Wyllin nodded and closed her eyes. “She had a plan,” she said. “And I agreed to it. For the good of the City. For the health of our people. But it was not meant to last this long.” When she opened them, they shone with tears. “I never thought I would see another Cerulean again.”

“Can you help Sera get home?”

Sera had almost forgotten her friends. Agnes was looking at Wyllin with a mix of awe and determination. “We have traveled so far. Please. We want to get her back to her city.”

Wyllin seemed to only just notice them as well. “Humans,” she said, confused. “Humans are helping you?”

Sera nodded. “They have risked much to bring me here.”

Wyllin’s smile was a private, gentle thing. “So she was wrong after all,” she said. “I am glad to see it.” She turned to Sera, but before she could say anything else, there was a flash of brilliant light and then something fell into the courtyard, sending up a cloud of dust that made Sera choke and her eyes water.

“What . . .” Leo gasped, coughing and swatting at the air.

When the dust cleared, a young woman was standing beside the fountain, looking utterly shocked as she stared around at the courtyard. And Sera felt all her fear and confusion turn to joy.

“Leela!” she cried.

Part Six

The Island of Braxos, Pelago
and
the City Above the Sky

32

Leela

THE POOL HADN’T FELT LIKE WATER WHEN LEELA JUMPED through it.

She’d expected liquid to soak her the way the stalactite had when she’d freed Estelle, but instead she’d fallen through a thick gelatin-like substance and emerged completely dry. She caught a fleeting glimpse of shock on the High Priestess’s face before she was tumbling through space, the stars bright around her, the stalactites swirling in her vision.

The descent took ages—at some point it felt like she was no longer even falling, as if she was simply suspended in the cold endless black of space. It was cold, colder than anything she’d felt before, colder than the glowing blue columns of the Sky Gardens or the frosty grass in the cloudspinners’ grove. Her lungs expanded and contracted, but breathing wasn’t comfortable here, not at all the same as she was used to. The planet never seemed to come any closer.

Until all at once, it did.

She hit the atmosphere and her skin sizzled for several painful moments, the tether turning from winking silver-gold-blue to a thin streak of fire. But before the terror was truly able to set in—that she might actually die and her theory of moonstone was wrong—a pearly mist engulfed her, cool and soothing like a balm against her skin. She hung suspended and sensed the mist was waiting for her to make a decision.