She would’ve been more enamoured with them if they weren’t wearing full face masks with eyes painted onto them.

  And she would’ve looked around the room more if a sudden dizzy spell didn’t overtake her senses and make her bend over, almost slamming her head against the table in front of her, her hands restricted to her back and unable to support her.

  “We’ve given you each a bottle.” The one with the voice, the braids and smooth dark skin, gestured towards the table. Indeed, there were two thick amber glass bottles with some sort of liquid inside. No labels. “We took the liberty of giving you something else during your nap.”

  Veaer’s skin itched, and her ears started to ring. A wave of rage had her fighting against the restraints, to get out, to get anywhere, to get in this person’s face and punch it. But her body wouldn’t cooperate. The side of her head helplessly twitched towards her shoulder.

  The one with the red hair stepped to the side where a small round table had a tray of more glass bottles of different shapes and sizes, and a few shot glasses. Two glasses were taken and placed in front of Veaer and Elise.

  “Simple terms—we’ve poisoned you for trespassing. You should have turned back. Or… not have followed one of my angels.”

  She flinched, causing a spasm along one of her arms. They knew, they knew. How did they know? Her gaze hovered to the red-haired angel who turned to their leader in some sort of surprise—she couldn’t see any proper expression. Was this the same angel-stranger who left the lift from the storage room, the same who pinned her in Tychon’s room?

  She had no doubt about the leader’s claim of poison, in how her body responded to each thought and movement, and how her mind continued to draw fuzzy at the edges, her lack of urgency being a reason to stay even more alert.

  “Fuck you!” Veaer screamed and thrashed even more, or she thought she was. The air was making her move in a sluggish way and she was afraid of bothering Elise with her tantrum. But hot fear and confusion pulsed in her heart and mind. “Your idiot should’ve thought about leaving a different way if you didn’t want people finding you.”

  The red angel bristled but the leader held his palm out. “We have measures for when this happens. This bottle has the antidote to your poison. You can have it. It takes a full bottle to take care of the poison—”

  “Then shut up and give it to us. Give it to her!” Tears cascaded down her face and she turned to watch the still blindfolded Elise. Poor Elise, her poor Elise. Her charade was impressive but concerning, was she already dead, or suffering in silence?

  “You’re a fast responder. Your body must be trying to fight the poison. Sweating, weakness, dizziness, heightened emotion. A true wolf caemi’s biology. It’s a wonder that Elise’s weak senti body hasn’t collapsed.” He carried on and snapped his fingers, and the red angel unscrewed the bottles and poured one shot from each, then closed them again.

  “Are you going to help us or not?” Veaer hissed, her voice clamped in her throat. It didn’t occur to her that she was asking the help of the ones who hurt her in the first place.

  “As I was saying, one full bottle, but you can only take one shot a day. If you have more, then you’re only setting yourself up for something worse, understood?”

  “Yes?! Oh, in the name of Ter and Mian, what do you want from me?” Veaer wailed and was about to thrash around again when—

  “Calm down, Veaer,” Elise said, her voice raw but there and real and alive.

  “So, the princess is awake,” the leading angel said with a twinge of wonder. “You seem very fine for someone who has poison coursing through her veins.”

  She did appear okay, mostly. Veaer glanced behind and saw that Elise’s hands were shaking at a shocking rate of movement. They needed that antidote.

  “You want us to join you,” Elise said, instead, and Veaer’s gaze snapped between everyone else in the room. “You know what we’ve seen down here, and you will give us a choice. Join you or die.”

  “You’re so clever.” The leader’s tone was upbeat but laced with malice. There was something about him that felt familiar, recent, but nothing was connecting while the room spun. “Join our legacy, and you get the shot, and the bottle.”

  “Legacy? We’re just kids, what legacy is there?” Veaer shot back and a pain in her stomach made her actually hit her head on the table this time, spilling a little off the top of her shot glass. She grimaced and whined.

  The leader laughed for a long time, letting Veaer curl up, and even Elise was starting to react with spasms and more shakes.

  “The four heroes have existed for a long time in memory. But why should they stay there? Or why should their power remain buried in history forever? They have the ultimate ability to transform and transcend, stronger than anything since they passed away. Every angel carved in marble came from the quartet’s image. Iris Galacia’s image. Angelus Caelum’s image.”

  The horrible irony of her awe and wonder towards the displays earlier, to how they were so connected to these people now racked her with anxiety and more tears.

  “The power of the past, the vision of the future.” He had said it in a language she didn't understand but repeated it in translation. Then, “Everything we do, and every ritual will bring us closer to their power.”

  “Including killing us?” Veaer frowned. She didn't know how plausible this legacy was to achieve, but she did know magic was stronger here than anywhere else in the academy. Tychon's ghost hovered over her shoulder, and she refused to face him.

  “Yes. Because now you know this, and if you can't join us, your existence will be troublesome. And...” He glanced between Veaer and Elise. “Excava and Rosell. What an interesting combination.”

  “There's nothing stopping us from refusing your offer. We can just leave this world behind.” Elise's low voice shook Veaer's core even more. “This isn't only about us. There's a reason why you're pitching us a position in your little society. Your Ascension Order.”

