“The goddesses require us to have a perfect balance of all five elements in order to channel their powers. But we found that tapping into our dominant element—the thing we already have in abundance—is enough. It not only works like a Gi, it also allows us to wield that element. Like you saw when Austin controlled metal, or when Taeyo manipulated water.”

My mouth gapes. Does that mean I could wield fire? The thought blows my mind. I grew up thinking I didn’t have a drop of magic in my blood. Now I find out there’s a way I could control the thing I’ve always been ashamed of. No, not just control—master.

My first gut reaction is to ask Sora if I could learn this skill, too. I want to know how it feels to have magic at my fingertips. But then Hattie’s face pops into my mind, reminding me of my priorities. This is not the time to be picking up party tricks. I have a job to do.

Instead, I ask another question. “But how does it work? Where does the power come from if not the goddesses?”

Taeyo points to the water cooler near us, and then to a running tap a man has turned on in the kitchenette across the room. “The five sacred elements are all around us. The Earth was made by Mago Halmi herself, and we were all created in her image, which means we and the elements are all divine in our own right. We don’t need the Godrealm to access our gifts. Magic is inside each of us.”

I immediately think of Auntie Okja. She’d told me the Horangi had become obsessed with power because they’d figured out a way for witches to become as potent as the goddesses. That’s why the scholars had been cursed by their goddess to never wield magic again. It was also the reason Emmett’s mom had been stuck in the cross fire keeping the seventh artifact out of their hands.

A bubble of anger pops inside me. They can adapt all they want—it doesn’t erase the horrible things they’ve done. At the end of the day, they killed Emmett’s mom, and there is no excuse for taking a life.

“Is that why you did it?” I ask quietly. “Is that why you staged an attack against the gifted community? Why you killed people? For…for power?” I consider the life I could have had if the Horangi hadn’t become corrupt. All the things I don’t even know I missed out on. “Why couldn’t you just have been happy being the keepers of the sacred texts? Why did you have to be so greedy?”

“You don’t know the full picture,” Sora starts. “There are always tw—”