A sob broke in Lore’s throat. It gave Him an opening. “You stupid buried whore,” the god snarled at her mother, “you know nothing of divinity—”
Lore clamped her teeth into her lip until she felt the skin break, not letting His voice out.
“Listen, my baby,” Lilia said. “You have to give it to me.”
The song of the Fount reached a crescendo, resolving once again into words.Yes, It sang,yes, a vessel, one to bring it all back.
Lilia was not the avatar of a god. But maybe it only took divinity to steal power, not to have it given. Lore was the God of Everything, and there was nothing beyond her grasp.
In her head, Apollius shrieked. He battered at her insides like her bones were prison bars; the pressure in her head crept close to bursting.
“You’ll die,” Lore said simply, an argument stripped bare. “Bringing it to the Fount will kill you, it’s too much to give back any other way.”
“I know,” her mother soothed. She stepped forward, cupped Lore’s monster-proportioned face in her hands. “I know. I’m ready for that.”
“What if I’m not?” Lore whispered.
She’d never had Lilia as a mother, not really. Even in those first thirteen years, she’d been held at arm’s length. And now, here: proof of her love, proof it had always been there, and the final proving was that one of them had to die, and Lilia would not let it be her child.
Tears fell freely from Lilia’s eyes, twin to Lore’s own. She leaned her head forward, resting her forehead against her daughter’s, clearing Lore’s own tears away with gentle fingers.
“You,” Lilia said, “are the only good thing I have ever done.Making you run that day tore me in half. It was my one good deed.” She took a deep, shaking breath. “Let me atone, my baby, my heart. Let me finally make a world you can live in.”
Lore fell forward, into her birth mother’s arms. Her sobs were artless, racking things. Lilia held up against them, her hands soothing, sweet in a way they had never been allowed before.
Apollius was still screaming, His cries going from wheedling to begging to raging, telling her all the ways He’d make her suffer for even considering this. But Lore, here in her mother’s arms, surrounded by her mother’s love, could ignore it. Her mother had come to save her.
And Lore would let her.
The waters of the Fount imbued every part of her body; not a swallow so much as a reservoir. And when Lore let it go—fully relinquishing every bit of herself that had ever wished for this power, rejecting every bit of awful divinity—it didn’t feel like it had in the North Sanctuary after marrying Bastian, when her sip came back to her mouth. It fled from every pore of her, seeping out like a wrung rag.
Seeping into her mother, instead.
But there was a moment in all that rush, just a heartbeat, when they were both human-shaped, right when the magic left Lore, right before it entered Lilia. When they could just be a mother and a daughter embracing, for the first and last time.
Lilia pushed Lore away with golden-shining hands. Her hazel eyes were wide and bright; she gasped, and Lore knew she was hearing Apollius, that the god was hurling every kind of abuse He could, knowing His second death approached.
Lore’s mother looked at her. Smiled. “Love you.”
Then she threw herself backward, into the Fount.
It erupted, the power It had once held returning in a flare, almost as if It had forgotten how to hold it. Or maybe in celebration.
A storm of golden light and deepest dark twined together over the lip of the Fount, obscured in a gout of clear, sparkling water. It threw itself on the canvas of the world, marring the sky. Blackness, swirling, an infinite void framed in molten gold, as if the Fount had spilled forth eternity.
Lore had been there, on that threshold. She’d seen this yawning star-filled door. And now she knew that nothing lay beyond it. That her mother was gone, gone completely, and even though that was rest, a sob still broke in her throat.
The hum in the air intensified. The open door into eternity grew slowly as she watched, like a flower in bloom. The very atmosphere seemed strained, bending forward, everything pulled toward that threshold.
The threads of the world flashed around her, as if the seams had been cut. A new dread chewed at the bottom of her stomach. Lore made herself look up, head heavy with grief. “What’s happening?”
The Fount didn’t answer her. The humming continued, the pull, the void in the sky opening, opening.
“This world has not done well,” the Fount said finally, speaking aloud rather than in her head, a low boom of sound. “It’s time to make another.”
The words didn’t register at first. When they did, Lore slammed her hands on the ground with a frustrated scream. “No! I did what You wanted! You have Your power back!”
In the corners of Lore’s vision, threads of magic disentangled themselves from stone and leaf, water and wind; the world unraveling back down to composite pieces. “We have Our power back,” the Fount agreed. “And We are using it.”
