Her brain was one shout, almost enough to drown out Apollius. Lore tried to fall to her knees, but her movements weren’t up to her alone, and the god kept her upright, refusing to bend at His final victory.
Yes, He murmured, soothing her interior screams, the two meeting in some macabre harmony.This is what has to happen, beloved.
“He would have given it up.” Her words were broken, serrated with sobs as all the magic washed through her, every scrap that had ever been stolen from the Fount. She finally won the fight against her body and managed to kneel next to Gabe’s lifeless form, cradling his head in her too-large hands. It lolled, awful, a broken toy. She could hear the crunch of vertebrae when she tried to move it, so she stopped, as if he could still be hurt. “He would have come around, would have given the powers to us, You didn’t have to do that—”
Pain.
It was so sudden, so intense, that Lore couldn’t scream. All she could do was tense, curl herself as small as her divine form would allow, wait for it to be over.
But it would never be over, would it?
I will do what I please.A whisper, worse than a roar.I gave him a choice, did I not? And he chose the world over you. Over us. All Hestraon’s talk of wanting it to be the three of us, wanting to be equal, and when He got the chance, He didn’t take it.
Lore shuddered and shuddered, the pain continuing even though He’d already gotten her attention. He’d made it soundlike they would be partners in this, that day when she killed His body and killed Dani and drank half the world’s soul down. But that had never been the plan, and she was stupid, so stupid to think it had been.
Mari had told her once that half of love was being afraid. Not of the person, of course not—but being afraid of how that love could ruin you, how it could feel like handing over part of your soul to be trampled. Not a fear of what the one you loved might do to you, but a fear of what the world could, when you let part of your heart walk around outside your body.
She felt for Nyxara. She could see how someone starving for love might mistake those kinds of fear for each other. How power could feel like safety, how a want for good could be twisted so thoroughly.
Now she was god. Harbinger of the apocalypse, and finally, the apocalypse was here.
No.
Not a scream this time. A simple statement of fact.
She could deal with pain. She’d done it her whole life, her body made sepulchral by the magic it carried. She could push through it.
Lore closed her eyes, took a shuddering breath. Sharing her mind with Apollius was being knee-deep in brackish water, a current tugging at her that she’d never felt when it was just Nyxara. Like the river of time she’d stepped out of to save everyone, once, stretching out a second. This was the same idea. She was stuck in her head because she allowed herself to be, drowning in a sea of magic.
But all she had to do was step out. Feel the pain, and forget it, and step out.
No.From Apollius, this time.You stupid thing, don’t—
Lore stepped.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
LORE
Every ending is just a pause.
—Jorach Birham, Eroccan poet
Someone was running up the path. Lore could hear it, in that moment she took control again, the sounds of the world drowning out the screams in her head. Someone was running up the path, and she should care about that, but at the moment all she could bring herself to do was sit here and cradle Gabe in her hands. He didn’t wear his eye patch anymore, something she hadn’t noticed before. She stroked her fingers over the exposed skin of his temple, the faint red line where it had been for so many years.
Deep in her head, she could hear Apollius screaming, screaming. The pain was exquisite, but she floated somewhere above it, above that churning magic sea, grief buoying her to a place where it was abstract fact rather than concrete experience. Her body changed, shrinking down to the size she should be, her unnatural golden glow dimming so she was more moon than sun. Fitting.
Eventually, Apollius would battle His way back into control. She wasn’t strong enough to keep Him at bay forever; her mindwould break under the pressure if her body didn’t first. A mad god would be worse than a selfish one.
But she wouldn’t think of that now. Wouldn’t think of the solution presenting itself, the one she’d run from for so long. She cleared her thoughts as best she could, smoothed her hand over Gabe’s hair.
She could bring him back. The soul of the universe swam beneath her skin; she could bring him back. But it wouldn’t behim, really; she knew that. It wasn’t like the docks when that ship exploded, settling everyone’s lives back in place before they’d crossed the threshold. Not even like when she’d tried killing herself and Bastian to banish the gods from their minds. Death could be delayed, but it could not be cheated, and once you’d entered eternity there was no real return.
So she sat here, and cradled him, and waited for whoever was coming up the path to see what she had done.
Of course it was Bastian, his dark hair matted with sweat, his face scratched and bleeding. He panted as he came to the top of the path, the only one of them left with no god-magic to make living hurt less.
His eyes widened. Sheened, then closed. “Oh, love,” he murmured, the lines of him going crooked. “Oh, love, what happened?”
