“Good luck,” Elysse whispered, so that only Wyllin could hear. She turned, the blood flowing down her arms, and jumped from the dais.

33

Leo

THEY RETURNED TO THE PRESENT WITH A JOLT THAT SENT a shock through Leo, even though he hadn’t moved at all.

The courtyard was too bright after the dimness of the Night Gardens. Leo felt mixed up, so many emotions coursing through him, most of them not even his. He could still feel Wyllin inside his mind, her thoughts, her fears, her terror as her feet left the dais.

He turned to the others; Agnes looked winded, Sera dazed, but Leela seemed to be one step ahead of them all, and Leo felt like she was satisfied in some way, as if she had finally found a missing piece that completed a puzzle.

“So that is why she has lied all this time,” Leela said. Then she shook her head. “Her motives may once have been pure, but they have become twisted and rotten. She clutches her power now. She does not want to relinquish it.”

“She has been through so much,” Wyllin said, sinking to the ground as if her legs could no longer support her weight.

“So have you,” Leela pointed out.

Sera found her voice at last. “What is a planet-keeper?”

Leo had noticed that as well, when Wyllin had mentioned the Cerulean who’d stayed on the planet of ice and roses.

“A Cerulean who finds her purpose on a planet,” Wyllin explained. She mopped at her brow, Sera’s necklace still clutched in one hand. “There was usually one, sometimes two, who would find a deep connection to a planet—whether it was romantic love, or friendship, or simply a love of the planet itself. It was often a traveler, but not always. Those were some of the most bittersweet goodbyes, a Cerulean who chose to leave her City.”

Leo tried very hard to ignore the way his blood was suddenly pumping through his veins, the tiniest ray of hope lighting up inside him. Sera was not a planet-keeper, no matter how much he might wish her to be.

“What’s a traveler?” Agnes asked.

Wyllin seemed bemused by him and his sister, as if she could not understand why they cared so much.

“Travelers were the first to go down when we tethered to a new planet,” Wyllin explained. “They would seek out life, assess the level of danger or intelligence, the richness of the earth and how long a tether might be able to hold. They would be the first to communicate, to make contact with the inhabitants if contact was deemed safe or necessary. Of course, there would be no more Cerulean travelers now. And there are no tether-tenders either, are there?” She dropped her head into her hands. “What have you done, Elysse?”

“So there were Cerulean who once looked after the tether,” Sera said.