But if Brandon was right—and as much as I disliked his general ambiguity, he had yet to lie to us—then the righteous and wonderful and much beloved Hrista was our enemy. I knew nothing about how to defeat a Valkyrie. Where would I even start? Would light deprivation weaken her? Maybe, but there were other sources that would allow her to charge her weapons and powers. Myst had fared pretty well with Astra by her side, for example.
“What will you do if Hrista is to blame?” I asked Myst. It earned me a glare from Regine, which made my spine stiffen, but the question had been warranted by these new and unknown circumstances.
“We cannot let her get away with it,” Myst replied firmly, and a weight fell from my shoulders. I’d gotten comfortable with Valkyries on our side, not against us. The thought of losing their support scared me. “But I need to see her. I need to talk to her, to hear Hrista say it out loud…”
Regine shook her head again. “I’m still not buying it. Sorry.”
“Why not?” Richard asked. There was a dash of cynicism in his question, and I knew where he was coming from. How could such celestial beings be so naïve as to think that their own would always be flawless and beyond reproach? Perfection didn’t exist. We all screwed up in one way or another. Even Reapers had done horrible things. How were the Valkyries so childlike to think they wouldn’t slip up?
“Because I have known Hrista for a long time,” Regine replied, but her tone suggested even she knew it wasn’t enough to sustain her argument.
“You have to admit that she changed,” Myst said, her eyes lowered. “Not long before, the Spirit Bender had been destroyed once, and it had broken Hrista. Then Visio happened, and she thought she’d get another shot at being with him. Brandon was right about one thing—nothing has been the same since that day. How often have you seen Hrista since then?”
Regine gave her a curious look. “Barely.”
“So how can we completely dismiss Brandon’s accusation, when we’ve been unable to find her? It’s why I’m here, after all…”
“The problem is you’re both stuck,” I said. “You can’t get into the real Shade. You can’t go back to Purgatory. HQ controls this strange place, and we all need to figure out who’s in charge and how we can beat them. No matter who the real enemy is, I have to ask… can we count on you two?”
Regine exhaled sharply and walked over to Isabelle’s side. The girl was in deep sleep, Viola’s hands still moving up and down in a bid to speed up her metabolism. “I understand she might have answers,” the Valkyrie said, looking at Isabelle. “I think I might be able to help her wake up sooner, though I cannot promise much. My expertise isn’t with living creatures.”
“That’s Regine’s way of saying that yes, you can count on us both,” Myst said, smiling at me. For a moment, the entire world felt right again.
Sure, we’d made progress. We’d saved our friends. But the path ahead was still narrow and dark and sinuous, snaking through the great unknown that was the false Shade. There was so much we still didn’t know, and the prospect of facing a Valkyrie as our enemy didn’t help. We missed our parents and our families, our friends, and our lives from before this nightmare had begun.
Most importantly, we missed peace and balance.
The universe felt wrong, and it was up to us to restore it, to bring it back to what it had once been. I hadn’t felt this strange or scared since Visio—a life I’d left behind without any regrets. I’d just gotten used to sharing the Spirit Bender’s power, but this? This was too much, even for me. I glanced at Myst and allowed myself a moment to bask in the sunlight of her hair. There was more to my attraction toward her than just the spiritual component. There was something physical too, and the combined force left me spinning.
She was the guiding light I’d follow through to the end. She’d come to us in this deadly darkness, and she would help us return to the brightness of our normal lives. “Will you go with us and Brandon to see for ourselves if Hrista is, in fact, responsible?” I asked, determined to find the truth as quickly as possible.
“I will. And so will Regine,” Myst said.
In that moment, I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that our turn had come. We would take the fight to HQ this time, whether we were ready for it or not. It had to be done. The truth could no longer be left in the dangerous hands of shadows.
Unending
As soon as we set foot inside the Temple of Roses, I knew we were in the right place. Obviously, that had already been confirmed, but every fiber in my undead form vibrated with confirmation. Tension trickled through my veins, thick as blood but cold as ice. The World Crusher was here, and she was furious. She had been furious for so long, time itself had lost track of the years and the ages.
The white walls of the temple were covered in black and gold images of the past—but not Biriane’s past, I realized upon a closer inspection. The Ghoul Reapers scampered across the smooth floor, spreading out before they gathered around a massive black marble lectern that hovered a few inches aboveground. I took a moment to study the walls, as Tristan
