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CHAPTER THIRTY

LORE

The past is the easiest place to get lost.

—Taya Mireau, Auverrani poet

T he island was thick with memory.

She and Dani had fallen into an uneasy routine in the days since they’d arrived.

They’d divided up the island as best they could—Dani searched through the ruins of the villages, while Lore took the wild places, the idea being that she’d have an easier time navigating them, what with her god-affinity.

Thus far, it both had and hadn’t worked.

Lore was able to explore the island without getting hopelessly lost, but neither of them had managed to find Apollius’s body yet.

Last night, as they sat in front of a tiny fire that Dani had made with her lighter and some dead branches, she’d brought up the thing they’d both thought of but hadn’t yet discussed. “What happens if we can’t find Him?”

Lore had shifted on the ground, holding a half-eaten piece of dried meat in her hand. Their stores were running low, but she found she hadn’t been very hungry since they arrived. As if the very air of this place sustained her. “He’s here. We’ll find Him.”

Dani glared at her across the fire. “You can sense enough to be sure of that, but not enough to know where He is yet?”

Lore just looked at her. After a moment, Dani looked away.

They hadn’t spoken again, both bedding down for the night next to the Fount.

Dani had given up sleeping on the ship, but neither of them were brave enough to sleep in the cathedral ruins.

Lore knew enough not to believe in ghosts; still, Apollius’s old church felt haunted.

The truth was that Lore did feel something.

On the backside of the Mount, beneath the ash-cover, the mountain had a sheer rock face, as if something huge had slid down the earth.

She kept finding herself drawn there, standing on a grassy outcropping that jutted out over the slice of stone, staring. This was where they should be looking.

She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t yet. Why the place seemed to both push her forward and draw her back. The place in her head where Nyxara had been seemed to tug her toward it, while the rest of her shied away.

But this had to come to an end, eventually.

Now she stood there again, the wind off the sea stirring the ash and feathering her hair against her face.

She held on to the trunk of a burnt tree and leaned out, just a bit, looking down at that sheer face.

If she fell, it wouldn’t be immediate death.

It’d be tumbling head over feet down this stone-slide, crashing against craggy handholds and pockmarks, until she hit the black water of the ocean.

And still, a glimmer. Calling her out onto that rock.

And if He was there? If she found Him, killed Him? What then?

It was a question she’d thought of before, but never with such immediacy.

Apollius still had both deaths the Fount had given Him, one in body and one in spirit.

So what happened when Lore finally killed His body?

She didn’t think Bastian would be as lucky as she was when she killed Nyxara.

The goddess hadn’t wanted a stronger hold in Lore’s mind, but Apollius wanted all of Bastian; giving Him one bodily death would only make His spirit dig in deeper claws.

Especially now that she knew renouncing the gods was as simple as words said in the vicinity of the Fount, close enough for It to siphon back Its magic.

For Gabe and Malcolm and Alie, their plan could be enough. Gather back the pieces of the Fount, fit them to their proper places. Have them wish away their power as they stood close. But for Bastian, it would never be that simple. Apollius would never let him come here.

So they’d force Him, somehow. Drug Him, maim Him, do whatever they had to do to wrestle Him to the side of the Fount and hope Bastian was strong enough to fight forward. They’d come this far, impossibly. She refused to leave the job half done.

It is not the closeness alone that allowed Us to take Nyxara back.

The not-voice, the Fount speaking. It was fainter here than when she was in the courtyard, but still clear. Lore tipped up her chin to the sea breeze. “What is it, then?”

You renounced Her, and She desired to go.

Lore sighed. “So Bastian can’t get rid of Apollius unless Apollius decides to leave?”

He cannot.

“This is all pointless, then. Apollius will never do that.”

Not unless He thinks there is somewhere better to be.

“I repeat: pointless.” It didn’t make her angry, just filled her with a deep and abiding despair. The closer she got to an end, the further away it drew.

No , the Fount countered. Not if you continue on your path. Not if you give Him somewhere else to be.

A frustrated growl rumbled in her throat. “Whatever the fuck that means.”

Her fingers tightened on the burnt bark. She leaned farther over the precipice, her center of gravity shifting.

