Something had changed.

Her breath caught. She blinked or tried to.

What is it? she sent.

But he offered only a shake of his head and a faint smile, a familiar crooked curve of his lips. Her heartbeat sped up.

What had changed?

Oh, God, everything. Everything. She felt it in the air between them.

She stepped away from Endelle and moved to a position in which she could address both the Supreme High Administrator and the Warriors of the Blood.

The warriors stood in a broad arc in front of her, some of the most powerful ascenders on Second Earth.

Thorne, with his bleary red eyes, stood near the chicken coop of a pool table.

Luken ranged next to him almost protectively like a guard dog, his thick muscles on display since he already sported flight gear.

Medichi carried his regal height at the apex of this warrior mountain, the tallest among the men, but the one who never mounted his wings.

Zacharius stood next to him, all that thick curly hair trapped in the cadroen, but fanning out down his back, his blue eyes narrowed, waiting.

Santiago sat on a stool beside Zacharius, his long wavy black Latin hair hanging loose, shiny, gorgeous. He lifted his hand and the sub disappeared, sent somewhere. He shifted his knees in order to face her.

Jean-Pierre drew up next to Santiago. He held a cue stick in his hand, his long elegant fingers wrapped around the narrow wood. He was an aristocrat in even the grace of his hands.

Endelle stood a foot from him, her wooded eyes dark, her arched brows sitting low, a restlessness to the air surrounding her, impatient as always. We haven’t got all day screamed from every pore of her body.

Kerrick stood to the left of the pool table, his enormous wings fluttering slightly at the tips, his gaze never leaving her face.

Alison had the strangest feeling, a familiar odd déjà vu sense that she had been here before and would be here again and again, that her destiny, which had been birthed at the medical complex, was being thrown into the stratosphere right here, right now. She had thought that to ascend was everything, the be-all and end-all. She had been wrong. She had only understood her place a few minutes ago in her CO’s office, which also meant she was beginning to understand that her arrival on Second Earth had ramped up the war.

She squared her shoulders. “I know now why the Commander wants me dead.”

Endelle snorted. “We all know why. You have too much fucking power.”

“Yes, but what purpose does that power serve?”

She saw it all so clearly. The revelation came from her dreams, from the deepest parts of her subconscious, from the mysteries well beyond the human rational mind.

She recalled the beauty of staring up into the Third Dimension, of seeing that world open to her, of being painfully drawn to Third Earth but unable to get there. She recalled the pull of the lake, the need to protect the lake.

She stared at Madame Endelle, drew in a long deep breath, moved to the edge of the pool table, and dove straight in: “One day, a few years from now, I open the Trough to Third Earth.”

First, a long combined intake of breath, and then silence—heavy, weighted, fearsome silence. A tomb, sealed for a thousand years, could not have been quieter than the Cave.

Endelle’s jaw went slack.

Kerrick’s green eyes shone with admiration.

The rest of the warriors stared, first at her then at one another; then almost as a unit they turned to look at Endelle. Waiting.

Alison shifted her gaze to Kerrick to see how her announcement had affected him, wondering if he would think she’d suddenly gone insane. How shocked she was to see the certainty in his eye as he nodded once to her. He showed a level of trust and confidence that she had not seen in him before.

She felt buoyed to continue, to explain her meaning, and faced Madame Endelle once more. “I’ve dreamed repeatedly of White Lake, as well as the Trough and Third Earth, every night since my rite of ascension began. When I dream, I’m always dressed in warrior flight gear and I’m flying over the lake at full-mount. Though I can’t explain how I know my purpose, I just do.” She pressed a fist to her chest. “Here. And this is why Darian, the Commander, wants me dead.”

Endelle blinked only once as she stared at Alison. She finally looked away and started to pace. Her brow had dipped low, and sparks flew from her body as though she could not contain the energy of her thoughts. Back and forth she paced in front of the mountain of her Warriors of the Blood.

“Passage to Third Earth. Shit. Holy shit. Holy, holy shit.” She stopped in front of Alison. “Don’t fuck with me, ascender. You’d better be damn certain about this. No doubts, questions, not even a glimmer of What the hell am I saying?”

Alison shook her head. “Not even a little” came as a whisper from her throat.

But the moment the words left her lips, a deep sinking sensation invaded her heart, forged not from doubt but rather from certainty, profound, raw, overwhelming certainty. She was the instrument by which the pathway to Third would be opened and her life had just gotten harder, a lot harder. She dropped to her knees then buried her face in her hands. She was overcome, and tears flooded through her fingers.

