I need to find Sera, she thought, and then her whole body was wrenched back and flung forward and she was falling fast, too fast, everything blurred, the wind howling in her ears, and just when she thought she couldn’t take it anymore, her feet hit solid ground and a cloud of dust engulfed her.

And there was Sera. Real, true, living, breathing Sera.

“Leela!” she cried. Then they were running, colliding into each other.

“You’re here,” Leela said breathlessly.

Sera pulled away, tears sparkling in her eyes. “You are here!” she cried. “How . . . how?”

Leela held up her wrist with the moonstone cuff. “I was right,” she said. “It’s the moonstone, Sera. It saved you. It brought me here. Moonstone allows us to travel between the planet and the City. It does so much that we never knew.”

Sera was examining the bracelet with awe. “Where did you find this?”

“In the temple spire. There is a secret place beneath it. The High Priestess has been hiding all the moonstone inside it.”

“Of course. She is so afraid.”

Leela whirled at the sound of an unfamiliar voice and stared in shock at the ancient Cerulean woman standing before them. “Who are you?”

“This is Wyllin,” Sera explained. “She did not die. She has been here on the planet all along.”

“Wyllin?” Leela more mouthed the word than spoke it. “But . . . how can you be alive and also have formed the tether?”

“Because there is a way,” Wyllin said. “A way to create the tether without death, though it leads to death in the end, anyway. Just a longer, slower one.” Her words seemed to carry a weight that grew heavier as she spoke, and she leaned against the fountain. “The circlet Elysse wears is the first moonstone Mother Sun ever gifted the City, passed down from each High Priestess. It contains all the power and knowledge of every single High Priestess who has ever lived. That was how she learned about the fruit, about how to make Cerulean magic into another tangible form, one that could be consumed instead of one that was merely connective. It was done centuries before we were born, by a High Priestess named Elbeth, she told me. As a precaution against a long voyage through space. She wished to see if she could preserve Cerulean magic and use it to boost the magic within her people during the journey—it was she who first put a Cerulean in a stalactite. But it was done willingly and not for very long.”

“It is not being done willingly anymore,” Leela said sharply.

Wyllin’s eyes turned sad. “No,” she said. “I imagine not.”

“But why has the High Priestess left you here all alone?” Sera asked. Wyllin gazed up at the tether with tenderness, almost the way a mother looks at a child.