Avi Marie's Arc

Chapter 22 of 30

Avi Marie pushed off the fountain. The five angels had fled upward through the tear in the clouds. If they reached their masters first, the whole crime would sink out of reach. No name. No trial. She looked at Petra Lund, who stood at the garden's edge with her rope of knotted cloud still in one fist. "Then we chase them," Avi Marie said. "Now." Petra did not fly. She had climbed here by hand. She looked up at the fleeing white shapes, then down at her own smudged sleeves. "Can't catch them," she said. "Not by air." She was right. Avi Marie's power ran thin this high. Her wings would not carry her faster than five fresh angels. "Then we don't catch them," said a flat voice behind her. Azrael dropped through the rift and landed hard. His white robe was torn at one shoulder. He had spent his last crystal at the mountain pass, but he had followed her up anyway. "They fly to warn. We send our own message first." "How?" Avi Marie asked. Azrael pointed past the fountain. A tall rock pillar stood there, gray and cracked, carved with old words. "That," he said. "It's a beacon stone. The masters watch it. Light it, and the whole upper realm sees at once. Your name. Your proof. Before those five can whisper a lie." Avi Marie read the carved words. They asked if she dared to know her true self. She pressed her palm to the cold stone. She had climbed all this way for a name, blinded, doubted, silent in her own memory. She was done hiding. "Petra," she said. "The ledger. Read it aloud." Petra opened the ledger. Her voice was level and clear, the voice of a woman who kept records for a living. "Order given. Transfer witnessed. Mortal silenced. Angel blinded." She named the superior. She named the day. Avi Marie poured what warmth she had left into her hand. The pillar took the light. The carved words blazed. A white beam shot up through the rift, splitting the clouds, brighter than the fleeing angels' wings. Every tower in the realm above would see it. The five angels stopped in the air. They turned. Their warning was worthless now. The truth had arrived ahead of them. "It's out," Azrael said. "They can't bury it." Avi Marie lowered her hand. The beam held, steady, feeding on the ledger's words. She had not silenced the conspiracy by being faster. She had made it too loud to hide. But the light also told the masters exactly where she stood. From the towers above, horns began to sound. Not fleeing this time. Answering. Petra closed the ledger. "They know we're here." "Good," Avi Marie said. "I want them to. Now they have to face me."