cried instinctively, having no love for his grandmother yet not wanting to see what would happen once she touched the chain of Cerulean magic. But Ambrosine had already reached up, wrapping her hand around the tether that Leo could not see. For one endless second, nothing happened.
Then she let out a choked cry, and her whole body was illuminated in a silvery-blue light—it shone out through her eyes, from the tips of her fingers, from each strand of her hair. She began to scream, and the light poured from her mouth in a torrent of brilliance. One long, high-pitched wail that pierced Leo’s heart and rang over and over again in his ears. The light coming from inside Ambrosine grew brighter and brighter, until she was engulfed in it, until her body was a mere shadow, an outline, and then there was a flash like a solar flare and Leo had to shield his eyes against it.
When he looked again, all that was left of Ambrosine Byrne was bits of ash floating through the air.
“She would never have let it go,” Wyllin said. “She would never have let it be until she saw it. It was consuming her thoughts and so it consumed her.”
Agnes looked too shocked for words, which was exactly how Leo felt. Eneas was rubbing his eyes as if that would somehow help make sense of what had just happened, and Matthias wore an expression of horror. Hektor looked like he was going to be sick. The spear clattered to the ground as the other Misarros released their captives, staring numbly at the spot where Ambrosine vanished. Vada rushed to Agnes’s side.
“She’s . . . gone,” Agnes said, her breath hitching in her throat as Vada held her. There was another loud boom and this time the wall shook, sending chips of rose stone down into the courtyard. Ambrosine may be gone but the Renalt was still very much here and very much a danger to Sera. She could not lose this chance to return home.
“You’ve got to go,” Leo said, finding his voice at last and turning to her. The words tore at his throat on their way out but he swallowed down the pain. “You’ve got to get back to your city.”
“I can’t just . . . leave you,” Sera said, looking helpless and torn.
“You can’t stay here,” Agnes said. “You can’t let the Renalt get her hands on you. You’ve got to go home, Sera.”
Sera blinked and a tear fell on her cheek, glittering like a star. “But—”
Another blast from the cannon and this time it found its mark. A whole section of the wall crumbled, causing the Misarros to run for cover.
“Sera, go!” Leo cried. “Go home!”
Sera gripped the moonstone pendant in one hand. Her face was tender as she looked at him—he wanted to tell her how much he would miss her, how much she had changed his life, but the words wouldn’t come. Sera pressed her lips together, another tear following the first.
There were two brilliant flashes of light.
And when Leo looked again, Sera and Leela were gone.
34
Sera
SHE’D WANTED TO SAY GOODBYE.
When Sera had gripped the moonstone, she’d felt her heart pulled apart, her mind in knots. Leo was right, there was danger on Braxos and she needed to go, but the thought of leaving him made her chest ache and her lungs shrivel. Besides, she didn’t know how to get home—Wyllin had said it was about intention, but Sera didn’t know what she was supposed to do.
But it seemed her moonstone remembered—it went cold in her hand and suddenly the thought of her City became bright and writhing inside her, and she could see it as clearly as if she’d called up a memory. She could see the banks of the Great Estuary and the glow of the moonflower fields, could hear the buzzing of the bees in the Apiary and smell the rich fruits of the orchards.
Home, Sera thought with purpose, and her magic stirred in a way it never had before. The word was more than just a wishful thought. It held the power of a command.
Then the world was spinning and her feet left the ground in a disorienting whirl of color at first, then fire, then she was in space and the stars were bigger and brighter than she remembered them. Leela was beside her, encased in a pearly mist, and Sera realized she was too. She hadn’t noticed it forming, hadn’t been able to make