When Eliana found the Prophet’s door, a sick heat rushed down her body. A moment ago, the door had not been there—she was sure of it. Thick swaths of blood, both red and blue, slashed across its surface.

Now, Eliana!

Eliana pushed to her feet, searching for Remy. More cruciata were slinking over the walls. They tackled the angels, lashed them with their tails.

In their midst, Jessamyn fought a single angelic soldier. She swung her sword at him; their blades crashed together and locked. The angel swore at her, the ripples of his fury ricocheting through the plaza. Eliana knew that look. He was trying to get at Jessamyn’s mind but couldn’t.

Her skin prickled. A hidden door. A thwarted angel.

The Prophet was everywhere.

The angel fighting Jessamyn spat a curse in Lissar. Eliana had come to know the word well. Corien shouted it at his servants, often flung it like a knife into Eliana’s mind. The Prophet had translated it for her. It meant whore.

Jessamyn bared her teeth at her attacker. Sweaty strands of red hair had come loose from her braid and clung to her neck. “My name,” she shouted, her voice cracking, “is Jessamyn.”

The angel shoved her to the ground and raised his sword. Eliana looked away before it could fall.

Simon was running toward the Prophet’s door, an unconscious Remy slung over his shoulder. He locked eyes with Eliana’s. “Go, now!”

Eliana ran for it, but she saw at once that there was no latch. Her power rose like the heat of an explosion. She punched her fists toward the door, castings ablaze inside her clenched fingers.

The door shattered. Shards of stone went flying. Beyond it, narrow stone stairs descended into darkness.

Eliana ran toward them, choking on clouds of white dust. Once Simon passed over the threshold with Remy, she whirled back around and flung her palms at the door. Rock and dust reassembled in seconds, flying back into a solid wall of rock, sealed tight against the city beyond.

In the darkness, Eliana heard only her own ragged breathing, her own pounding head. The tunnel had swallowed all sounds of battle.

She found Remy slung over Simon’s shoulder, cradled his cheek in one hand, and held her other before his mouth. A faint puff of hot air, then another. He was breathing. Weak with relief, she stepped back, away from the heat of Simon’s body. They stood for a moment, the silence thick and scorching between them. Eliana’s castings threw a faint golden light across the scarred lines of Simon’s face and the iridescent blightblade still clutched in his hand, dripping blood.

Eliana glanced at it. “Is he in there?” she said tightly.

“No.” He would not look at her. “I tried long ago. He’s too strong for blightblades. They can’t hold him.” Simon flicked the blade a little, as if scorning it. “It’s the other angel in here, the one whose body he momentarily took possession of to find you. The blade will have weakened him, though. That will buy us time.”

Eliana stared at Simon, hardly seeing him. It was too strange, standing in the near-dark beside him. As if the past months hadn’t happened and they were back where they had begun.

Come to me, little one. The Prophet sent her a feeling too muddled to decipher. Simon knows the way. I’ll explain everything once you’re here.

Simon shifted Remy on his shoulder and turned away from the steady gold burn of Eliana’s hands.

“Follow me,” he said, his voice flat, unreadable.

She wanted to seize him, burn his face with her castings until he writhed as she had, until he screamed her name as she had screamed his.

Only the Prophet’s gentle voice stayed her hands. I’m sorry it had to be this way. I took no enjoyment in it.

Eliana said nothing more to either of them. By the light of her castings, she followed Simon down the stairs. She couldn’t look away from the dark blond crown of his head, mussed and bloody from battle. She imagined grabbing it, then smashing his face against the stairs. Her head ached from Corien’s last attack, ready to split open, and she almost wished it would, for then she wouldn’t have to face what came next. She felt numb, as if she had entered another world, one in which she understood nothing. Her legs moved of their own volition, carrying her deeper into the endless darkness. Her throat ached with each frigid inhalation. The air had grown cold.

At last, the stairs ended. Beyond them spiraled a web of tunnels and chambers. Three people with the bustling efficiency of soldiers hurried by with weapons, packs of supplies, clean folded linens. Their eyes, when they found Eliana’s, were clear.

They stopped to watch her, and then four more hurried out of the shadows, breathless, their eyes shining. As she passed them, they sank to their knees and bowed their heads. They kissed their fingers and touched their closed eyes, murmuring prayers in her wake.

Beside the entrance to a chamber flickering with candlelight, Simon stopped. Still he wouldn’t look at her. He placed Remy on a bench outside the chamber, so tender and careful, even in his stark uniform emblazoned with wings, that Eliana nearly went for his throat with the knife Jessamyn had given her. Her imagination went crystalline with anger, showing her how the blade would sink into his chest and scrape bone. She thought of Jessamyn, how at the moment of her death, she had still believed Eliana intended to close Ostia and save the city, and felt the sharp rise of tears.

“You dare pretend kindness,” Eliana whispered.

A moment of silence. Then Simon turned to her, his eyes lowered. Her pulse drummed against her throat. Since that night on the shores of Festival, his face had been steel from brow to jaw. Now, every hard line had softened, haggard with weariness.

She wanted desperately to look away but could not. He seemed to shrink from her, as if she were too brilliant to be seen.

“It was the only way, Eliana,” he said, the first time he had uttered her name in months. His voice broke beneath the word, and his fingers flexed at his sides, as if he longed to reach for her. “That’s what she told me. It was the only way.” He drew a ragged breath, then at last lifted his gaze to meet her own.

She stepped back from him. That piercing blue, the full force of it like a strike to her chest. Once, it had held the heat of desire, the flint of anger.

Not once until now had she seen his eyes raw with grief.

A voice spoke from within the chamber. Gentle and familiar, though different than it had felt in her head. There was a clarity to it now, as if a veil had been lifted.

Eliana gratefully turned away from Simon, her knees liquid and her throat sour, and entered the chamber to her right.

In its heart, positioned between three flickering candles, a young woman sat in a polished chair. Pale and golden-haired, she wore a gown of rose and lilac that buttoned at her throat and mimicked the look of an armored breastplate. She held a sheathed sword in her lap, and her eyes were twin drops of ink. Colorless and ancient.