was looking up. The airships spotted it, too, and several tried to fly toward it, but the light vanished before they could pinpoint its precise location.
Moments later, explosions echoed in the distance. From the hilltop, we had a full and gorgeous view of the entire city. Around it, fireworks shot into the sky—straight beams of blue and green, purple and rabid pink, red and gold. They reached for the stars before they burst into myriads of sparks and colors.
I was breathless watching it all unfold. Fiery flowers swelled against the tourmaline backdrop. They ate all the stars and stretched out like glimmering suns. Amethysts and sapphires, citrines and rubies, they formed oversized gemstone showers that dazzled all who saw them.
The shuttle flew between them, but the airships weren’t that capable. Some went straight into the fireworks’ explosions, parts of them coming off in plumes of white smoke. They crashed on the outskirts of the imperial city as the alarms continued to wail.
Cannons were fired from the ground. Flaming projectiles joined the fireworks’ dances but failed to hit our shuttle. Instead, they took out more of their own airships. Amane gripped my hand, and I could feel her angst as strongly as my own. She worried for Ridan most of all.
We looked to the east, where we knew we’d see his shuttle coming through.
The city’s sky was ablaze and chaotic, riddled with flying monsters made of metal, cannon charges, and furious fireworks. But the east… the east was dark and quiet, with nothing but stars twinkling in the celestial silence.
“Here he comes!” Sofia said, and we all saw the growing glimmer.
A singular point of bright white grew in size as Ridan’s shuttle breached Visio’s atmosphere. Loud noises and flashing lights covered the imperial city, and no one was paying attention to the east. The sky rippled around the white dot. Blue circles expanded around it like a pebble had been tossed into a lake.
“They’re in,” Sofia continued, exhaling sharply.
Relief washed over me as I watched the white dot disappear. Our diversion mission had been a success. Ridan’s team had reached Visio, and now Esme and Tristan could go invisible, as well, and head back to the hilltop. They’d teased the Aeternae’s air forces long enough. The Aeternae had begun using the cannons, and it was time to get away before one of their projectiles caused significant damage to the shuttle.
In the midst of all this, as we hugged and congratulated each other, I knew I had to tell Sofia something—something my sister and I had set aside since this morning, given the troubling number of issues we’d been dealing with.
“Tristan, it’s done. Come back to us now,” Sofia said through the comms system. A second later, we saw their shuttle disappear amid the airships zooming around as the last of the fireworks burned out.
Smoke blanketed the city, ashes sprinkling across its rooftops. The sky grumbled as the Aeternae pilots tried to figure out where Tristan and Esme had gone. Ridan’s shuttle was safely on its way to us, and I finally felt like we’d earned a small and much needed victory.
“Well done!” Sofia laughed, hugging Trev. “Thank you!”
“I never say no to screwing with the bigwigs once in a while,” Trev replied, flattered by her display of affection and gratitude.
Kalon breathed deeply, and Valaine wore a generous smile. They were both relieved that Esme and Tristan were returning to us unharmed. I gently touched Sofia’s arm to get her attention, while Ansel stayed with Kalon and Valaine, beaming with excitement.
“Sofia, I need to tell you something,” I said.
Amane grinned. “Oh, this is definitely a good moment.”
“A good moment for what?” Sofia asked, slightly confused.
“To tell you that we’re pretty sure we cracked the day-walking formula,” I said. My sister and I had pondered when it might be a good time to tell Sofia. After what she’d witnessed at the palace, we’d both agreed it wasn’t exactly the best of good news, considering the very person who’d spearheaded this mission was still being held captive in an Aeternae jail. But now that Ridan and Esme’s shuttles were about to reach us, I felt Sofia could use the additional boost.
Her first reaction, however, was muted astonishment.
“You… you what?” she managed, blinking rapidly as she tried to process the revelation.
“It needs testing on an actual vampire, but we think we got the measurements right. We clipped the protein and inserted it into Esme’s gene samples. We used Derek’s blood as a benchmark… and it