“An interesting five hundred years, We are sure,” the Fount burbled.
“Undoubtedly.” Lore flexed her fingers back and forth. “Now there’s something we should fix.”
The Isles were still burnt. The dregs of the Godsfall still poisoned them. The Fount couldn’t fix everything—she couldn’t fix everything—but she could fix this.
Lore settled her hands on the lip of the Fount, right over the pieces they’d found and brought back. It buzzed like It had before but didn’t make her go numb. She was something that could withstand It. She and the Fount, of the same nature.
Lore looked deep into the waters. A swirl of color, but right now she needed gold and green.
They rose to the surface, then spun away in lazy spirals. She watched them, grabbed them, pulled them into herself. Imbued them with her will, easy as taking her next breath.
The power flowed through her, and then into the earth.
Buds sprouted on long-dead trees, blooming green, the bark going from char-black to deep-brown. Grass unfurled like a carpet. Wildflowers opened in colorful swaths up and down the path to the Mount.
The green and gold settled back down into the Fount, replaced by air and water and fire.
These, too, she channeled easily, funneling them up into the air, recalibrating the atmosphere. Seasons realigned, weather stabilized. The sharp gust of an autumn breeze ruffled her hair.
The magic resettled. The waters of the Fount spun.That’s nice, It said contemplatively, Its voice only in her head again.Nice to feel like things are back as they should be.
“It’s a start, at least.” Lore sighed, exhaustion filtering through every muscle. “Not so bad, being helpful, huh?”
The waters swirled in thought.You have carved a beginning, daughter of the dark, when your nature was always an end.
“I am nothing if not contrary,” Lore replied, and settled her back against the stones to watch the sun set over the ocean.
EPILOGUE
THE GODDESS OF WAITING
1–100 AFA (after Fount’s ascension)
The first one hundred years were the hardest.
She lived like a mortal for them, and that was probably why. That, and everyone she knew dying.
Alie came to visit her sometimes, when her duties allowed. After some convincing, she’d held on to her throne, but she legislated away most of its power to the newly wrought delegate system. It worked well, apparently. Astonishing what people could accomplish when they chose their own leaders.
Finn was one of the elected, after renouncing his Caldienan citizenship so he could marry Alie. Lore found that she wasn’t really surprised when she heard that bit of news. Good for Alie, tying down a pirate.
Still, it took time to dissolve the Empire, to break it back into composite parts. Things didn’t always go smoothly—it was hard to get everyone to agree on how to deal with the Empire breaking up, and there were a few who wanted to try conquering the newly sovereign nations. Alie shut that down quick and hard. “The last thing I want to do,” she said, sitting on the lip of the Fount with Lore during one of her visits, “is accidentally make another Empire.”
Her eyes had been far away when she said it. Like she was thinking of Jax.
Her mothers had stayed with Lore for the first five years or so, but when Alie reached out to them and asked if they’d help with some scientific studies at the university—poison no longer allowed anyone to extend their life or reach for Mortem, but researchers were still interested in how they could use it for pain mitigation—Lore convinced them to go.
“We don’t want to leave you all alone, mouse,” Val had said, chewing at her lip. Her shoulder had healed cleanly, with only the red mark of the cauterization scar and the loss of the limb to mark it.
You aren’t alone, the Fount said, indignant.You have Us.
The Fount only spoke in Lore’s head now, so she didn’t do anything but smile, small and tentative, but there. “The world is only as good as we make it,” Lore said, pushing back her mother’s hair. It was gray all the way through. “So go make it.”
Alie married Finn soon after, and one day, she came up the path to the Mount heavy with child.
Ten years since the Fount, give or take. It was hard for Lore to count time anymore, the years of her penance blurring together. But all that time came rushing to her when she saw her friend, swollen to at least eight months out of the nine. Lore had never wanted children, had never even considered the possibility, other than that one fleeting moment when she thought about how being an Arceneaux Queen would necessitate heirs. Still, there was an ache in her when she saw Alie. She wondered if the child would look like her or like Finn.
She wondered what kind of fathers Gabe and Bastian would have been.
