But Leela simply reached out and took the circlet, clutching it in her hands, her jaw set. Elorin pressed her palms to her chest.

The High Priestess turned to Sera. “There is something you will need,” she said. She deftly plucked a strand of hair from her head and bent to bury it in the earth. She put her hand over the mound of dirt and a tiny sapling no more than a foot tall sprang up from the ground, winding through her fingers—a miniature Arboreal. And from its slender branches, a golden fruit appeared, growing larger and larger until the tree bent beneath its weight. The High Priestess plucked it and offered it to Sera.

“Eat this before you fall,” she said. Sera took the fruit, its skin soft, its flesh warm in her hand.

Then the High Priestess walked back to Wyllin. “Together?” she said.

Tears leaked from Wyllin’s eyes as the two ancient friends embraced. “Together,” she whispered.

“It is time to go,” Leela said, turning her gaze to the beach. “We have given all we can, I think.”

Sera nodded. Leela touched the moonstone in the circlet and Sera felt it beckoning, rippling through each moonstone on this planet, calling the Cerulean home. She turned to her human friends, looking scared and confused.

“Will you wait for me here?” she asked, and her voice broke.

Agnes was nodding and Leo said, “As long as it takes.”

Sera looked up at the tether, the twinkling chain that had forever altered the course of her life. “I don’t think it will be long.”

Then she called on her moonstone to take her to the City Above the Sky, one last time.

The Night Gardens were quiet as Sera made her way to the dais.

The High Priestess’s final fruit was running hot in her veins. Leela stood at the jutting glass balcony with Elorin beside her, an acolyte now that Klymthe had been stripped of her title. The circlet suited her best friend, Sera thought. It made her as powerful on the outside as she was on the inside. Cerulean bowed to Sera as she passed and the gesture of respect did not inspire insecurity and fear as it had before. This ceremony was so different from the last one.

Leela had returned the siphoned magic back to her people—she told Sera that the moment she had placed the circlet on her head and claimed the moonstone as her own that she could sense the Cerulean magic writhing inside it, begging to be released. She said it felt like turning on a faucet when she at last gave their magic back, a gratifying sense of release. The Cerulean held in the stalactites were healthy and well. Soon the City would move and the Sky Gardens would grow lush and green again and the Cerulean would explore new planets and learn the ways of the universe as they were meant to.