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“Shut up, Kaleb,” Kamaria said.

“Shut up, Kamaria,” Kaleb retorted, mimicking her tone so perfectly Saida got a case of the giggles.

“While we’re on the topic,” Alessa said, “can you all please use my name? I know there are rules, but I think some have gone off track over the past few hundred years.”

“Screw rules,” Kamaria said. “They’re overrated.”

Alessa smiled. “Well, um, hi. I’m Alessa Paladino. Nice to officially meet you.”

“Alessa?” Kaleb said. “Really? I would have pegged you as a Mary, or maybe Marie.”

“This is a fun little theological lesson,” Kamaria said, earning an elbow from Kaleb. “But you still haven’t told us who’s going to hold your hand when the bugs come.”

“That’s what I’m trying to say.” Alessa took a deep breath. “I was sort of hoping it would be… all of you.”

Four pairs of eyes stared blankly at her.

“I think Kaleb collapsed because you were each absorbing part of my power, so no one was overloaded, but when you let go, Kaleb got the full force, and it was too much.”

“Meaning?” Josef said.

“Meaning I’msupposedto have more than one Fonte. Simultaneously.”

“Whoa,” Saida said. “None of the texts ever mentioned such an idea.”

“Didn’t they, though?” Alessa smiled sadly. “Together, we protect.It’s in every song. On every mural. Maybe it’s what Dea wantedfrom the beginning. She told us to find safety in connection. In community. We—thepeople—wrote it down and turned it into a million rules regulating everything a Finestra could wear, touch, love, or speak to. The gods didn’t make those rules. That wasus.”

“The apocalypse is coming in—” Kaleb pretended to check his watch. “Ten days? Eleven? Who can keep track? And we’re throwing out the rulebook. Nice. What about the part that says ghiotte are evil?”

Alessa couldn’t smile. “That one might take longer to fix, but we’ll figure it out after we save the world.”

Josef still looked dazed. “Ateamof Fontes?”

Kaleb cleared his throat. “Ahem. I have it on good authority that the correct pluralization of the word isFonti.”

Kamaria punched him on the arm, and they broke into a childish slapping fight.

Alessa watched them bicker with fierce affection. The Verità may have said loving no one was the only way to love everyone, but she’d fallen in love with Dante, and now her heart could burst with love for her friends.

Love didn’t demand perfection. The people—human, flawed, imperfect—who’d begun writing the Verità hundreds of years ago might have started on the right path, but they’d gotten lost along the way, a pendulum swung so far it had snapped. And if they were wrong about that, they might be wrong about other things.

She’d tried to be like Renata, strong and stoic, hiding her emotions beneath a layer of cold detachment, and it had never fit. She’d tried to be what she thought the gods wanted her to be, what she was told the people needed her to be, and it had gotten her three dead partners, and a shell around her heart. She’d beenstunted until she threw off the rules, shut the holy books, and let herself be the emotional, stubborn, distracted mess she was.

Her mistake was playacting at being someoneelse.

Shewasstill Alessa. She was a person, a daughter, a sister, a lover, a friend. She didn’t have to shed those roles to become Finestra. She only had to rearrange the parts she already had. She might be but one stitch in the tapestry, but every stitch had a purpose, and threads couldn’t become art without them.

To become one of many, she had to beone.

And to win the battle, she needed her friends.

Forty-Five

Tardi si vien con l’acqua quando la casa è arsa.

It is too late for water when the house is burnt down.

DAYS BEFORE DIVORANDO: 7