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

Chapter 77

Chapter Seventy-Seven

Vale

The Fates screamed.

It was a glorious, glee-ridden cacophony rioting through my heart and spirit, starfire crashing through my mind at the freedom of our Angel.

And as pure, undiluted Angellight washed across the room, as it melted with the power of my nine Fate ties, the final latch on my readings snapped. And they barreled into me in one burst of starfire.

All of those moments I’d barely seen in recent weeks—all of the images I’d been trying to reach—poured out.

Annellius was on his knees, pleading before Damien. His eyes—they were a mix of brown and magenta, one fading into the next as the Godsblood took root in his spirit. But then?—

“ No ,” I gasped out.

Damien lashed a branch of his power across the mountaintop, and that ether dug into Annellius. It tore up his spirit—his soul. Blood leaked from his nose and ears.

“What have you done?” Damien asked.

And as Annellius died at the hands of his Mystique Angel, he echoed, “Brother, what have you ?”

It had been Damien. Damien who had killed Annellius after the first chosen decided not to fulfill the Angelcurse. I saw it now, in flashes as my nine Fates hurried to feed me the readings they’d been trapped with. Annellius piecing together the truth of the emblems—finding some of them, even—and the horror that sank into his gut when he learned the truth.

A man with him down in the catacombs, corpses chasing him. Killing him. And Annellius’s answering rage.

How he’d written to the fae, and upon refusal, returned the emblems where he’d retrieved them from. How the earth had accepted them back—likely some spell of the God of Nature—and Annellius summoned Damien atop the mountains, knowing he would die when he told the Angel what he did.

I had to tell Ophelia. She had trusted Damien, and this was what he was capable of?

But starfire flared before me, warming me down to my toes, which, in this plane, were bare, my skin and clothes clean of the blood and gore from the cavern.

And before me, the six gods took shape in a field of burning wildflowers, ripping magic from the Angels in what I now knew was the twisted Ascension. The day the gods locked the Angels in that prison with the Warrior God in order to keep him docile.

I watched, horror sluicing through my chest, as power was siphoned from the Prime Warriors. And a part of me understood why they wanted out so badly—why they were willing to do anything to break their Angelcurse.

When the winged beings disappeared, the six gods turned to me—they could see me .

And I nearly fell to my knees when one of them winked. Moirenna, the Goddess of Fate and Celestial Movements. It had to be her, with the way starlight seemed to shine from her ivory skin.

“Fatecatcher,” she said, and my heart leapt into a gallop, “we will see you soon.”

As the session faded, I scanned the other gods. Thallia, with her cascading dark hair and willowy frame, eyed me knowingly. And there was something achingly familiar about her.

But it was Aoiflyn, the Fae Goddess, who caught my breath.

Because I’d seen her before, in a recent reading. I hadn’t been able to make out her face, but I recognized the thrum of her power. Even through the starfire barrier, it echoed with the reek of blood.

It had been Aoiflyn, bleeding unto the crowds of fae in that reading.

Aoiflyn’s blood, leading straight to Lancaster and Mora. Godsblood, binding their tongues and bargains. Godsblood, warring with the myth magic Ophelia bore. Godsblood, keeping that wound in Mora’s shoulder from healing, because the corpse’s bite was laced with ancient enchantment.

And as each god faded, taking the rolling, flaming hills of Firebird’s Field with them and locking our Angels away in the past, I remembered how Valyrie had warned Ophelia not to push at the whims of the stars. Had this been what she meant? That the Angels did not want me to see the six beings now vanishing before me?

If so, I feared how close the gods had been this entire time.

And how soon we may see them again.