  Tychon's wings wrapped around Veaer and held her tightly. His bones dug into her back, and she crossed her arms as her skin pulsed in pain.

  “Hm. You already prove yourself useful. You know more than we think.” He turned to the red angel, and they left for another room.

  “I do.” Elise tilted her head, as her form of expression.

  “You do...” Tychon's cold, cold voice.

  “We're down a member and could use a couple more. Core members.”

  Clanking came from where the red angel went. Creaking old wheels against uneven floorboards. Tychon hovered next to the leader and his face was hollow and suffocating.

  "Down a member?" Elise asked, erring between caution and curiosity. "What happened to them?"

  He didn’t reply, but he did approach the table, slow and steady, and stood across from Elise.

  Veaer twisted her wrists to try and loosen the ropes, and stomped the floor when her ankles wouldn’t separate. “Get away from her!”

  He grabbed Elise’s blindfold and tossed it on the table. The princess kept her eyes closed though her eyelids twitched and her eyebrows furrowed. It only took her a few moments to adjust.

  The leader sighed and turned away.

  “We found him buried.” (A dirty shovel, with splinters in its handle.)

  “Covered in dirt, a hasty job.” (Pile and pile and pile.)

  “Shards of glass and stained feathers.” (Throw it all away.)

  “Desecrated. Disrespected. Our poor, poor archangel.”

  Elise stiffened. Veaer shut her eyes with prayers to the patrons under her breath.

  Spots of red butterflies appeared behind her eyes and stayed when she opened her eyes again.

  The other angel returned and wheeled in a long stone box, not unlike the ones found in the crypt.

  “Our dear leader is dead,” he said with a booming, convicting tone, and lifted the coffin’s lid. “Tychon Alastor Galacia found in Adraredon’s graveyard.”

  CHAPTER 28

  FINALLY

  At first no one said anything and nothing happened.

  Then their noses were attacked by a putrid, sour, musty, and rotting scent.

  Veaer wheezed and desperately struggled against her bounds so she could at least bring her hands to her mouth and nose. The smell made her head spin, and she was ready to pass out, but she saw as Elise doubled over with cry, and knew she had to stay awake.

  “Tychon!” Elise wailed, crumbling into herself, puddles of tears forming on the table as she thrust herself forward but could barely move, barely get closer. “Tychon, how long have they had you? Oh, my dear Tychon… who did this to you?”

  If Veaer hadn’t watched Elise do it, she would’ve been convinced that Elise didn’t kill him.

  What is going through her mind right now?

  Seeing the corpse of her best friend.

  Taken from his resting place.

  The only thing worse than being followed by his spirit in purgatory.

  Tychon’s ghost stared at his corpse and screamed, so much that his body distorted and ripped in places, his wings cracking, the feathers falling out. And then he disappeared, and the red angel placed the lid back on.

  “Thank Ter and Mian…” the leading angel mumbled, and then walked over to what looked like a vent in the wall, opening its shutters.

  Veaer’s vision only continued to worsen, and she attempted to lean over the table to suck the shot glass closer to her, but it was just out of reach. Her stomach began to ache even more now, not for the poison but the pure hunger that came with skipping lunch for folio work.

  “So now that we’ve gotten that out of the way,” the leader continued, grabbing a cloth and wiping his hands, “You can see how serious our situation is. No one can ever replace his aptitude for the spiritual, or his hereditary advantage, but we will make every effort to complete our ascension in his memory.”

  Her eyes watered and she blinked slowly. She looked at the leader, and then to Elise. She had done this to Tychon, and they thought no one else would ever know what happened to him. But the gods came forward and delivered him to those who must have known him best. These people and this place, a living reminder of who he was. Not even his body could be forgotten, kept in the morbid possession of these angels for whatever reason, and perhaps in their way of honouring him, in the most valuable crypt she had ever known, and alongside his powerful ancestors.

  This legacy could be her penance.

  “How do you expect us to contribute?” Elise asked, cracking voice reaching from the crevices of her throat, and tears reflecting in the candlelight. Veaer stayed quiet and was glad of it.

  “Our rituals work to increase our power and connection to the angelic realm. While you, a senti, may not be able to contribute an auratic ability, the more core members we have, the stronger our circle. We complete rituals once a week, recovering and studying on other days to avoid suspicion,” the leader explained, flawlessly. He seemed to have sufficient knowledge to take his position after Tychon.

  “Nothing else?”

  Veaer stared into the side of Elise’s head, hoping something would be revealed. Because Elise’s question didn’t come from a search for something new, it came from knowing something and wanting the angel to confirm it.

  “I can only remind you that this choice is between dying before the end of the day or returning to your dorm for a good night’s sleep and the potential for great power.”

  As Elise pondered on this, Veaer took advantage of the time to focus her vision and observe the room, which may lend an advantage if needed. There were no windows, which made sense if they were still underground, and two doors—one to the room that housed Tychon’s tomb, and one that she assumed was a path back to the crypt. What didn’t make sense was how pristine this room was. Circular stone brick walls, a hardwood floor. Two big, full bookshelves flanked the left and right side of the room. At the opposite end, there was a long table covered in cloth against the wall, on top a set of small wooden drawers pushed to the back, and before it a pile of items that looked vaguely familiar, but nothing she could specify from where she was.

