior God has been locked up, he will have seen the atrocious ways you fought his people.” Sapphire’s pained whine echoed through my mind. “How you’ve mauled his creatures!”

The fortitude of the Engrossian emblem sliding home heated my blood, the memory of the tremors racking the earth forging my strength. “I have felt the power the god promises his warriors. It is equal to the fae—perhaps more than. And why should we be forced beneath you any longer? Why should we be at the behest of your stronger magic?”

“Because there is a reason he was sealed away!”

“Jealousy!” I roared. “The known gods were afraid of what the power he was amassing meant for them .”

“And the things he wished to do with it,” Ritalia clipped. And there was a certain desperation in her tone that stalled me. Something I’d never heard from her before. “I do not know every detail—no one does. There is a prophecy passed from fae royal to fae royal, one that threatened of a warrior who would bleed and unleash a plague, but we have never known of the warrior and have never been able to speak in depth of it. Not until your ancestor shared what he suspected, but even he could not share everything.”

The queen took one step closer, continuing, “And I have been using my unique power to search for the next and uncover why this curse is twisting our magic with it. It is why I sent my hunter here. But remember what your ancestor chose. What he turned his back on, Child Kissed by Angels.”

I looked over Ritalia—at the tendrils of her disheveled hair coming lose, at the thin scratch someone had struck on her cheek—and considered everything she wasn’t saying.

The fae were our enemies; I’d been taught that since birth. Give them a sliver of an opening, and they’d raze the entirety of Gallantia. We couldn’t trust Ritalia, not only with the power locked inside the emblems, but with the interest of the warriors.

But…Annellius was a warrior. And he had seen something in this curse so horrid, he couldn’t find it in him to complete the task. He’d asked the fae for help after discovering what the emblems were for. After consuming the Godsblood and unlocking the ability to command unknown power.

Gaveny’s pearl beat in my hand. I clenched my fingers around the smooth glass.

What could be so wicked that Annellius deemed it worse than death?

He was a coward .

The Angelcurse had not been resolved, it had only stopped being his problem. He’d passed the damn thing on to me, all these centuries later.

And if I didn’t do this, if I didn’t return these emblems to the statues and spill my own blood, that chain would continue. Jezebel’s tawny eyes flashed through my mind. If I followed Annellius’s footsteps, she’d bare the curse next. A girl who had already been handed untold depths of magic, who didn’t deserve this pressure on her life.

And after her, it would go on to any Alabath children I bore, if I didn’t die before that time. A mix of Godsblood and Angelblood—something so blessed and so cursed all in one.

I ran my thumb across the glassy edge of Gaveny’s pearl. Watched Angellight reflect off the smooth surface. Behind me, Tolek awaited my decision. And across the cavern, Ritalia’s stare burned into me.

I couldn’t hand this task on to anyone else. If I refused—well, the world was unraveling around us. The magic was poised to burst, to take the seas and the skies.

Remember what your ancestor chose . It wasn’t noble, what he had done. It was greedy.

I couldn’t be as selfish as Annellius.

My gaze lifted to Ritalia again. Was she a foe…or a possible ally? A chance that could get the emblems far, far away from everyone I loved? From our continent?

But while that would be a relief of this responsibility, I couldn’t take it.

Desperation clawed at my chest. Do it , that selfish part of my mind screamed. Assuage yourself of this damn prophecy, banish this curse.

Deep down, though, it was never an option. Not one I’d take. Because though I fought fate at every turn—though I knew I could condemn the Angels—I couldn’t force the pressure of the Angelcurse off my shoulders.

The queen must have detected it, the waver in my mind. The slight, instinctual twitch of a step back toward Gaveny’s statue.

Because with a sharp demand, she shouted, “Hunter!”

“ No .” I spun, her words slicing through the cavern as I jammed the pearl of the Angel into his stony arrow and the tide of shimmering, sea-faring power washed through the cavern, abundant and roaring.

But Ritalia continued despite the rocking of the ground, like a determined boat caught on a stormy sea. As I spun back to her with the power of warriors crashing through me, the queen shouted to Lancaster, “Call in your favor.”

And I was pulling Xenique’s orb from my pouch as Lancaster said through gritted teeth, “Ophelia Alabath.” Unwillingly, I froze. “I call in my third owed debt. I demand you stop replacing the emblems into their Angel statues.” His throat bobbed on a swallow. “If you fail to comply, Tolek Vincienzo will die.”