Cerulean magic had healing power, but there was no cure for a piece of metal that pierced the brain. Her vision grew black around the edges and Wyllin could feel her lungs shrinking inside her chest; there was not enough air, and she knew she should do something but she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t remember, there were bodies everywhere.

And then she saw him. The male her friend loved so much. With a long, cruel piece of metal in his hand. A rifle, she remembered. That’s what it was called.

“The head or else they’ll heal!” he was shouting. “We need the blood, it’s the blood that has the power!”

She told him, Wyllin thought in a daze. And now he wants it for himself.

“Wyllin!” Elysse was there then, shaking her. “We have to go!”

“It was him,” Wyllin said, stumbling to her feet. “Elysse, it was him!”

Elysse turned and saw the male. Their eyes met, and the flames in his seemed to extinguish for a fraction of a second. Then he raised the gun and pointed it at her head.

“No!” Wyllin screamed, and her mind cleared, the thought of home vibrant within her; she gripped Elysse’s hand, calling on her moonstone to return them to the City. The ring on her finger flared up and then they were spinning, their feet leaving the ground, everything a blur of color, and they burst through the atmosphere into space, but the stars held no comfort. When at last they emerged up through the pool and back into the Sky Gardens, Wyllin still could not find her lungs.

Elysse was shivering on the ground, sobs ripping out of her chest.

“He betrayed me,” she gasped over and over. “I loved him and he betrayed me.” She turned up to Wyllin, her face etched with agony. “He killed them, Wyllin. He killed them, he killed them . . .”

Wyllin held her but had no words to comfort. All she could see was Meranne’s body falling to the ground. All she could hear were the screams of the dying Cerulean they had left behind.

The High Priestess, Wyllin thought with a sudden chill. Had she died on the planet as well?

A Cerulean shot up through one of the other pools, her long wail echoing through the lush gardens.

“Dead,” she moaned, “all dead . . .”

Then a second appeared through a different pool, and then a third. They were crying and hugging each other the same as Wyllin and Elysse. Wyllin waited, holding her friend in her arms. And she waited. And waited.

No other Cerulean returned.

“Elysse,” Wyllin said in a daze. “I think you may be the High Priestess now.”

That was perhaps the only thing in the world that could quiet her friend’s sobs. She sat up, rigid, and looked at the other three survivors, huddled together.