“No,” I answer, throat thick. “You chose to remember.”
Zephara squeezes Solara’s hand and turns to me, admiration softening her sharp features. “We are not naive. We were taught the old stories—that the Tower took and kept, that its light must be guarded against. We were taught the Great Families rose to power to keep the peace and provide for our kingdom as the Tower bled it.”
“We were taught wrong,” Solara adds. “We were taught fear and hate and were raised to prize pageantry and to fold emotion into performance. Spectacle made it tidy and kept it contained.”
Zephara nods, the painted flames at her temples lined with ash and sweat. “In doing so we let show become the substitute for the truth.” She takes a deep breath and the corner of her mouth slides into a small smile. “We see that now.”
I bite my lower lip and sweep my gaze across the camp. “If you mean it, then do the work. Let your actions prove you understand the truth.”
“We shall.” Solara’s brow furrows, and her eyes narrow, the gears of a plan clicking into place. “No one party will own the story of our kingdom. We will honor the past, and we will change what failed us.”
“We will do it together.” Zephara claps her hands. “As a kingdom united.”
The sisters walk away, and I watch them tend to their people. Unburdened by the old lies and no longerchained to spectacle and secrecy, they will be the kind of rulers this place needs, the kind of rulers this kingdom deserves.
Tall grasses graze my legs as I climb back onto the stage.
“What’s next?’ Declan asks, smiling up at me.
“Dying and being brought back wasn’t enough?”
A cool breeze encircles us, and the Wheel of Fortune card flutters down from the dawn-lit sky. Like it did all those days ago in Declan’s club, it lands between us.
I can’t help but laugh as I help him to his feet and we stare down at the tarot card.
The image begins to move. The wheel turns, the designs around it shifting as if they can’t quite decide what they want to be. The card’s edges curl and smolder, sending up the scent of cinnamon and dust.
A hairline split races out from the wheel and cuts across the stage. Red, orange, and yellow light wells up beneath the boards in a surge of molten color that brightens and pulses until the planks bow with the heat. The fissure yawns open, revealing a rift in the center of the stage.
I know immediately: It is a way home, a new beginning.
Declan closes his hand around my uninjured one. His shirt is crusted with dried blood, his scruffy cheeks are streaked with ash, his hair clings to his forehead in dark, sweaty ropes. He looks like hell. He looks alive.
And I can’t look away from this man who infuriates me, who told me the truth even when it gutted me, who died and came back because of my choices, who I love with my whole heart.
He leans close. “I think that’s for us,” he says, nodding toward the wheel burning at center stage.
I lift my face to him and smile. “Are you ready?” I ask. “When we go through, everything changes.”
“I’m not afraid of change anymore. I’m not afraid of living.” He brushes my hair back and kisses my forehead. “Not if it’s with you.”
I squeeze his hand until my knuckles ache. Together, we step into the glowing rift between worlds.
The last thing I see before the fire closes in around us is the Everspring unfurling, green and endless, across the Kingdom of Wands.
Beneath that new life, beneathalllife, the Wheel of Fortune continues to turn.
Epilogue
New York hums outside the window. A taxi honks, a siren keens somewhere in the distance, the faint bass of an outdoor speaker beats against the windows.
Declan’s kitchen looks like it was ripped from an architectural magazine—glossy white marble counters that waterfall into wood floors, black cabinets that close without a sound, knives that cost more than my rent.
I sit at the island that’s as big as a car, laptop open, deleting piece after piece of the persona I built. Canva mockups of curated affirmations. Prescheduled Reels with sparkly captions about “five-step manifestation hacks.” Witchy lip syncs that have stopped trending in the week I was gone.
Delete. Delete. Delete.
The bandage mummifying my hand makes it hard to move the cursor, my fingers clumsy on the trackpad. Luckily, the ER doc didn’t press too hard when we stumbled in streaked with blood, sand, and ash. I chalkit up to Manhattan being Manhattan. This city has seen worse stagger in off the subway at three a.m.
