She’d had many instances when she thought she felt despair, but none of them compared to this. Lore slumped on the broken tiles of the Fount’s courtyard, her scarred palms limp in her lap. All this, and still, the world ending. All this, and still, she’d begun the apocalypse.
“It is too great a rip to mend,” the Fount continued. “A god-imbued soul tearing their way into eternity. The only thing that can sew it back is another death, another who has held divinity. It would close the doorway.” It paused, and when It spoke again, there was a suggestion of thoughtfulness, and admonishment. “But you are not willing to die.”
Of course. Of course.
“What if I did?” Lore asked.
“Our way is cleaner,” the Fount replied. “Easier.”
She huffed a laugh. She and the Fount, united in this: They both always wanted the easy way out. If you were captured, take the deal the corrupt King offered you. If the world you’d made wasn’t up to snuff, tear it down and try again.
It’d caught up to her, finally.
Lore didn’t have it in her to curse. She barely had it in her to sob. She just let herself fall forward, her head slumped to the broken tiles, taking one last moment to feel her breath, feel her heart.
Feel that hand in her hair, caressing, familiar.
Bastian.
“Well,” he murmured. “We’ve come to my part, at last.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
BASTIAN
Behold, You always make a way.
—The Book of Prayer, Tract 8645 (the last Tract in the Compendium)
It had occurred to him while he sat with Gabe—Gabe’s body, but he refused to think of him like that, as just a corpse—and watched Lore embrace her mother that he was probably going to die tonight.
The thought wasn’tnew, of course. There had been part of him entertaining the possibility pretty much since Apollius vacated his body, since he boarded Jax’s ship bound for the Golden Mount. He should have been worried over the political implications of suddenly going against Kirythea’s plans, how he would deal with his court’s newfound religious fervor. But those things had been far from Bastian’s thoughts, and not just because he was, when you came right down to it, not a very good King. It was because he’d known, somehow, that those things would not be his problem. That they would be left to better-suited minds than his own.
Because this was his part. Dying for Lore. For the rest of the world, too. But mostly for her.
He watched her slump, after her mother was gone, swollen with magic then swallowed by the Fount. There’d been surprise in Lore’s face, when Lilia disappeared and the star-void materialized in her place, erupting from the Fount like a geyser of black-and-gold water. He’d had no such surprise. He knew something more was coming.
There was always something more.
But Bastian took his time, even as Lore railed at the Fount, as he felt the world going to threads around him. There was time, because he was going to die, and his dying would end it. A cork in the wine bottle of eternity, sealing it closed.
Gabe’s eye was open, glassy; Lore hadn’t had a chance to close it, full of shock and god. Bastian did it for her, gently closing Gabe’s lid over the shining blue iris. He ran his hand over the stubble on Gabe’s chin, raked his fingers through that red-gold hair until he’d broken up most of the dried blood, brushed the flakes away. He kissed him, one last time, though he could hardly stand to do it when Gabe’s mouth was stiff and cold. For a man who always tried toappearstiff and cold, he’d never, ever kissed like it. Bastian had only experienced those kisses a handful of times, but he was confident in his assertion. Gabriel Remaut had always kissed like fire.
Then Bastian stood up and walked over to his other love.
There were no tears left in Lore. He knew that feeling. She lay limp in the ruined courtyard, utterly defeated as the Fount began the process of unspinning the universe, trying to work up the courage to die. Gently, Bastian reached out and tangled his hand in her hair, a gentle pressure.
She didn’t understand at first, when he said they’d come to his part. Bastian’s fault; his flair for the dramatic dictated that he not just sayNever mind all that, I’ll die for you instead, especially when it seemed that he would not get many more opportunities to be dramatic. But when she did, those perfect eyes blew wide, her jaw went tight, and her chin came up, a picture of defiance as familiar to him as the scar on his palm.
“No,” she said simply. No cursing, no fighting, just simple negation. “I won’t allow it. Please, Bastian, I can’t lose you both.”
“It seems one of us is going to have to lose the other two, or the world will end. How’s that for fairness?” He smoothed back her hair, and she leaned into his touch, so tired. “Lore, dearest, there could be a life for you beyond this. Let me do this for you.” He knelt next to her, pulled her forward so his lips brushed her forehead. “Let me be the hero, just once.”
“I never wanted you to be a hero,” she murmured. “Either one of you. I didn’t need that.”
“Of course not.” He smiled against her skin. “I would say you wanted to be your own hero, but that’s not quite right, either. We just didn’t need heroes, any of us. I’d like to try, all the same.”
Her grip on him tightened. All around them, the Fount sang, eternity hummed, and the void in the air slowly, slowly grew.
