Even though I’d witnessed Inalia’s decision, and I’d faintly agreed with it, I still couldn’t believe it had just happened. My mind, worn out by what felt like hours of constant fighting with the Shills, couldn’t fathom the reality that had unfolded right before me.

I was still holding on to Raphael, unable to let go of his forearm. It was as if he was the only creature left in the world to give me some sense of stability. My knees were weak. My heart was heavy.

“What happened?” Lumi asked. None of us were able to speak.

Would she have been able to stop Inalia, had we stayed longer back in Lemnos Woods? I doubted it. The Hermessi were more powerful and infinitely more determined. For them, this could only go one of two ways: either they let Cerix freeze to death with Inalia’s refusal to ascend as the element of fire, or they gained another Hermessi in their ranks, to then destroy all living things on Cerix. Either way, we lost. But with Inalia as the Fire Hermessi, the planet could survive. Granted, if the ritual was completed, all life would be wiped out, but it would at least start anew. Neither option appealed to us. How the hell could it?

“Where is Inalia?” Emperor Tulla asked, slightly concerned as he looked around at those of us who had returned.

“She… She did it,” I said.

Riza pulled Eva and Eira away from our group to look after the eight wounded Brothers of the Shadow we’d brought back with us. Trap was quick to join and help them, as Eva prepared the healing potions and Eira and Riza applied them to those injured, including Herakles, who grabbed the nearest chair to sit down. He was pale, and he’d lost a significant amount of blood. For him, Eva cut her wrist and squeezed some of her blood inside a glass vial, which she then handed to him.

“Did what?” Lumi replied, still confused.

“She stepped forward as the new Fire Hermessi,” I said, tears pricking my eyes.

Taeral was simmering quietly by my side, while I gently leaned into Raphael. He didn’t push me away. On the contrary, I felt his arm come around my shoulders, holding me closer as I gave in and started crying.

“What? So soon? Why?” Lumi croaked, now utterly befuddled. She checked the clock on the wall. Maybe she thought she’d lost track of time, somehow. That the deadline had already been reached. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“We didn’t really have much of a choice,” Raphael said. “We were surrounded, unable to reach out for help, constantly outnumbered.”

“By what?” Lumi replied, frowning. She knew an entire army of Cerixians couldn’t take us down.

“Creatures that came from crystal eggs, birthed by pink water underground,” I explained. “Definitely the Hermessi’s doing.”

“Monsters, right?” Lumi asked. The twinkle in her white-blue eyes made me realize she knew exactly what I was talking about. “Born from pink waters, much like the Daughters of Eritopia. Faster and stronger than anything else you’ve dealt with on Cerix?”

We were all stunned. Oh, she knew more than we did about the Shills, but I doubted she’d faced one while we were away. She’d even confirmed my suspicion about the Daughters’ origins, without me even mentioning it to her!

“I think we have a lot of catching up to do.” Lumi sighed.

The emperor nodded at the injured Brothers. Most of them couldn’t get up yet, while the healing potions worked their magic, but they were all conscious, more or less. And they all looked up at him in fear. “I assume they were with you in Lemnos Woods?”

“Yes. We don’t know if the others made it out, but these are the ones we managed to save,” Raphael replied. “I suppose you’ll want to talk to them about that pardon scroll. It kind of got lost in the melee.”

“That won’t be an issue—” the emperor started, but Taeral interrupted with a burst of anger.

“How is anyone talking about anything else other than what just happened?!”

Silence fell over the room like a lead shroud. Lumi, however, wasn’t having any of it.

“We are talking about what just happened. Only, more than one thing happened, Taeral,” she said.

“Inalia is giving herself to the Hermessi,” Taeral replied.

“We knew that was a possibility from the very beginning,” Lumi returned. Man, the swamp witch could be really cold if she wanted to. But I did understand why she spoke like this. We were all disheveled and distraught. Someone had to be the glue to stick us back together, in light of what we’d just experienced.

“How can you talk like this?” Taeral gasped, his eyes wide with shock.

Lumi pointed a surly finger at him. “You’re forgetting where you are, Lieutenant. Our main mission was to save the Cerixians, at whatever cost. If Inalia chose to do it by sacrificing herself, then who are we to stop her? She did decide it on her own, right? I’m not missing something?”

“Yes, she did,” Eira said from the side.

“You shouldn’t speak for a while!” Taeral snapped at her. “You helped her!”

“Don’t be selfish!” Eira spat. “I love Inalia like a sister. I would do anything for her. And I did. You’re not the only one who lost her, Taeral. The nightmare doesn’t even end here.”

“You know what? I can’t. No. I need to talk to her. I can’t do this,” Taeral said, shaking his head.

Raphael tried to reach out to him before he slipped away, but he missed him by a mere second. Taeral vanished, and we all knew where he’d gone. The emperor sank into his chair, rubbing his face with his bare hands as a means to release all the tension that had probably gathered inside him since Brann had perished.

“He went back to Lemnos Woods, didn’t he?” the emperor grumbled. Lumi exhaled, then offered a weak nod in response. “He’d better not screw us all over just because he’s got a crush on the girl.”

Taeral might’ve acted on his emotions just now, but he wasn’t an idiot. It hurt him, that much was obvious, but he would never jeopardize a planet or his crew for this. “Your Majesty, he just needs to talk to her, that’s all.”

And I understood that. Taeral needed closure. Everything had happened so fast there, that he hadn’t had the chance to properly talk to Inalia about her decision, about what would come next. Then again, he’d just gone back, smack in the middle of Hermessi territory. The Shills hadn’t followed us back here upon our return, but what if one or more of them hopped a ride with Taeral the second time around?

I looked at Trap. “You need to get your armed guards in here and get ready,” I said.

“Why? What for?” he asked.

“Crap. Dammit, Tae,” Raphael groaned, realizing why I’d required armed assistance. “The Shills might hitch a ride back with him. He’s too fast to get killed, but they might still catch his trail. We’re still not sure how far those suckers can teleport after us. This here might’ve been just a fortunate fluke.”

Trap seemed even more confused. “The Shills?”

“Like Lumi said, we have a lot to catch up on,” Raphael replied, while we all braced ourselves for whatever came next.

A new Fire Hermessi came with a new set of problems or, at the very least, some complicated implications. Would Inalia be on our side? Would she intervene and try to catch us, like the others? Or would she rebel? The latter didn’t seem like a sane choice, given the Hermessi’s habit of destroying their own if they didn’t cooperate with their ritual agenda.

Maybe we’d saved Cerix for now, but we still didn’t know where to go or what to do in order to stop the ritual altogether. The end was still nigh.