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Justus was wrong.

Ezryn, Farron, and Dayton will be enough.

The ground vanishes.

I shoot upward, weightless, the breath stolen from my lungs.

Light roars. I squeeze my eyes shut, pressure wrapping my ribs and spine, until⁠—

It ends.

The magic slips away like mist.

The air is different up here. Soft and warm. It clings to my skin. I open my eyes. We’re no longer in the chamber.

We’re in the sky.

The light dissolves into sparks. Below, far below, I see it. A glowing ring—the portal we opened. And within it, it’s as if I’m looking down on the pale stone ruins of the Celestial Landing as if from an airplane. Already the gateway we opened is beginning to shrink in on itself, closing.

Around me, the princes float, suspended midair in a loose ring. Wrenley clings to Caspian’s arm.

We’re surrounded by clouds, thick as spun sugar, streaked with soft rose and silver. They curl and shift in a way I’ve never seen before. The sky above is impossibly bright, not blue like home but something richer. Sapphire and indigo and liquid gold.

Through a break in the clouds, I see a shape. The edge of…jagged cliffs. Stone and moss and ivy.

A floating isle.

Airaleth.

A sob builds in my chest. We did it. We actually made it! We⁠—

We start to fall.

It’s slow at first. A downward drift, as if the air has exhaled us.

Then we begin to plummet.

The gateway opened. But it wasn’t strong enough to bring us all the way. We are slipping back through the clouds like the stars Kel pulled from the sky.

15

Rosalina

My mother could power the entire Celestial Landing on her own. I couldn’t give it a single spark of magic.

Now I’ve doomed us all.

Air rushes around me on all sides. We’re falling. Below, the gateway crackles, like a glowing disc in the sky. Within it, the faraway promise of land. No magic armor will help break a fall from this high.

Every failure I’ve ever made crashes over me all at once. But one thought burns more prominent than all the rest.

Losing Castletree. How did I think I could create a gateway to another realm when I couldn’t even save our home?

I lose control of my body, tumbling over myself, hair and clothes blowing in my face. My mates’ voices try to break into my mind, but all I can do is send two words: I’m sorry.

A deep rumbling voice breaks through my mind. Kel’s voice. Don’t be sorry. Save us!

I flash my eyes open, tears streaming upward with the force of the wind. “I can’t! I’m not my mother!”