He weakens , the Fount offered, as if it were a consolation. His vessel has renounced Him and sometimes fights free. Each time the vessel is in control, a little more power is lost. Leaked back to Us.

“But You can’t hold it until You’re put back together.”

Not all of it , the Fount answered. But some of it.

Better than nothing, Lore supposed. Since the chances of Alie and Gabe and Malcolm being able to find their pieces of the Fount and get them here still seemed very slim, for all that her makeshift plan hinged on it.

“So if Bastian manages to take over for long enough, Apollius will drain out? And You can hold all of Spiritum, at least, even if we don’t manage to find all the pieces, and can’t surrender all the magic? ”

The Fount was quiet for a moment. He will never be gone completely until He decides to leave.

“That’s really fucking unfair,” Lore murmured.

For a moment longer, Lore hovered half on the knoll and half over the open air that led to the slick of rock.

A wound left by the Godsfall; she knew that.

If she closed her eyes, she could almost see the tumble of gods falling down the mountain as they fought, taking trees and growth with them, burning it or tearing it away as they rolled toward the sea.

She could almost feel the dig of rock into her shoulders.

She could almost see the place where Nyxara had put Him, after it all. Where she’d brought His body, with the sucking hole in His chest, the barely tethered heart.

Lore straightened. Then she went to the grove.

The grove hadn’t been hard to find. The second day they were here, the island divided into searchable quadrants, her feet had taken her here instinctually, something in her body knowing where to go. When she entered the trees, she knew exactly where she was.

It didn’t look like her dreams anymore; didn’t look like the forest she’d grown around her mind as paltry protection from the fate she couldn’t escape.

Didn’t even look like the one in the goddess’s memories.

That forest had been green and brown and uniform, in a false blush of health.

This one was burnt, the trees spindly corpses pointing up into the sky, the dead leftovers of something holy.

But it was Nyxara’s grove. Her grove.

Her searching always brought her here by the end of the day, no matter how she tried to avoid it.

Memory felt thick as hangman’s rope, continually tightening, but Lore held it back, like she had every other time she came.

She’d had enough of seeing a life that wasn’t hers; her own was exhausting enough.

But today, the tide of memory was nearly too much to ignore, and it pulled her on, coaxing her to drown.

When Lore reached the grove, she went to the center, where the moss was still soft even if it was coated in ash. She lay down, shifting her head until she was comfortable. She closed her eyes and slipped into time’s river, too tired to hold herself away.

It played out like it had when she’d touched Nyxara in the tomb—Lore looking out from Nyxara’s eyes, experiencing Her memories as if they were her own.

It was disorienting to be in the same place where they’d happened, five hundred years gone in a blink.

One moment, the grove was gray and burnt, and the next it was vibrant, a sanctuary grown to keep her complacent.

She turned her head. Next to her, Hestraon, stretched naked on the moss, his eyes closed. He didn’t look like Gabe, she knew that. But Gabe was all Lore could see.

“What are you thinking about?” He didn’t open his eyes, but Hestraon reached out and grasped her hands. They were bound together with a ribbon at the wrist, and he stroked his finger along it, tender against her pulse.

Soreness between her legs; so that’s what they’d been doing. Lore found herself disappointed this memory hadn’t started half an hour earlier.

Nyxara rolled on her side and hooked her leg around Hestraon’s, tugging him closer. “Nothing.”

“Yes you are,” he said softly. “You’re thinking that you want to escape with us.”

She looked away. The plan that would eventually lead to the Godsfall was in its infancy, but she knew that there was no way she could leave with the others.

That he wouldn’t let her. And she’d told them that it was fine, that she would be fine.

Nyxara had a penchant for self-sacrifice that Lore couldn’t relate to.

But Hestraon always knew.

“Nyxara.” He cupped her cheek. “There has to be a way to escape him. I know you love him. I do, too. But you can’t sacrifice yourself for his sake.”

She closed her eyes. Huffed a short laugh. “Sometimes, I think that’s the only escape I’ll find.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do.” She opened her eyes. Looked not at him but at her hand tracing his side, his neck.

“I think, sometimes, that the two of us together are too much for the world to take. That there can be nothing for me as long as he lives.” She paused.

“I’m tied to him so closely, sometimes I wonder if I would even exist, if he was gone. ”