She hesitated, still, turning the thing over and over in her hands. Finally, with one more look at the god above them—the god that was barely moving, other than the occasional beat ofthose giant wings, as if something else held the majority of His attention—she let the stone drop into Gabe’s palm.
Gold opened before him, a gilded road in the air leading straight up the Mount.
Just as the masts of ships appeared on the horizon.
Whatever lead Alie’s wind had given them was gone—the rest of the fleets were fast approaching the Golden Mount, Kirythea and Auverraine chasing Caldien, some still ablaze, others snuffed out. Gabe wasn’t sure if it was on purpose, or if they were just trying to escape the dead.
The distant sounds of screams and gunshots said that even if they hadn’t brought the dead with them, they had certainly brought the war.
He turned, his edges already fading to ember-shimmer, prepared to phase through every iota of heat in the atmosphere to get to the top of the Mount. A hand on his arm stopped him just before he disappeared into a shower of sparks.
Gabe whirled, expecting Bastian, but it was Malcolm standing there. Malcolm, a determined clench in his jaw, his hand outstretched. The tiny leaves that had flecked his nail beds and the corners of his eyes were withered and brown, falling away.
“Take it,” he said.
At first, Gabe thought he meant the shard, that he’d somehow forgotten already handing it over. But then, shining in Malcolm’s palm—a pool of clear water.
Malcolm was unsteady on his feet, but he looked better than he had in months. Gabe hadn’t noticed just how drawn his face was, how stooped his posture, until he stood here unencumbered. He held the power of Braxtos in his hand, the sip of the Fount that had given him magic and damned him, and he offered it to Gabe.
Alie’s eyes kept flickering from Malcolm’s hand to Apollius hovering above, as if expecting the god to swoop down and take the offered water. But if Apollius was aware of what washappening right below Him, He didn’t show it. Bastian, too, was peering up at the god, looking almost puzzled.
The shouts from the ships drew closer, more appearing on the distant sea. Pennants in blue and purple and green, the cloud and boom of cannons.
“I never wanted this,” Malcolm said. A tremor ran through him, rippling the mirrorlike surface of the water in his palm. Dead leaves shed from his hand. “And I don’t know how this is going to go, but even if it doesn’t work out the way we want, I have to be free of it. I can’t live with it anymore.”
Not exactly a vote of confidence, but Gabe understood. He said nothing, just lifted his friend’s hand to his mouth and drank.
It tasted like starlight, at first, impossibly cold and clear. Then the grit of dirt, earthy green. Gabe could feel every dying tree on this island, every run of roots that had gone dry and desiccated in the burned-out ground. He took a shuddering breath, the power of earth melding with fire in his veins, his vision a dancing tangle of green and orange.
Another whispering voice in his head, not as loud or as close as Hestraon, but with the same unearthly resonance.This is a dangerous game.
Braxtos said nothing more. Or, if He did, it was lost in the rush of magic, drowned by the waters of the Fount making a home in Gabe. Washing him out and settling into the hollows.
One last voice. Not-voice, low, a register nearly too deep to recognize.
Another way, perhaps.
Alie stepped up while Gabe shuddered. When he opened his eyes—flames still flickering in the corners, but with a green tinge over everything now—she stood before him with her chin tilted and her eyes shining.
“Alie.” Warning in Bastian’s tone, but a lost kind, as if he couldn’t quite figure out what he was warning against.
She shook her head. Brought her hand to her mouth. Spat, as if the magic within her was a sickness. Then she held out her mouthful of the Fount, the skin of her forearms looking more opaque, somehow, a strange ghostliness gone. “I can’t fight a god, but maybe you can.”
Something in the way she saidyou. Gabe was different now from the boy she’d grown up with, the man she’d known. Something stronger, something stranger.
But he took her hand and drank down her power, the starlight-cold this time giving way to a light and airy taste, almost bitter. He stood and shuddered through the change, shaking as all that magic swirled, carving through him like a river making a way through a mountain. No words from Lereal, just a fleeting sense of worry before They were washed under.
Half the Fount in him. Half in Apollius.
In his mind, grouped with the other gods, Hestraon shimmered with impossible heat. A lurch of god-thought, hidden behind his own.
There is still one more piece. But now You have half of the world’s soul. Maybe He will love Us now.
Gabe grew taller. His eyes were fire, his hands were translucent, tiny leaves pricked from his nailbeds. The apex of heresy.
So much magic made it hard to know which element to dissolve into, so he turned and started toward the burned-out trees, toward the golden path that tugged him on from the Fount pieces in his hands. Memories torrented through him, none his own. The Mount as it had once been, his vision wavering between a burnt forest and a lush one, his ears hearing peaceful stillness for a split second before going back to screams and gunfire.
“Wait, you asshole.” Bastian, though it took him a moment to put a name to the face, the feeling. He was something the gods in his head had no concept of, someone entirely Gabe’s own.
