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Sera runs over with present-day Maribelle at her side. She slides to her knees, so bold that she doesn’t pay any mind to the Blood Casters crowding Bautista. She shoves away Luna, who laughs. Maribelle suddenly starts holding her stomach and screams; can she feel his pain too, even if she transported to Sera? I can’t focus as Sera slowly pulls out the infinity-ender from Bautista’s stomach. Everything is too agonizing to notice a difference. It’s so odd to feel all his pain and not see my own blood running down me.
“We won,” Sera says with tears flooding down her flushed cheeks. “We won. Not them! I will see you in the beyond, my sunray.”
His body is shutting down, but when Sera kisses him, there’s so much love that blasts through me. Love that I’ve never known because I’ve never taken this leap. Bautista wants to stay here, he wants to keep living, and I do too, but darkness conceals everyone, and it’s just us, dying together.
Then, right on the edge of death, gold and gray flames drop around me and I’m screaming in my own body.
I’m alive, I’m back.
I’m drenched in sweat and I haven’t felt this dizzy since when I used my powers for the first time. Brighton, Prudencia, and Wyatt are all at my side, and they want to know if I’m okay, if I saw Bautista or became him, if I discovered the ingredients. But it’s too much too soon.
My body is still aching, and I lift my shirt—not giving a single damn who sees—to make sure that there isn’t a hole in my stomach from where Bautista was stabbed. The only scars are my own. How Luna killed Bautista is what she intended to do to me the last night of the Crowned Dreamer.
I rock back and forth, haunted by how I felt Bautista’s death. I watch Maribelle in her dark yellow flames, hoping she can return to her own body before she has to feel every ounce of pain as her biological mother is killed too.
Forty-Seven
Honor
MARIBELLE
Sera is still alive, but all her light has left her.
Bautista’s pain may have left me, but Sera’s heart is so shattered it’s as if I’m reliving Atlas’s death all over again. Except she doesn’t have my rage. For all her talk about how she and Bautista won—a code to let him know they succeeded in getting baby Maribelle to safety, maybe even figuring out that power-binding potion—her brave face has fallen.
Luna rests her hand on Sera’s shoulder, and Sera doesn’t bother shaking her off. “You were worthy by my side. We were going to create a world where you wouldn’t need to worry about losing your loved ones as I have. No more visions of danger and death because everyone would be safe, untouchable. Instead you both betrayed me and tried to undo all my work. Tell me, my one and only. What do you think of this world of death as you hold his corpse?”
Sera looks her mother in the eyes. “It’s unfortunate I won’t be around to watch you die.” She turns to Bautista and kisses his lips for what she feels will be the last time. “I’ve seen the end already. Get on with it.”
“Very well,” Luna says. There’s remorse alive within her, but her need for survival is sharper.
Luna grabs the infinity-ender dagger, pulls Sera’s head back by her hair, and slices her throat. Sera ungracefully crashes against Bautista’s shoulder, blood pooling under her. By the time the pain begins, darkness takes over and it’s only me and Sera dying in it until my familiar dark yellow flames vanish and I’m back in my own life.
I suck in the sharpest breath and almost punch Tala as she tries pressing a cold towel against my forehead.
“I’m back, I’m back,” I whisper.
“You’re okay,” Emil says, still sitting where we first started.
Retrocycling has the potential to be beautiful. But this was a nightmare.
“I’m going to kill Luna,” I say.
“What happened?” Tala asks.
“Can someone fill us in already?” Brighton asks. “Curious minds.”
I’m half expecting to feel Sera’s emotions, but I only feel mine since I’m no longer by her side. There’s one takeaway I keep rolling around in my head. “How did we not know that Luna was Sera’s mother?”
“Wait—what?!” Brighton asks.
Everyone is as surprised as I was, and this is the problem. Sera being an alchemist herself wasn’t enough of a clue, but it’s certainly an important piece of the puzzle now. Why didn’t Mama and Papa tell me? Sera said it wasn’t necessary for me to know that I was her daughter, but why couldn’t they have trusted me with the knowledge that Sera’s mother was Luna? Maybe to them it didn’t matter, but it’s yet another family secret, and this better be the last one I hear from anyone or so help me.
“How did we not know?!” I shout.
“I’m remembering something,” Emil says. “When Luna had me hostage, she mentioned something about a traitor enthralling Bautista. She didn’t say anything else about them, but Sera fits the bill.”
“Why didn’t you mention that sooner?”
