Adam sighs, steels himself, and reaches forward again, this time with his whole hand. The energy crackles and sparks against his pale skin way more than it did with Marina and me, but it lets him through without incinerating him. I grin at him and he gives me a relieved look, wiping some sweat off his forehead.

“Now what?” he asks.

Marina has paused a few yards in front of us, still floating Eight’s body. She reaches behind her head and takes off one of her pendants. Loosed from her neck, the pendant bobs slowly towards the stone steps of the temple, and then begins to rise up them.

“We climb,” Marina says.

Her pendant glints blue in the sunlight and it occurs to me that the Loralite is glowing a little brighter. Like it’s charged up or something. I feel it, too. The Sanctuary is giving off some kind of energy beyond just the force field. There’s a sense that every cell in my body has been suddenly invigorated. I glance up to the sky and know that I could call up a larger storm than ever before. I feel more in touch with my Legacies. And somehow, it all seems so natural—like I’ve known this feeling before.

Marina was right, I realize. We’re home.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FIVE

IT TAKES US ABOUT THIRTY MINUTES TO CLIMB to the top of the Mayan pyramid. I try passing the time by counting the steps, but I lose track somewhere around two hundred. There are sections where the stone steps have crumbled into ankle-twisting crevices, and other spots where rain has eroded the ancient stonework down to smooth slopes. We use the overgrown vines that spill forth from the jungle to assist us over the difficult parts, ascending hand over hand. We don’t talk much, except to tell each other when a particularly tricky section of steps is coming. Somehow, it seems rude to disturb the silence of the Sanctuary.

We take a break once we reach the top of the temple. Marina is sweating from the heat, the climb and the exertion of using her telekinesis to carry Eight’s body for so long. I set down the Chest I’ve been carrying and flex my fingers. Adam stands with his hands on his hips and gazes out over the temple’s edge.

“Some view,” he says.

“It’s beautiful,” I agree.

At the temple’s pinnacle, we are above the treetops. It’s possible to see beyond the overgrown trees that crowd the pyramid, beyond the stripped ring of land the Mogs cleared and out to the rest of the Mayan ruins and the thriving jungle beyond. I imagine some old Mayan ruler standing up here and gazing out at his domain. And then, I imagine that same ruler turning his eyes to the heavens as a Loric ship descends from the clouds. The image seems so real and vivid; I get the strange feeling that my imagination didn’t just conjure it up. Centuries ago, something like that really happened here—the Loric visited, and the Sanctuary remembers.