The Alcazar (The Cerulean Duology #2) - Amy Ewing Page 0,131

are in danger. I don’t know what the Renalt will do if she gets her hands on Leo and Agnes.”

Leela swallowed. She did not know what a Renalt was and she did not wish for her friend to return to the planet, but she knew when Sera had made her mind up about something there was nothing else to be done. She cared deeply for those she had left behind, Leela had seen that. And then she remembered a snippet of Wyllin’s memory—of how, before the City moved again, the Cerulean would go down onto the planet one last time.

“I will go with you,” Leela said. “We must give back what we took from this planet.”

“I will come too,” Elorin piped up, and Leela smiled at her. She wasn’t sure how much the three of them would be able to give, but it was better than nothing.

“Where are you going?” Leela had not noticed that Koreen, Daina, and Atana had approached them, but Koreen was looking at her with interest now.

“I have to return to the planet once more,” Sera said. “To help my friends.”

“And we must replenish the earth,” Leela added. “As Cerulean did in times of old.”

“To the planet?” Atana gasped. “But it’s dangerous down there.”

“Do not be a scaredy-cat, Atana,” Koreen said. “It is our purpose to go onto the planet. Sera survived, and Leela too.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “I will go with you as well.”

“What?” Atana yelped, but then Daina said, “So will I.”

“What’s this about going to the planet?” Freeda was looming over them and other Cerulean were gathering around, curious and interested.

“I wish to join you,” Acolyte Endaria said, after Leela had explained why they were going.

“We will go too,” Kandra said as she joined them, holding Sera’s green mother’s hand, her orange mother close behind.

One by one, Cerulean volunteered, agreeing to something they had no concept of, something that had been kept from them for generations. Twenty were coming in total. Leela had never felt so proud of her people.

“But we need moonstone,” Leela said.

Sera grinned. “It’s in the temple spire, you said, right?”

And Leela laughed, because there was nothing Sera loved more than climbing the temple, and this whole time she had been perching atop all the moonstone in the City.

Leela turned to the High Priestess. “You are coming with us,” she said, and Acolytes Endaria and Imima flew to her sides and gripped her arms. But the High Priestess did not struggle. She merely looked at Leela with the eyes of a woman who saw her world shrinking, who saw everything she had built begin to crumble and fall apart. The fight had gone out of her.

As they left the temple, the news of what they were about to do spread and there were cheers of encouragement for the knot of . . . what had Wyllin called them? Travelers. The knot of travelers that Leela and Sera had gathered.

Leela’s eyes filled with tears as she passed the doors and the symbols of Mother Sun shifted and became readable, a short cluster this time, not a waterfall like she had grown used to.

I am so proud of you, my child, the markings said. They shimmered, and for one moment, Leela saw the will-o-the-wisp from her dream reflected in their gilded image.

And then it was gone and the markings melted away.

Once outside, the travelers waited as Sera climbed up the temple spire as quick and lithe as a sunlizard. Leela saw the golden point shift and then moonstone was raining down on them, figurines and rings and bracelets, necklaces and circlets and brooches, along with shattered fragments of the old fountain from the Night Gardens.

Elorin chose a moonstone ring set with pink stargems and Kandra was fastening a brooch to her robes as Freeda tucked a long shard of moonstone into her belt. Leela could not believe so many had volunteered to come. She did not want to put her people in danger, but she knew in her heart that this was what they were meant to do. Sera might have another motive in helping her human friends, but Leela knew that if the City were to really, truly change and return to the way it was supposed to be, it had to begin now.

Besides, trying to keep the Cerulean away from all harm was what had led them to this stagnation in the first place. There were worse things than death, Leela thought as she looked at