When we arrived in town, Colonel Fireswift was waiting. He’d flown ahead last night, right after he’d finished beating me and Jace bloody. The sun was about to rise, so the colonel had us drive out immediately onto the Black Plains.

As we parked outside the Lost City, heading into the ruins, I saw Jace step out of the lead truck with Colonel Fireswift. The angel patted his son hard on the back. I couldn’t tell if that was supposed to be punishment or praise.

We went into the city in teams, splitting up to explore the lower levels of the sunken districts. Colonel Fireswift put Jace in charge of me and Drake. We walked down the dark streets, looking for the entrance to the Treasury. I hadn’t shared what the Pilgrims had told me, but I was looking for these mysterious markings that were supposedly on the building that kept the relics.

“He made me team leader for a reason,” Jace said.

“Because you’re leadership material. Yes, I heard the speech,” I replied.

Beside me, Drake snorted.

“No, the real reason.”

“So you can be in charge of me?”

“He put us together because trouble finds you, Leda. And he wants me to be there when it does. He put me in charge, so I could claim credit for defeating the trouble you attracted.”

“Clever.” Or should I say devious?

“Too clever,” said Jace. “With my luck, you’ll attract a horde of monsters and the rogue angel, and then we find the way into the vault only to be attacked by a horde of the dead.”

Skeletons lay in the streets, wearing the armor of a war long since passed. So many people had died here in this battle between heaven and hell. My gaze snagged on a skeleton with wings. The angel’s feathers had long since turned to dust, but a purple flower bloomed from one of the wings, right where a feather would have been. I moved in closer to the angel. A golden light fell on the skeleton, as though from a skylight, and the air hummed with an old forgotten hymn. More purple flowers rose out of the ground, wings of petals, every bit as beautiful as feathers.

“Leda,” Jace called out. He and Drake were standing across the street, watching me.

“Did you see…”

I blinked, and the blossoming wings were gone. There were no flowers, no golden light, no music. I must have been imagining things again, not just hearing voices but seeing things now. This place—it was saturated with memories, scorched like permanent imprints into the magic that flowed through the city like a river.

Drake and Jace were looking at me like I’d lost my mind. Maybe they were right. I rose from my knees and walked back to them. We continued deeper into the city. We didn’t meet any monsters. Where were the monsters?

“There,” I said, pointing down a street lined with small houses.

“What’s down there?” Jace asked.

Not answering, I moved quickly, drawn to a faint glow. I found it there on one of the houses—the picture. Valiant had been right. I did know it when I saw it. It was a halo with wings, the symbol of the angels. A glow pulsed slowly from the picture.

“A gateway. How did you know it would be here?” Jace asked, amazed.

“I followed the glow.”

Jace traced his finger across the picture. “This is the door to the Treasury. The relics have to be beyond this wall.”

Drake looked for a way into the building, but the house’s doors and windows were sealed shut. “I wonder how we get in.”

“There has to be a trick to it.” Jace pressed his hand to the stone wall. “Angels protect their treasures with wards.”

“ ‘For in the midnight hour, the sun and moon will shine, and a new hero will rise, his mind unlocking the secrets within,’ ” I quoted softly.

Jace’s head jerked around. “Where did you hear that?”

“From the Pilgrims.”

If Jace was surprised that the Pilgrims had shared secret information with me, he didn’t say anything.

“That is the solution,” he said. “…in the midnight hour…sun and moon…” I could almost see the gears turning in his head. “I believe this gateway can only be opened at midnight.”

“Well,” I said, sitting down on a boulder beside the house. “It looks like we’ll be here awhile.”

By midnight, nearly the whole expedition had gathered around that little house. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut. The Pilgrims had wanted me to be the one to find the relics, and now Colonel Fireswift was on his way to claim the glory for himself. I didn’t give a damn about glory, but I wasn’t about to stand by while someone who’d done nothing took it all for himself.

Our collective minds had puzzled out that midnight was the hour the gateway could be opened, and that the sun and moon represented light and darkness. We had to shine some light on the symbol, something to penetrate the darkness.

Captain Somerset cast a small flame in front of the angel mark. When the picture failed to react, she grew the flame. It continued to pulse along in the same, slow way with no signs of change.

“What if the mention of the moon is literal?” Claudia said. “What if the gateway reacts to moonlight?”

Jace looked up. Moonlight streamed through an opening in the rocky ceiling, but the moonbeam didn’t come down at the right angle to touch the symbol on the wall. Jace drew his sword, putting it into the moonlit stream, turning the blade. The pale light bounced off the steel. He shifted the angle until the stream hit the angel symbol. Everyone held their breath for one long moment, but nothing happened.