Page 72 of Children of Virtue and Vengeance

I clench my jaw and brush past her, walking toward the center of the room. How dare she try to tell me what I can or can’t do?

It doesn’t matter if being this close to Inan makes my heart beat like a caged hummingbird. When these walls part, I have to thrust my new spear through his chest. I don’t have a choice.

“Zélie, promise me!” Amari grabs my arm and her touch makes the room spin. I reach for the nearest shelf as I stumble. Sweat leaks from my skin.

“Are you alright?”

I try to nod, but my head throbs. The pain makes my knees weak. I fall forward as my tattoos flicker with golden light.

“Zélie!” Amari shouts.

Bodies crowd around me, but I can’t see them through the blinding pain. I grit my teeth as my tattoos heat, searing like branding irons pressed into my flesh.

Steam rises from my skin, and my body starts to shake. My hands go to my throat as my tattoos glow. In a flash, the sunset walls of the scroll room go black.

No one moves when an explosion of light escapes from my mouth.

The beam shoots from my lips like a snake breaking free from its cage. It coils around my head, so powerful I can’t breathe.

A pulse of air radiates around my body and sends everyone flying into the walls. Amari slams into a scroll case so hard it crashes to the ground.

“Jagunjagun!” Mâzeli shouts as the golden beam changes the room around us. Deep blues and purples swirl like night bleeding through the glassy walls. Glowing stars fill the air.

I wheeze when the golden glow ignites in my chest, so stark it paintsmy rib cage in black silhouettes. My back arches toward the ceiling as my feet leave the ground.

“Hold on!” Amari scrambles up from the floor, running across the scroll room. She climbs onto a fallen shelf as I rise. The golden light floods out of my eyes.

Amari reaches for my hand, but the moment our fingers touch, a cobalt light ignites in her chest.

“Zélie, what is this?” she screams, losing control as her feet dangle in the air. Though she fights, she rises by my side like she’s been plucked from above by an invisible hand.

Cosmic energy leaks into the space between us, rainbows of smoke twisting through the air. With Amari’s touch, hundreds of voices fill my head, voices I haven’t heard since the sacred ritual.

Àwa ni omo re nínú èjè àti egungun!

A ti dé! Ìkan ni wá…

As the incantation thunders in my head, dozens of heartbeats ring in my ears. They pulse harder and faster, growing as my tattoos spread along my skin. It’s then that I see the cobalt ribbon of light twisting from Amari’s chest.

My eyes bulge as I remember myìsípayáand all the colorful threads of power weaving together. The same sight appears before my eyes now, but instead of a rainbow of color, Amari’s ashêis all navy blue.

The cobalt ribbons intertwine before her body, creating a sphere of energy so powerful its light flashes through the room. Blue ashêcrackles around Amari’s form like lightning. Its glow shines through her amber eyes—

In a breath, everything disappears.

Pain rattles through my body as I fall to the floor with a heavy thud. Amari hits the ground across from me, flashes of blue sparking as she falls.

I groan and grab my shoulder, rolling to the side as the soft orange light of the room reappears.

“Jagunjagun!” Mâzeli rushes over. “Are you okay?”

In seconds, the library returns to normal. There’s not one sign of the chaos I just unleashed.

“What wasthat?” Dakarai asks.

“I don’t know.” I shake my head. I look down at the golden tattoos still glowing on my skin. No longer confined to my neck, the swirling symbols now spread across my shoulders and down my arms. I feel their searing heat all the way down my back.

As they glow, everyone’s hearts beat like drums thundering in my head. The louder they pulse, the more I can see the ashêglowing under each maji’s skin.

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