Valeria waited for them to come. She wouldn’t fight the Coterie out on the Obsidian Sea where she’d be a target. Nor would she bring destruction in the beautiful courtyard that had sprung to life. No, she’d fight her battles here, beneath the roots of her new home. She looked up into the brilliance and indulged in a wistful smile. The golden heat that kissed her cheeks was what Tree Mother’s life felt like. Even though she was gone, the power that had made her still remained.

She wasn’t surprised when Anark stepped through the brilliance to greet her. He didn’t have to fly down from his great angel city. She held the power of the Light gifted from Nile’s touch and a creature such as he could come through a portal of her own making. The power dissipated when the portal closed. It would be a one-way trip.

His broad wings brushed the sides of the golden cavern that housed her new power. “Valeria,” he said, his voice a smooth caress over her senses.

Her fingers twitched in response, wishing to go for the blade at her thigh. This time, she had her weapons. But she made a fist. Weapons she’d only used on rabbits and fish wasn’t how she was going to win this battle. “They’re almost here,” she said.

His amethyst eyes shifted to look towards the sole semicircle of darkness that broke into a stairway up to the main floor. The Coterie stepped through, three of them, followed by Ferdinand who jerked to a halt to stare at the angel.

“By the Divine,” Ferdinand murmured. His eyes went wide. “She’s done it. You see? I was right. This child can save us all. She can bring the angels here to—”

Anark narrowed his eyes and flared his wings. Valeria flinched, but didn’t think the angel had done the movement on purpose. “I have come for the girl.” He flared his nostrils, making him look like a predator that had just scented prey too disgusting to eat. “If you’ve come here for the same, then I will show you what angels are capable of.”

While the three members of the Coterie stared with incomprehension, Ferdinand stumbled forward and fell to his knees. Valeria would have expected the old man to die before bowing to anyone, much less the angels that had abandoned this world. To see him grovel made her lip curl in disgust.

“Please,” Ferdinand said as he stretched out his hands. “Our world is dying. Surely there is something you can do to save us.” He gazed around the room that bathed them in gold. “You can’t just take her from us. Look what her presence has done. She’s brought Light back to this land.”

Anark glanced at her, his magnetizing gaze taking her breath away. “What say you, child of angels?” He folded his wings to his back and approached her until he was close enough to touch. Valeria resisted the urge to back away. Instead, she straightened her spine and matched his gaze. “I say that I wish to stay here.” She brushed past the angel, shivering as his impossibly soft feathers grazed her naked arm. She walked past Ferdinand and stood before the three members of the Coterie who’d begun to eerily glow. “You’ve come here for power, have you not?” She spread her arms as brilliance glowed all around them. “Well, here it is. A whole, untouched mountain of activated Divine Material.” Her hands fell to her sides, sending a shockwave of her building rage emanating through her chest. “Come and get it.”

Everything happened too fast. Ferdinand yelled, Anark snapped open his wings, and the Coterie began to sing.

The low hum of their power vibrated through her skull and made her clench her teeth, but this was what she wanted. This was why she’d hoped that Ferdinand would bring as much as the Coterie as possible so that she could use them for herself.

She spread her fingers and summoned a blade. It was just as she’d seen it in Nile’s memories where his master had summoned enough power to slice into the souls of the Coterie. She’d strike them all down and take their power for herself. She could read their hearts. They sang, but there was no depth to their voices. They were empty creatures that lusted for things that no longer held meaning.

She sliced, but her blade clashed against a sheer barrier around the three men. They spread their hands upwards and raised their voices until she felt as if her head would implode from their power.

Anark came up behind her and wrapped his fingers around her, draping his wings over them in a protective shield. “Use me,” he whispered in her ear.

She didn’t question him. This was why she needed the angel. Her own body screamed as Light rampaged through it, purging and scourging as it went. The Darkness that hid in her shoulder burned like a cold cinder and she felt she might go mad with the pain.

But the angel who wrapped himself around her. He was a creature that had lived in the Light for endless centuries. He was an immortal untouched by malice or Darkness.

Without hesitation, she coursed her power through him. The Light that held a sentient voice shrilled with delight as it zapped through his wings and formed a new blade in the air between them and the members of the Coterie.

“Valeria!” a voice screamed from the dark entranceway.

Valeria snapped her gaze to find Nile’s burning gaze staring at her with panic and desperation. She couldn’t read Ferdinand or the Coterie, but Nile’s emotions hit her like a wall.

He jutted out his hand, but hissed with pain as he lurched back into the shadows. The brilliance was too powerful for even him to withstand. “Don’t do this! Don’t kill them!”

Valeria hadn’t realized that to slice their souls open and drink their power would mean death, but the truth of Nile’s words slammed into her. Hot tears came as she gripped onto the angel that groaned with pain. She pulled his arms tighter around her and flashed with power. “Why?” she screamed. “My mother isn’t alive. My father has been taken. Even Tree Mother died all because malice lives in this world.” Her blade of power began to slice, sawing slowly at the aura of protective, twisted Light that bent around the Coterie. They didn’t back away or try to run. Instead, they clung to their arrogance and the stubborn determination that they could overcome Valeria’s power.

Nile set his jaw before replying. He speared a finger through the brilliance to point at the angel. Even though his skin blistered, he didn’t pull it back into the safety of the shadows. “You’ve convinced an angel to sacrifice himself for you. If you can get him to do that, what else could you do? What kind of hope could you bring to this world?” His hand shook as the welds moved up his arm. He began to glow as his own power kicked in to fend off the overwhelming magic. “I don’t care about the Coterie, but I care about the people they protect.” He stumbled to one knee and groaned, but still didn’t bring his hand back as he continued to spear the finger at the angel whose wings glowed like the sun at her sides. “I care about my master who is losing control over secrets he thought he’d hid from me.”

Valeria twisted to see the old man groaning on the golden tiles. She’d expected to see him blistering and dying, but there wasn’t brilliance at all. Instead a dark shadow wrapped over him and threaded like a web in a protective layer. He shivered as the power of malice protected him. He turned up to look at her, only a sliver of his golden eyes flashing with desperation and misery before the shadows blocked him out.

She ground her teeth together. Malice had gone too deep in this world. Even a Hallowed meant to be a pure soul of Light was tainted by it. She screamed, turning her wrath onto the Coterie that finally buckled under her blow.

Light poured out, tainted and foul. Valeria didn’t touch it. She let it seep and mix into the ward that was her castle.

Nile fell limp at the doorway and a single crushed blossom flashed color before bursting into flames.

A single saffron flower.

She grimaced as the angel sagged at her back. This was her home and all that was left of Tree Mother. Her hand went to her stomach. This was where her child would be born and grow. No matter if she’d been manipulated, there was still a soul that needed her.

She watched as the last of the flower in Nile’s open palm evaporated. She would name this place after the hope that birthed it.

This was Manor Saffron.