“How is this possible?” Kandra asked as they broke apart. “How are you here? How did you escape?”

“Leela,” Estelle said simply. Kandra gasped and turned to Leela as if only just noticing she was there.

“But how?” she asked.

“You may want to sit down,” Leela said. “It is a rather long story.”

Kandra sank down onto the bed, her eyes growing wider and wider as Leela explained everything.

“The High Priestess made up the sleeping sickness?” she gasped. “To steal Cerulean magic for the tether?”

Leela nodded. “But the tether is dying—the City needs to move. I’m not sure if she knows what to do now since the sacrifice failed. Sera didn’t break the tether. We may see another bout of sleeping sickness run through the City.”

“No.” Estelle’s voice carried the chill of her underground prison. “We cannot let her . . . no one should be subjected to what she has put us through.” She took a seat beside Kandra. “We can hear her. Through the glass. Through the liquid that suspends and sustains us. Bits and pieces. Sometimes she talks to herself. Sometimes she talks to others.” Estelle grimaced as if in pain. “At least I think she does. The other voices, the ones who are trapped alongside me, they are very old, they know more than I do. . . .”

She fixed her black eyes on Leela. “They told me a secret. The circlet, Leela. That moonstone is connected to every Cerulean in this City. It has been the moonstone of the High Priestess since the forming of the City itself. It was meant as a way to keep the High Priestess connected with her people, so that she would best know how to guide them. But it has been twisted to a dark purpose.” Estelle clutched at her chest. “She has been using it to siphon magic from the City’s population, for centuries. She has been weakening us, been stealing the magic from every single Cerulean. That is how she has been able to survive for so long, why she looks so youthful after nine hundred years. That moonstone can draw out Cerulean magic like a moth to a flame, without us knowing or feeling it. The circlet may seem small but it contains more power than anything in this City.” She shook her head. “She was feasting on our magic, she still is, and we cannot feel a thing.”

Leela felt her face go blank with shock. Kandra had one hand covering her mouth, her expression frozen in disbelief.