“I’ve been waiting for you,” Eda said.
Niren smiled, and sank to the temple floor across from her. “I know. I came as fast as I could. The miles pass slowly when I am trying to reach my friend.”
“Then we are friends?”
Niren brushed her fingers against Eda’s shoulder. “Always.”
Eda smiled back. She hugged her knees to her chest and stared out beyond the ruined temple to the starry desert plain. “What happened to you?”
“Tuer and Raiva found me, wandering in the Mountain. Raiva poured the rest of her Starlight into me. Made me Bearer of Souls, as she meant to from the beginning. I have been busy, gathering the dead, leading them through the Circles to paradise beyond.”
“Are you happy?” Eda whispered. She shuddered at the memory of Death and Time and Sorrow. She still thought it cruel of the gods to bind anyone to such a fate.
“I have found my purpose,” said Niren. “I am content, Eda. I always knew I was meant for something more.”
It felt wrong to say it, selfish, childish, but Eda did anyway. “I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t know what I want or what my purpose is.”
“Eda.”
She looked over at Niren’s gentle face.
“It’s over. You saved Endahr. You saved me. That’s who you are.”
“But where do I go? What am I to do?”
“You no longer wish to reclaim your crown?”
Eda thought about the city, glittering on the horizon. How fragile the Enduenans were. How easy it would be to destroy them. “I don’t want to sacrifice anyone else like I did you. I know that isn’t the point, that it was never the point, because the gods had other plans for you, but—but if I do, I will sacrifice others over and over again, until my soul is truly gone and I’m nothing but a cruel empty shell wielding the powers of a goddess. I don’t know what I want. But I don’t want that.”
Starlight pulsed from Niren’s brow. She nodded gravely.
“Can you forgive me? For what I did to you?”
“My dearest Eda. You didn’t do anything to me.”
“But I intended to. I traded your life away without a thought. It doesn’t matter that the gods meant for it to happen. I still did that. To you.”
Niren closed the distance between them, and folded Eda into a tight embrace. For an instant, Eda’s whole body tensed, anticipating the rush of pain that accompanied the feeling of someone else’s sorrow. But all she felt was Niren, solid and warm, her heart beating steadily.
“You can’t hurt me,” Niren explained, when she’d drawn back. “Just as I can’t hurt you. I’m not exactly living, you know, and you’re not exactly … you’re not exactly mortal anymore.”
Somehow, this didn’t come as a surprise. Eda had felt it, when the Starlight and the sorrow had woven themselves into her soul.
“But that isn’t all bad,” Niren went on, her tone over-bright. “It means that no matter where you go, I can find you. Speak with you. We can be friends, as we haven’t quite been since childhood.”
Eda didn’t miss the quirk of Niren’s lips. “Did you always know I was your sister?”
“I suspected for many years, and I knew for certain when I met our father in the Circle of the Dead. You frown the same way he used to frown, you know. You laugh like him, too. Although it has been a very long time since I heard you laugh.”
Eda wanted to laugh, but she didn’t know how. She found herself yearning to know the father she had known, and yet not known. “Tell me about him. Tell me everything.”
Niren did, as the moon rose and sank again, as the stars faded and the sun climbed bright into the sky. And for the first time in a long, long time, in the ruins of the temple she had tried so hard to build to save her friend’s life and quell her guilt—for the first time, Eda didn’t feel alone.
Epilogue
SHE ALWAYS FELT MORE ALIVE UP ONthe cliff.
There was a certain ledge unreachable except by half an hour’s treacherous climb that she visited nearly every morning, tucking herself between the rocks, watching the ayrrah soar in the air currents as the sun poured over the mountain peaks and warmed her face like nothing else could.
