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My heart skips a beat as I remember: “She might be hiding somewhere near, or even inside, this city.”
That’s the conclusion I’ve reached after spending the entire day searching for her across the other end of the island. She wasn’t there. Which means she must be somewhere close to here.
“But she can’t see the mist!” Horror rises in me at the thought. Most people can’t see the workings of the divine.
And if she blunders across its tentacles, it’ll take her, and the only chance I have of finding my kelai, not to mention reuniting with my only remaining family.
I turn to regard the mist again, that fear coursing through me. It’s remained exactly where it was, those tendrils gathering.
What is it waiting for?
I have no time to dwell on that. I turn to the others. “We have to signal to her. Warn her.”
“But that might alert our pursuers.” These grim words come from Li, Britta’s usually buoyant sweetheart.
He’s staring into the darkness, moonlight highlighting his pale skin and long black hair as he gives us this reminder: everywhere we go, the worshippers of both the Gilded Ones and the Idugu follow, both groups in a desperate race to capture us and hand us over to their respective gods.
I sigh. “At this point, we have no choice. It’s either that or—”
“You could use your combat state,” Li suggests, as if thinking out loud, but then Britta glares at him, another reminder: while I can still enter the combat state, I can’t use it to do much without pain striking every part of my body, rendering it unmovable.
I’m nearly powerless now, and that’s by design. One of the most horrible truths I’ve learned over these past few months is that my body is an arcane object that was created by the Gilded Ones for one purpose and one purpose only: to allow them to steal my power. My body was never truly mine to begin with.
By the time I fell from the cosmos to this world centuries ago in the form of the god known as the Singular, the Gilded Ones were already aware that their counterparts, the Idugu, were conspiring against them. Plotting to gain dominion over them.
So they schemed to find a way to finally and decisively win their never-ending war.
They did so by trapping a portion of my kelai in a golden seed, one that would eventually grow into a human-seeming body, given the right conditions and amount of time. One that would eventually form a small but powerful connection to the rest of my divine powers and give them a way to feed from it, take it for themselves.
But first, they needed the perfect vessel to bear their baby god, an alaki who could nurture such a creature in their womb without being destroyed by it.
They needed my mother.
Why she was that perfect alaki, I still don’t know. White Hands tried planting the seed in several others over the centuries, but it never quite took.
But then Mother came around, and I was finally born. A girl who would seem human, and then alaki, so as not to arouse suspicion, all the while growing in power. All the while, reconnecting, slowly but surely, to the rest of my kelai. And all the while, allowing the Gilded Ones, my false mothers, to slowly but surely siphon off what much of it they could.
But then we had our confrontation, and Etzli forced my ansetha necklace to grow roots into my body—roots Ixa almost immediately ripped out. In doing so, he accidentally severed the tenuous thread between myself and my kelai.
As a result, this body is failing. And soon enough, it will be dead.
Without my kelai to give it power, any abilities I use outside the combat state speeds up its disintegration. Now I have mere months, perhaps even a month, left.
I can feel it already, the growing emptiness inside me. The emptiness that signals my diminishing life force.
Just the thought has that all-too-familiar panic surging inside my mind. Then Keita steps forward.
“What if I send fires to guide her?” he suggests.
My heart leaps. “Fires?”
“Small flames. Wisps, really.” Keita sounds almost bashful. He’s been training every day, and control over his ability has increased in the past few weeks—a very welcome development.
Keita’s gift is related to his emotions—specifically, his anger. Any time he feels anything close to fury, heat pours out of him, so hot it sears his clothes and everything else in the vicinity. It’s a massive inconvenience, given that we had to leave behind our infernal armor, the golden armor made from alaki blood we all used to wear. Although it slowed us down and was too distinctive to blend in, it was also heat proof, unlike the dark leather we wear now, which has singe marks all across it.
I watch as he gestures and flames appear in the air. One more gesture, and they’re racing across the city.
“If she’s anywhere nearby, this should draw her out,” he says.
