A couple of hours went by as we scoured all the Hermessi-related texts. Amelia, Inalia, and Eira took copious notes, while Riza organized them based on their theme: origins of the Hermessi, their ancient laws and rituals, the history of Hermessi worship on Cerix, and a number of miscellaneous legends that could turn out to be true. Some of the stories in there sounded eerily similar to our experiences, including the Blackout.

Most of the information we’d gathered so far could be potentially useful, but none of it gave us any hint on how to prevent Inalia from sacrificing herself without destroying the planet in the process. The glow that she’d walked in with had quickly faded as she flipped through pages and found absolutely nothing that could save her.

Bane stayed with us, if only just to keep an eye on what we did. That seemed normal. We were still strangers in his home. But he, too, had noticed Inalia’s slow but certain descent into despair, even when she said nothing at all.

“You shouldn’t expect your salvation to be miraculously hidden in one of these books, you know,” he said to her, his voice low as he sat down next to yet another pile of manuscripts she’d taken on.

The glare she shot him would’ve been enough to chill the blood in his veins. But it only made Bane laugh.

“I don’t see why I can’t hope to find something here,” Inalia mumbled, and proceeded to flip through another book. “It’s all I’ve got left, after all.”

“One option, so far, is to summon a Hermessi and broker a deal to stop Inalia’s sacrifice,” Riza said. “But we have no idea what they’d deem valuable enough to make it hold. To even be interested, for that matter.”

“Hope is good to have,” Bane replied. “But it’s a dangerous thing to hold on to. It can make the truth hurt even more when it does set in. Don’t take this the wrong way, I do hope you survive this, honey, but I’d hate to see you disappointed.”

Inalia offered a sour chuckle in return. “I think that ship has already sailed.”

We’d already brought Lumi up to speed with our progress so far, but we’d yet to reach a positive conclusion. On the contrary, things looked just as grim on her end. There was no good news coming from the emperor’s palace either.

According to their calculations and projections, there weren’t enough resources to get everyone off the planet in two days. Not even if we had all of the interplanetary spell supplies required for such mass evacuations. Plus, Lumi was on her own out here as a swamp witch. The rest of her kind were stuck in The Shade, in Eritopia, and on Neraka, dealing with major hardships also caused by the Hermessi. The amount of energy required to prepare all this and to see it through safely was insane—and Phoenix had yet to find a safe planet for the Cerixians to call home.

Cerix was the only inhabited world on a ten-thousand-light-year radius so far. Even if, by some miracle, we gathered the resources and energy needed to perform a mass evacuation via interplanetary spell, there was no destination. We’d bitterly agreed that this wasn’t an avenue we could follow, and the emperor had kindly asked Lumi to remind us that the deadline was still the same for Inalia. It made my stomach hurt. It had me on edge, to the point where I could barely focus.

Looking around, I realized we were all in the same boat. The frustration, the angst, and the fear could be felt in each of us, without Varga reading our emotional auras. It was written all over our faces.

“That being said, summoning a Hermessi might work if you have something good to give them,” Bane said.

“We just agreed we don’t have anything,” Eira replied, her tone clipped.

“Well, that’s not entirely true, now is it?” he said.

We’d told him about the Hermessi cults and what they’d done to our people, their plans, and the lengths they’d gone to in order to stop us. Wherever Bane was going with this, I didn’t like it. He struck me as the pragmatic type, with some sociopathic tendencies, to say the least—it had to be what made him a great leader for the Brothers of the Shadow, but his ideas could border on crazy, if given free rein.

“What are you talking about?” Inalia asked the question I’d hoped she wouldn’t. I could already hear his answer in the back of my head, before he even opened his mouth to reply.

“You can promise you’ll stop pursuing this mission against them, for example,” Bane suggested, making me pinch the bridge of my nose.

“It won’t work. First chance they get, they’ll obliterate us.” I sighed. “That’s why we’re always on the move.”

“Then stop moving. Offer your surrender in return for Inalia’s salvation,” Bane said.

Amelia shook her head. “Why would they save Cerix like that, if they plan to destroy entire civilizations anyway? Don’t you see? Even if Inalia sacrifices herself, the Hermessi’s ritual will continue, and it will wipe out this world and ours and all the others we’ve yet to discover. Us surrendering isn’t an option.”

“Maybe I should just call it quits now, stop wasting everyone’s time…” Inalia managed, tearing up. Within seconds, I was kneeling in front of her, firmly gripping her shoulders. The move surprised her.

