The cold did not seem so biting as it had on her previous visits; perhaps she was growing accustomed to it. The winding stair felt familiar, the blue and green lights a welcome sight as she emerged into the cavernous space with gardens growing from above like a plant-filled sky.

Sky Gardens, she thought. That is what I shall call this place.

Her feet carried her without thinking to the main pool, weaving her way through the circles where Cerulean rested beneath. The tether seemed dim today, fragile, as if some of the pure light had gone out of it. Leela turned her eyes to the heart of the moonstone. It pulsed weakly in its cone, more orange than red, and she knew this was the High Priestess’s doing. She looked up at the vines crawling around it, heavy with fruit, and wondered how she was ever going to reach one. They were far too high and there was nothing for her to climb.

Plop.

She whirled around. A fruit lay on the ground, only a few feet away, on top of the circle with Estelle’s name. Leela approached it cautiously. She was afraid to consume anything the High Priestess had touched, especially after she had seen the effect it had had on her. But Mother Sun had told her to—and while she didn’t trust the High Priestess one bit, she knew the symbols were not leading her astray. She crouched down to examine it, like a peach but smaller and without a hint of pink. When she picked it up, it was hot to the touch.

“Mother Sun,” she prayed. “Do not fail me now.”

And before she could think about it another second, she plunged her teeth into the fruit’s flesh.

The taste was everything Leela loved most in the world—toasted pine nuts and lavender tea and dates stuffed with cheese . . . it was her green mother’s smile and her purple mother’s laugh and her orange mother’s embrace . . . it was the singing of minstrel flowers and the pale light of dawn and the crook of the old willow tree in the Day Gardens.

And it was Sera’s heartbeat, most of all.

She did not realize she had eaten the entire thing until she held its small glowing pit in her hand. She stood and walked to the pool, dropping the pit through the water as she had seen the High Priestess do. And when it flashed in a light so bright and warm and strange and scary and perfect, the water began to churn around the tether, frothing in a foam of sea green and blushing pink and heliotrope. Leela felt her magic sing inside her, a song of heartbreak and joy, a song like the blazing colors of sunset and a night without stars, and her blood crackled and snapped, and her skin felt as if it was searing itself to her bones.