  “I’d like to join your order,” Elise finally said with her chin held up, which earned a satisfied, slow nod from the leader and a flinch from Veaer.

  Neither Elise’s expression nor body language lent any clue to why she would want to join, or at least anything other than wanting to live. Because if it were just that, then she wouldn’t have needed to question, or take so long to answer. There was something else, and Veaer wondered if they shared the same intention.

  “I’m so pleased to hear this.” He turned to Veaer. “Will you follow her?”

  His mask of eyes bore into Veaer, and she already knew her choice. Even with every lurching and uneasy feeling taking over her—whether the poison, or her judgement.

  “Yes, I will,” Veaer answered, and she didn’t hide how her gaze dropped to the shot glass in front of her.

  The red angel hurried around the table and took a small knife from their belt. They cut the ropes on their wrists and then gestured to the shots.

  Veaer cupped her glass in two hands, cautious of spilling anymore, and sculled it. She whimpered at how it tasted like childhood, like undertones of sugarcane juice, sweet but slightly spicy, and a note of caramel. The pain across her body subsided, leaving a dull cramp in her legs, but her mind cleared, and her senses were returning back to normal.

  When she finished savouring her temporary cure, Elise had already placed her glass back down and was having her ankles untied.

  “Please note,” the leader said, as he walked to the door just behind them, “We have eyes—everywhere.” The masks didn’t help Veaer’s unease. “We will know if you betray the order, and we can do much worse than poison.”

  Veaer swallowed the spit that gathered on her tongue. The leader knocked the door twice, and from the other side emerged two others, notably a similar height to everyone else in the room, and while they had the same painted eye masks, they wore the thick dark hooded robes.

  The leader instructed the hooded people to lead them back to the surface, and then added, towards Veaer and Elise, “Return here on Sunday evening, eight o’clock, and we will conduct your initiation rites.”

  The tension in Veaer’s shoulders finally lessened when one of the hooded society members presented a secret exit from the crypts in the forest behind Miriam Manor. She had wondered at some point, during their winding navigation of even more corridors than before, if this was just another ploy to knock her out and drag her back, like a sick trick of entertainment.

  When the two members brought their arms over their heads and moved a thick slab of stone in the roof aside, afternoon sun struck the darkness around her. In her state of hunger and soreness, she vocalised a question on how no one had found this place before, which actually earned a proper response, unlike any other question she had asked on the way here.

  “How do you think the angels recruit protectors?” one replied as they climbed up and looked around, before gesturing for her and Elise to follow. “Anyone who is good enough to find these entrances and then the crypt, are deemed good enough to be part of the cause.”

  Veaer nodded, vaguely, concentrating mainly on putting her feet and hands in the right places. Her palms slapped the cool, wonderful grass of the surface world and she would’ve kissed the dirt but held back as her gaze caught the legs of Elise. She wouldn’t want to embarrass herself like that.

  “So how come you aren’t… core members?” Veaer tried for another question, steadying herself on the forest floor and then managing to stand. Dirt painted her knees, and her uniform was in disarray, plus the afternoon sun made it hard to ignore how sweaty she was.

  The protectors remained silent, and with one more look between Elise and Veaer, left the same way they came and covered the entrance again. Only now Veaer realised that the top of the stone slab was disguised with grass and moss, allowing it to remain flush against the ground. She couldn’t even work out how they’d open it from the surface.

  Finally absolved of being watched by strange angels and finding herself in the familiar sight of Miriam Manor, Veaer groaned loudly, her muscles deflating and her mind spinning with a desperate desire to sleep.

  She ran a hand down her face. “Patrons above, I’m ready to just—”

  Elise stared at her with those sunray filled, deep brown eyes as Veaer’s back was thrown into the rough bark of a nearby tree, her feet slightly slipping on loose leaves and damp grass, and her entire being trapped between two soft arms. She was left completely vulnerable, mouth hanging open, hand flying to her chest. Somehow every colour in the forest melted together with Elise and framed her in beautiful greens and browns.

  “Elise…?” Veaer barely managed to whisper, her breath unsure of which direction to go, where to go. She didn’t know what to do with her hands at all, finding it ill timing to tap her fingers, and settled on scrunching them together in front of her chest.

  An incredible smile burst across Elise’s face, her lipstick smudged from their underground ordeal, her straight hair sticking out in places that only made the expression seem fanatical. Not to remind the fact that Elise was slightly shorter than Veaer too.

  “Veaer,” Elise breathed, and her eyes widened.

  My name, Elise, that’s my name. That’s me, entirely, without the past and without the future, that is me right now. I’ve only been Rosell to you, but now I am Veaer.

  “Elise,” Veaer repeated, a short, questioning chuckle punctuating the name. She found the courage in her to unfurl her hands and bring them to the princess’ face. Her rose-gold cheeks were soft and lightly freckled and the perfect fit for her palms.