How long she remained there, she didn’t know, but to her surprise she felt cool hands take hold of hers. She lifted her gaze and met Endelle’s ancient wooded eyes. The Supreme High Administrator of Second Earth folded a dry cloth into her hand and wiped Alison’s cheeks, nose, and chin.

Alison looked into Endelle’s face, so full of miraculous understanding and compassion, those qualities that ordinarily escaped Her Supremeness.

Endelle nodded. “The responsibility just ground you into the dust, didn’t it?”

Alison’s lip quivered. “Yes,” she whispered.

“I remember this day in my own life some nine thousand years ago. I thought about slitting my wrists.”

“Oh, God.”

“If you had been flippant, I would have put my foot on your neck again. But this, seeing the devastation in your eyes? Yeah, you’ve convinced me of the truth of the situation. But holy shit, Alison, opening the Trough to fucking Third. That’s major shit.”

Endelle, the toughest, meanest bitch ever born, gathered her into her arms and held her. Welcome to my world, she sent.

* * *

Thorne couldn’t keep his feet from moving backward. He didn’t stop until his ass hit the pool table. He stared at a fucking nightmare, Endelle on her knees and the newly created ascender proclaiming that she was the vessel by which Third Earth would be opened to Second.

He wanted his Ketel ice-cold and burning down his throat.

Did no one understand, like he did, what this meant? That a new log, the size of an eighteen-wheeler, had just been dumped on top of this burning heap of a bonfire called war?

He scrubbed his hand down his face. He had hoped that Alison’s powers would have brought an alignment meant to ease the stress on the warriors, on Endelle, on him, but didn’t anyone else get that Darian Greaves would escalate, not fall back?

Thorne needed to get to the Convent, to get to his refuge, but new pain beat at him, for he knew, he knew, that the woman he protected would soon be dragged into the war.

Goddammit.

* * *

Kerrick took deep breaths, expanding his lungs to their fullest. Pride flowed through him, admiration, full-on lust. God, he loved this woman, and love held him in a state of euphoria, of a decision made, of hope wrestled to the ground, of possibilities, of a future with Alison.

The tide carried the past out to sea. He turned his face to the shore for the first time in two hundred years. Alison was a new land, a new life, a promise of the future.

So she would, in time, be the one to bust through the Trough to Third.

Holy hell. His wings shimmied, a fluttering at the tips, a shiver down his spine.

He watched her with Endelle. He couldn’t remember seeing Her Supremeness show such tenderness before. Ever. What did this suggest for the future? One glance at his brothers told him they had the same thought. Wonder lit each face like they were looking at a flying pig.

Understanding whirled around him, a cyclone moving faster and faster. Alison had spoken the word guardian the first time she had told him of her dreams about White Lake. Had she been a man, he would have concluded she was meant to serve as a Warrior of the Blood. Certainly she had the power. She just didn’t have the heart. Besides, only males were guardians.

He frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. His biceps twitched.

Guardian.

What if the concept needed to be expanded? But that would be such a break with tradition.

And yet, from the time Alison had answered her call to ascension, she had been an anomaly, the unexpected. She was his breh, something he had never expected to come to him, not when the breh-hedden was so rare. Yet here she was.

He drew in another deep breath because what he was about to propose went completely against all Second Earth traditions.

Dreams of White Lake? Now he would deliver the interpretation.

“Madame Endelle,” he said, the strength of his voice hitting the walls then bouncing back.

Endelle rose to her feet, Alison with her, both turning to look at him. Endelle planted her hands on her hips and scowled at him.

He moved to stand beside Alison. He took a couple of deep breaths. Endelle had the power to kick him from one end of the earth to the other without moving an inch. Needless to say, he was reluctant to open the door.

“Well, Warrior, what the fuck do you want?”

He prepared to get his ass kicked as he said, “I believe ascender Wells may be a Guardian of Ascension.”

She rolled her eyes and spoke in a voice that had idiot written all over it. “What the hell are you talking about? Or have you forgotten that guardians are both male and warriors, neither of which ascender Wells professes to be.”

Kerrick nodded. “She has dreamed of herself as a guardian, which is a primary indication that she should be granted a special dispensation.” He dipped his chin. “Consider. If you granted her guardian status, then COPASS would be honor-bound to bestow on her the rights of guardianship.”