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If Nyxara was gone, surely Apollius was, too. They’d died, she and Bastian, anyone who looked at them now would say so. It’s what Nyxara wanted her to do, to kill Bastian and thus kill Apollius, so it had to work for Lore, too, right?
It was hard to hold on, now, both to the magic and to herself. The currents had her, they wanted to pull her away, and even though her whole life had been defined by a reckless determination to keep living it, Lore almost wanted to let them. See where they would take her, what this atrium would open into. She could feel it gaping next to her, an open maw of dark, of things no one could understand until they fully crossed the threshold. Eternity, waiting, just like she’d felt on the docks.
She wondered if this was what other people saw when they gained the ability to channel Mortem. She wondered so many things, and maybe there were answers she could find, if she let this moment go. If she relinquished these threads, chose the path at this crossroads that led to restful dark.
But she couldn’t leave Bastian and Gabriel. The two halves of her heart needed her here.
It took monumental effort for Lore to reach out, to grasp the thin, straggling strands of Spiritum still clinging to her body and Bastian’s, the exploding stars of themselves. She grasped them, twisted. Channeled it through her, in this last frozen second when she could, and sent it toward Bastian.
Spiritum coalesced back into Bastian’s still form. Dim, but there, and no longer leaking out. He was alive. Alive and alone, dead for just a moment, just enough to banish Apollius.
Now for her.
It was harder to grasp your own life in your hands than someone else’s. Lore grabbed at the trailing threads of Spiritum as she stepped back into reality, off time’s shore, winding them around weak hands, letting them breach her skin again. She felt herself heal, Mortem receding, but gods, it was worse. The dark and the currents and the gaping star-hollow that was the gate to everything after drained away, leaving her in dust and unimaginable, crushing pain.
Lore expected the awareness of Mortem and Spiritum to fade. She’d killed herself, killed Bastian, and banished the gods; shouldn’t They take Their power with Them? But she could still sense the threads, could reach out and touch them if she wanted.
She heard a groan from Bastian’s vague direction, and didn’t have the presence of mind to stop herself from weeping, loudly, nothing like dignity left. Because he was alive. He was free.
Right?
The clatter of footfalls outside, shouting. “The King and Queen are in there! We have to go see if they survived!”
“Of course they did.” Jax’s voice, imperious. “The Sainted King is blessed by Apollius Himself.”
Blessed might be a stretch.
Lore’s eyes flew wide open. But she’d done it, four deaths in two bodies—
No. Sorrowful. Death cannot be cheated, Lore. Not with us. It only counts if it lasts.
Lore’s sob turned into a scream, loud and long and rage-filled, choking on dust and debris. Outside, someone shouted that they heard her, that it must mean they were alive, but Lore wasn’t paying attention. She screamed until everything went dark.
EPILOGUE
Gabe
He woke to waves.
Not surprising. They’d been on the damn ship for what felt like weeks, though surely that couldn’t be right. Gabe had never sailed before—his life before the Presque Mort hadn’t required it and his life after hadn’t had time—and he found that keeping track of things like how many days had passed wasn’t an easy thing to do when all you had was sea and sky. He’d tried counting the times he slept, at first, but since there was nothing else to fucking do, he found himself sleeping far more often than night fell.
Perhaps it was unfair to say there was nothing to do. There was plenty to do, really, but he didn’t know how to do any of it. Val, Mari, and Michal seemed to be holding things down just fine, since the galley was so small. Michal was often distracted by Malcolm, the two of them sitting close by the railing and murmuring together over things that Gabe never overheard, but he pulled the ropes when the ropes needed pulling and hoisted the things that needed hoisting. Val steered, her pale-green eyes narrowed at the horizon like it had personally wronged her, and Mari kept up with whatever else a ship needed to keep skipping over the water. Gabe helped, when she let him. It wasn’t terribly often. Everyone wanted to keep to themselves.
Gabe both did and didn’t. When he kept to himself, with nothing to distract him, all he could do was think about the people he’d left behind.
Alie. Lore. Bastian.
Alie, screaming as she was hauled away. Lore, bleeding out again, an awful echo of that awful night two months ago, and once again he could do nothing, nothing. Bastian, who he hated and loved in equal measure, who was being taken over completely by the god Gabe had been taught to worship. That was what he’d been thinking about, in that moment, when Lore was bleeding and Alie was screaming and bloodcoats were pouring from the alleyways. That at least he could see them. He could say goodbye. And he’d never have that chance with Bastian. Never have the chance to tell him about all the conflicting feelings he had, never have a chance to touch his face with tenderness instead of anger.
Then there was fire. It’d come on him like a wave, quicker and more powerfully than Mortem ever had, because this was his. It belonged to him and the god in his head, the one that blessedly didn’t speak to him like Apollius did to Bastian, or Nyxara to Lore. The one who was just an alien ember in the back of his mind, telling him to burn.
So that’s what he did. He stretched out his hands, and he burned.
But they’d gotten Alie and Lore anyway.
Gabe stood, planting his forearms on the rail of the galley, the wind ruffling his hair. It needed a trim, and he looked up as he pushed it back.
Then he squinted.
