The Alcazar (The Cerulean Duology #2) - Amy Ewing Page 0,39

red heart. “Is that where you saw Sera?”

“Sort of. It is hard to explain. The moonstone gives me visions of her, of where she is and who she is with.” Leela quickly explained about the necklace she had given Sera. “I think it is connecting us—as if that stone is linked to all other moonstone in this City. But I cannot control it. The visions come as they please.”

Elorin tiptoed forward and then curled up by the side of the pool. “Another vision will come,” she said. “Even if we must wait here all night. I believe in you, Leela. The power of this place . . . it recognizes you. Can you feel it?”

Leela had not quite thought about it like that before. She sat beside Elorin and the two of them stared into the pool, watching the tether glint and twinkle as it stretched to the planet below.

“Do you remember the story the High Priestess told us during the wedding season?” Elorin asked. “The story of Wyllin Moonseer and the forming of this tether.”

“I do,” Leela said. “Though I am not sure how much of it I believe.”

“Perhaps the High Priestess and Wyllin were not truly friends at all,” Elorin mused. “Maybe the High Priestess chose her the way she chose Sera.”

“But Wyllin died to form this tether,” Leela pointed out. “And Sera was unable to break it. I always assumed it was because Mother Sun had not truly chosen her. That the sacrifice could not work because the choosing had been manipulated.”

“Perhaps,” Elorin said. “I am only wondering what life was like in this City nine hundred years ago. How much has been lost or changed. How much has been forgotten.”

Leela had been wondering that too. She wished there were someone else to ask, but only the High Priestess was left from that time.

She did not know how long they sat for, but she was just about to suggest that they leave, her thighs growing numb with cold, when she felt another heart beating in her chest.

“Sera?” she gasped. Elorin turned, pushing herself up onto her knees.

“Do you see her?”

Leela shook her head. “I can feel her heart.”

“Does it speak to you? Like a blood bond?”

“No. It is . . . calm. Slow and steady. Almost as if . . .”

She looked at the cone of moonstone and the vision came and she welcomed it with joy. The room was small and dark, with a square bed and a single round window, like the one in the chamber of penitence but not so high up. The floor beneath her tilted and swayed gently. Leela saw the shapes of two figures beneath the covers, both sleeping. Suddenly, a girl sat up—it was not the same girl she had seen before, the tall one with curly hair and turquoise eyes. This girl had brown skin and brown hair, disheveled from sleep, and though her face was half in shadow, Leela sensed a keenness in her gaze.

“Sera?” she whispered, but Sera slept on peacefully. Leela saw the glint of gold around her friend’s neck, the pendant clutched tight in one silver hand. The girl was looking at the necklace too, and Leela wondered if she knew about the moonstone, what it was and where it had come from. They were sharing a bed together, so Leela imagined they must be friends at the very least, if not perhaps something more. Leela found herself glad that Sera had found someone who cared for her on the planet. She wanted to get a better look at the girl, she wanted to move, but she did not know how, when suddenly, Elorin was shaking her arm and the vision dissolved and Leela’s heart ached at the loss of Sera’s steady beat.

“What?” she asked.

“Someone’s coming,” Elorin whispered.

12

“HIDE!” LEELA HISSED AS THE UNMISTAKABLE SOUND OF footsteps came closer.

She and Elorin hurried as quickly and quietly as they could, pressing themselves against the cold surface of a column only moments before the High Priestess emerged into the clearing. They crouched low and peered out to watch her as she circled the main pool, muttering to herself, to the tether, to the moonstone. . . . Leela could not be certain which and she could not make out what she was saying.

At last, the High Priestess stopped and Leela saw her mask fall away, the ancientness showing on her face in hard, deep lines around her mouth and eyes, her irises darkening, her shoulders hunching as if