The Cerulean (Untitled Duology, #1)(58)

The temperature was mild, the air fresh and crisp like newly washed sheets. The grass was a vibrant green and it looked so springy Agnes felt she would bounce if she stepped on it.

There were no people.

“This is the City Above the Sky,” Sera said, and her connection to the place was palpable.

“Where is everyone?”

“I don’t know.” She looked at her palms. “I am still figuring out how my magic works, its capabilities. Cerulean do not go down onto planets any longer. I am discovering things that my green mother could not have prepared me for.”

“Why don’t you go down onto planets? How many planets have you been to?” Agnes found the questions piling up in her mind, and she had to bite her lip to keep from asking them all at once.

“I have only ever known this planet,” Sera explained. “We have been tethered here for over nine hundred years.”

“You’re nine hundred years old?”

She laughed. “No! I am not yet eighteen. But the High Priestess has been alive since the planet before this. She is ancient.”

Agnes decided to let that one go for now.

“What is that?” she asked, pointing to the cone. It sharpened into a golden point at the very top.

“That’s the temple of Mother Sun. It lies in the center of the City.”

“Who’s Mother Sun?”

Sera took a moment before responding. “She is everything,” she said.

Agnes was not as interested in gods as she was in the logistics of this place. “What is this temple made of?”

“Sunglass,” Sera said, as if it were obvious.

Observe, Agnes thought. Don’t disturb.

The steps of the temple were smooth, the doors engraved in markings, geometric shapes, spirals and slashes and squiggled lines. Some seemed to glow when she looked at them, others to fade. They looked sort of like the symbols Sera had scratched in the dirt of the truck bed.

“I used to climb up there all the time,” Sera said, gazing up at the golden spire twinkling overhead. “It made my orange mother furious, but I couldn’t help myself. It was the best place to see the stars.”

Agnes felt that any spot in this city would be an excellent vantage point for stargazing. The stars around them were big and bright, not like the tiny pinpricks visible from Old Port at night.

“Do you think you could show me what happened to you?” she asked.

Sera closed her eyes and a tear fell onto her cheek.

Agnes suddenly found herself kneeling inside the circular room she’d seen in Sera’s memory earlier, with the painted ceiling. Every inch of space was filled with silver-skinned, blue-haired women. There were no men.

Sera was kneeling beside her, surrounded by three women, each with a different color ribbon around their necks. Agnes recognized the purple and orange women. The green one was new. These must be Sera’s mothers.

Another woman stood at a podium, leaning over an ancient, crumbling bowl filled with light. There was something regal about her, something that declared power and demanded reverence—Agnes wondered if this was the High Priestess Sera had mentioned, except that she did not look nine hundred years old. The light in the bowl went out. The woman called Sera’s name.

The room dissolved, and Agnes found herself in one of the glass houses, standing in front of a mirror beside Sera. The three mothers were there too. Sera wore the very same robe she was wearing in Kaolin except it was fresh and clean. The clumsy embroidery matched the bracelets on her wrist: purple, green, and orange. The bracelets were gone now, Agnes realized, as was the necklace; her father’s men must have taken them. There was so much love in this room, it hurt her chest to contain it.

“You have been our sun, Sera Lighthaven,” the woman with the orange ribbon said. She was older than the other two and her eyes glittered with tears. “You have been the light in our world.” She looked like she wanted to say something else, then stopped herself. “Are you ready to go to the Night Gardens?”

Sera did not look ready at all. Agnes’s pulse quickened.

“Yes, Mother,” Sera whispered.

Then Agnes was in the most exquisite garden she had ever seen. Snow-white lilies, dark purple dahlias, and soft gray roses were all mixed together with other flowers Agnes couldn’t name, flowers that couldn’t actually exist—buds that lit up like glowing sapphires floating through the air, flowers as big as hibiscuses but that shone like the full moon on a cloudless night, trees with silver trunks and leaves as black as pitch. The garden was full of people, like the temple had been. She stood with Sera on a glass dais that jutted out over a waterfall. Beyond her was nothing except the dizzying vastness of space. Beside her was the regal woman from the temple who had called Sera’s name.

“Today is a momentous day!” she cried. “The beginning of a new chapter for our beloved City, at long last. This ceremony will free us from the bonds to this planet as Mother Sun will guide us to our new home. All praise her everlasting light!”

“Praise her!” the crowd cried back.

Agnes watched in horror as the woman took out a knife and cut Sera’s arms, just inside her elbows.

She caught sight of a young girl in the crowd that she recognized—it was the girl she had been racing along the banks of the river in Sera’s memory. Tears streamed down her cheeks.