And there was Mordred and Penelope’s Mortar Pestle, every brick back where it belonged. There was the cauldron-shaped sign, the front door where Darien had watched Loren fumble for her keys so many months ago.
There was the alley where they’d met, when fate had brought them together, changing their lives in ways neither of them had ever imagined.
There was Rook and Redding’s Restaurant and Bar, where Darien had first learned Loren’s name. When she’d sat down across from him at that booth in the back corner, trusting him and the offer he’d made to help her, even when she wasn’t certain if she should.
The last of the missing people were found at last, covering themselves up with whatever scrap of clothing they could find.
Darien didn’t quite understand it—didn’t know how it was possible that these people had been healed of the antidote when time had been reversed, the future changed. It seemed Tempus the Liar had worked a fair bit of magic in his wish, had perhaps answered requests Loren had made of him when she’d spoken in that strange tongue. It made Darien wonder what else now remained from before the shift—and what had been forgotten about.
But although Loren hadn’t saved everyone—only those who’d died in the blast, not the people who’d fallen before it, the smaller number of them still lying upon the sidewalks and the road—the streets were teeming with people.
Still kneeling before him, wholly spent and no longer glowing, the medical tattoo on her forearm a glaring red, Loren swayed in place—and collapsed on the sundial, the marble of which had been repaired.
“Loren.” Darien shuffled closer to her, drawing her limp body into his arms. Heart hammering, palms slick with sweat, he bent down, pressing his ear against her chest.
Relief weakened his knees at the sound her heart beating there, as present as the ground beneath him.
“Oh, thank the gods,” he breathed, swallowing hard. Clutching her to him, he tipped back his head and stared at the brightening sky as he whispered into the heavens far beyond, “Thank you. Thank you.”
There was a crackle in his ear.
And it was his sister’s voice that said thickly, “Darien.” She sounded like she’d woken up from a deep sleep. “Where are you? What happened?”
A sob burst out of him. “You’re alive,” he said into the speaker. In his arms, Loren stirred at the sound, her eyelashes fluttering.“We’re alive.”
Loren peeked up at him, her irises ocean-bright in the light of dawn. The light of a day that was theirs for the taking.
Darien whispered, “Happy Kalendae, Lola.” It was a new year.
And they had survived.
61
Loren slept for a long time.
When she finally woke up, the windows were dark, the sky beyond the glass a star-flecked canvas. She was in her bed at Hell’s Gate, tangled up in the teal and ivory quilts.
It took her several minutes to remember, to make sense of what’d happened.
Was it only a dream?
Sheets rustled as she rolled onto her side, wincing as her back spasmed.
Every bone hurt, every muscle. And although she was no longer wearing the bodysuit that had kept her alive through the blast, nearly every inch of the skin that showed beneath the sleeves of her pyjama shirt and below her shorts was marked up with deep purple bruises and scrapes.
The only light in the room filtered through the space between the bottom of the door and the threshold. Voices drifted through that door, muffled to a distant hum. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply as she listened to the sound of those voices—the voices of her family. She concentrated on the smell of freshly ground coffee and fabric softener and what she thought was pizza, allowing the scents to ground her.
She washome.
Loren leaned over to grab her cellphone from where it sat, plugged into a charger, on the end table. Squinting against the glare of the screen, she checked the date.
It was still Kalendae—still her birthday—for two more hours.
When she’d unleashed her magic upon the Arcanum Well replica, forcing it to destruct itself, she had been able to see down every alley, into every home and building, as though she were omnipresent. As though she were a god.
As though she were seeing through the eyes of Tempus the Liar, who she’d been able to speak through with the wish her father had bought for her.
Every person who’d died in the blast had been brought back, every wound they’d suffered from healed with the reversal of time—healed, even, from the disease that had turned many of them into demons. As for those who’d died before the Well had exploded—people like Randal and his men—they remained dead. A part of her felt terrible for even thinking it, but the world was a better place without people like Randal in it.