“I’m not giving up on you yet,” I said. “I’ll keep trying until the very last minute of that deadline. Hell, if I can buy us another hour after that, I will. And I’m sure I speak for the rest of the team as well.”

“Oh, you most certainly do,” Eva chimed in, smiling as she closed one book and got started on another. The others nodded in agreement, and it was all I needed to hold on to my resolve for a little while longer. “Inalia’s too cool to get herself sucked into this Hermessi crap.”

There was a part of me that simply refused to surrender. I was drawn to her in more than one way, and I didn’t want to deny it—not to myself or anyone else. I laid it all out there for her and the others to see. It drove me nuts to look at Inalia and think that twelve hours from now, she’d lose her body and join the enemy just to save her planet. It was cruel. It was despicable on the part of the universe to mess around with her like this. It was unfair.

“Sorry. I thought you might have some wicked ace up your sleeve or something,” Bane replied. “In the end, the Hermessi made our world. They facilitated the conditions that eventually created us. We’re talking about extremely powerful entities here.”

“They’re not indestructible, though,” Eira replied, her brow furrowed. “We’ve seen it so far. They can be destroyed.”

“Not without harming the worlds they fuel as well,” Amelia reminded her.

“Are we 100 percent sure about that?” Raphael challenged her.

“Guys, I think I found something about the ritual!” Herakles croaked, staring at an old parchment which he’d just unraveled.

“The ritual,” I murmured, slightly confused for a moment.

“The one that requires fae bodies,” Herakles clarified, thus bringing me back to the much bigger picture of what had brought GASP to Cerix in the first place.

“What does it say?” Inalia asked. She probably wanted to distract herself from the absence of useful answers regarding her own situation. I felt the same way. I knew that her worst-case scenario could still be the only outcome, but I couldn’t renounce the hope that maybe, just maybe, we’d find something in this library that could give us some leverage against the Hermessi—something solid enough to get them to agree to a bargain.

“The precise number of fae bodies the Hermessi need to complete the ritual. Five million on the dot,” Herakles replied. “That’s how many sources of elemental energy they need to amplify their own and… Nature will rain down upon the people and wipe the worlds clean, so life can start again, anew.”

“That’s what it says?” Eira murmured, checking the text as well.

“I’ve been at this for long enough to get the gist of what the Cerixians wrote down,” Herakles replied.

The color vanished from Eira’s cheeks. “He’s right. Five million fae to become destroyers of the very worlds they built.”

“Damn. If they keep up this cut-and-spell thing they’re doing back home, they’ll reach that number soon enough,” Raphael said, visibly concerned.

“Days? Weeks?” Amelia asked him. “I should be able to estimate that myself, but my brain is so tired at this point.”

“Weeks. Maybe two weeks, if GASP manages to slow the cultists down,” Raphael replied.

“Wait. There’s more,” Eira added, flipping a page and quickly reading before she gave us the brief summary. “The ritual needs to take place at a certain time. When all the twenty planets in the In-Between’s very first solar system are perfectly aligned.”

That threw us all for a loop. We spent the better part of a minute staring at one another, trying to take it all in. Bane’s eyebrows were arched upward as he glanced at me.

“How do you figure out which is the oldest solar system in the universe?” he asked, breathless. “Our scientists have only gone as far as just outside our solar system with their tools. Assuming you’re travelers of many worlds, do any of you know how to find this fabled first cluster of planets?”

I thought about it for a moment. Amelia beat me to it. “Phoenix could do some research from home base. He’s got the telescopes and the AI I helped set up for GASP in all our stations to help him. He could find out.”

A second later, she’d already pressed her earpiece button, passing all this information to Phoenix. The more we knew about the ritual, the better our odds of stopping it. So far, it hinged more on finding the solar system in question and understanding exactly how much time we had left before it all went south for every single creature in the In-Between.

Eva was the first to recognize the next issue out loud. “Even if we do find this first solar system, we still don’t know how to stop the ritual. Or the Hermessi. They’re clearly determined to do this one way or another.”

“We need more info about the Hermessi. Some accurate intel,” Varga replied, scratching the back of his head. “Our only useful source is dead. Acquis won’t come out. Or at least, I doubt he will. We all saw how he acted the last time we spoke. The others are watching. And Vesta is out of the question, as are all the other fae that were with us before and during the Blackout. We’ve got no one left to reach out to Aya.”

It hit me then, as I scraped the bottom of my memory barrel. It rammed into me, actually, almost knocking the air out of my lungs. “Ramin…”

“Huh?” Raphael replied.

Amelia shrieked with excitement. “Oh, my stars! Yes! Tae, yes! You’re a genius!”

“Hold on, let me check first whether it’s possible,” I said.

“What is he talking about?” Raphael asked her, while I pressed my earpiece button.

“Harper, are you around?” I called out.

Amelia told Raphael and the others in our crew who didn’t know about Ramin, the Fire Hermessi of Neraka. He’d once helped Harper defeat Shaytan, the daemon king and Zane’s father, and he’d been our first known contact with a Hermessi.

“I’m around,” Harper’s voice came through.

“I need a favor from you. Well, we all do,” I said.

“What’s up, Tae?”

“It just dawned on me. What if you try and reach out to Ramin on Neraka?” I asked.

For a moment, there was silence on the line. “I never thought of that. I should be ashamed of myself,” she replied.

“Don’t be. You’ve got enough on your plate already,” I said. “Can you do it?”

“I can certainly try. I’ll need a few hours, though.”

“How many?”

“Three, maybe fewer if I get lucky and establish a link. I need to get to Neraka first,” Harper said. “But I can certainly try, Tae.”

“Please do. We’re reading through a lot of Hermessi lore right now, but there’s only so much truth we can get out of it. It’s best if we manage to get some data straight from the source,” I replied.

“I’ll see what I can do. I only hope Ramin is not hostile to me now. You know, he could be one of them.”

By “them,” she meant the Hermessi who were dead-set on completing the ritual, and not the rebels we’d learned about recently. And yes, that was a risk that Harper was going to have to take, in order to find out more about the elements and what we could do to stop them.

“Legends can be deceiving,” Harper added. “And if you’re to save Inalia’s life, little prince, you need facts.”

“Who are you calling ‘little prince?’ We basically grew up at the same time,” I said, in a feeble attempt to remove some of the pressure.

She giggled softly. “How are you holding up over there?”

“Not as well as we’d hoped.” I sighed. “We’re not making any headway with Inalia’s issue. There isn’t much written about replacing a Hermessi, other than rumors that others have done it before.”

“Other Cerixians?”

“Yeah. We still have a lot of manuscripts to go through. Maybe we’ll find out more later,” I said.

Eira’s voice cut through the momentary silence. “Son of a… Tae!”

“Harper, I’ll talk to you later,” I said, before ending the call and shifting my focus to Eira. “What’s wrong?”

She held up a scroll, pointing at a string of words. One name stood out even from a few feet away, skillfully written with elegant swirls. “Brann wasn’t the original Fire Hermessi. He was once a Cerixian, half Hermessi, like Inalia.”

“That is definitely new information,” Inalia mumbled, genuinely stunned. “So, Cerix must’ve been through these motions before, then… My plight isn’t at all unique.”

There was a drop of bitterness in that statement. Eira turned another page. Then, as she read through the text, she released a slew of the most profane words I’d ever heard. She shot to her feet, nearly crumbling the scroll in her tightened fist. “And Acquis, my father, isn’t the original Water Hermessi, either,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Let me guess, a Hermessi child, as well?” Raphael said, pursing his lips.

“That’s it!” Eira exploded, lighting up blue from the inside. This side of her made Bane move backward, as he sought to put some distance between himself and Eira. Not that I could blame him. The rage in her was visible.

“Eira. You need to breathe,” Inalia said to her, in an attempt to calm her down.

“I’m not doing that calm-yourself crap!” Eira replied. “I’m doing the summon-my-father-and-potentially-beat-him-into-a-pulp-until-he-tells-me-the-truth bit! And you’re going to help me!”

Inalia blinked several times and gave her a faint nod. “Okay. But are we safe doing this here?”

“The planet is dying anyway. Riza or Taeral can teleport us out of here if needed,” Eira replied. “We don’t have time to tiptoe around these elementals anymore. I need to talk to my father, now!”

“Just be careful,” Raphael said, nonchalantly leaning back on a stack of books. He’d grown tired of reading, by the looks of him. Or he was bored. Either way, he was clearly taking a break. “He can tell you more about replacing a Hermessi. Try not to get on his bad side. I’m sure Acquis will keep a low profile, since he doesn’t want the rest of his ilk coming down here and making a mess with his daughter around, but still. Don’t piss him off.”

Despite her anger, Eira seemed to understand where he was coming from. Raphael was right. If anyone could tell us everything we needed to know about Inalia’s possible future, it was someone who’d once been in her shoes. Acquis had a lot to answer for, and his daughter was determined to drill him about it.