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CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

LORE

In the end, the making of a god is a simple matter: It is someone deciding that the world is not as they want it, and letting nothing stand in their way. It is someone defying every destiny with no regard for consequences.

S he didn’t remember the walk down the mountain.

Lore was already leaving the courtyard of the Fount before the doorway even closed, wanting her last memory of Bastian to be of him whole and steady and moving forward, rather than disappearing into the stars.

The humming died away, zipped up like a mouth suddenly closed.

The singing of the Fount crescendoed, triumphant, jubilant.

The apocalypse averted. It had only cost her everything.

The sun came back at some point in her trip back down to the beach, seeping light over the burnt forest, the ash-free sky. Idly, she wondered what Raihan’s silver instruments were doing now, if they were still or wildly spinning. She wondered what the world she’d made would be like.

She crossed the tree line, silent. There were more people on the beach than she’d anticipated; some ships, Auverrani and Caldienan and Kirythean, but the soldiers didn’t appear to be fighting one another. The suddenly avoided end of everything brought people together, apparently.

There were other boats, too. Rough-hewn things, made from lashed-together logs, crewed by an odd assortment of people in pale fabric. The escaped prisoners from the Harbor—it seemed they’d made more vessels after Lore took Raihan’s boat. Maybe now they could finally find their way home.

One of the pale-clad people was near a familiar shape on the beach near the tree line, binding someone’s shoulder. Raihan. Helping Val, who looked to be missing an arm. Lore shuffled over to them, moving on instinct. She wouldn’t allow real thoughts in her head, not yet. They hurt too much.

Malcolm saw her first. His expression cycled through shock, then fear, landed on concern. “Oh, Lore.”

At her name, the others turned. Alie, Val, Mari. Mari rushed for her, Alie not far behind. Val tried, but she moved slowly.

Mari enveloped her in a crushing embrace; Lore wanted to return it, but her limbs felt full of stones.

“Mouse,” her mother breathed into her hair. “Oh, gods, I thought you were gone.”

She had been, for a time. But Lore didn’t say that, just rested her head in the crook of her mother’s shoulder. As she did, her eyes connected with Alie’s. A knowing look passed between them. Alie pulled in a sharp breath.

Lore went to Val, gingerly touching her gore-caked shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Ma.”

“Wasn’t you.” Her smile was a strained thing, but it was there. “One of those pesky corpses.”

“More than one,” Mari said softly.

“But it was me.” She wanted to cry, but she didn’t. Her emotions felt too far away to affect her, like she’d fallen down a dark hole. “I told them to keep everyone away.”

“I forgive you,” Val said simply, bringing up her remaining arm to pull her close. “You weren’t yourself. And I suppose I could have taken the hint. At least it wasn’t my shooting arm.”

Lore closed her eyes.

Alie waited until her mothers had released her before she stepped any closer. She approached slowly, as if Lore might startle away, placed a hand on her arm. “Are they…”

The words wouldn’t come. So Lore just nodded.

Alie’s breath caught. She pressed the back of her wrist against her mouth, sobbed once. Closed her eyes. When she opened them, they shone with purpose. “Well,” she said. “I guess that means I’m the Queen of Auverraine. Dammit.”

Her voice broke on the last word. Lore bundled Alie up in her arms, the smaller woman’s sobs racking her entire frame.

Lore held her until it was through, damp-eyed but keeping it together.

Her grief was too deep to show anyone, a feral animal that hid from the light.

It would only emerge when she was alone, and Lore wasn’t entirely sure if she’d survive when it did.

Malcolm approached with the same cautious air Alie had. He didn’t ask questions, just enclosed both of them in strong arms. Michal followed him but hung back. He raised a hand and placed it between Lore’s shoulder blades, one comforting touch.

When their holds on one another relaxed, the worst of it past, Malcolm tried to crack a smile. “I’ll make sure there are books about them,” he said, with a quiet, strong conviction. “Gabe would hate that, probably, but Bastian would love it.”

“As long as everything in them is true,” Lore said softly. Thinking. She looked at Raihan, then back up at the Mount.

Raihan walked over cautiously. Curiosity shone in his eyes, and a little bit of shame at that curiosity, though not enough to blunt it.

“We saw the fog break, and then we saw the ships,” he said, answering the question on Lore’s face.

“And when all my instruments started spinning as if to break apart, Sersha said we should come investigate. Wasn’t as comfortable as sailing my boat, but the skiffs we made were serviceable. ”

“I’m sorry about the boat,” Lore said. “It’s here somewhere.”

He nodded. “If the dead didn’t tear it apart. Seems we just missed them; they all slipped back into the sea while we were sailing.”

“I must’ve let them go when Gabe made it to the Mount,” she murmured, piecing it together. “Right before I killed him.”

She hadn’t meant to say that. A flinch shuddered through every person in their small group, but none of them moved away from her. Alie reached out and grabbed her hand. Malcolm put a shaking palm on her shoulder.

Raihan’s eyes widened. He nodded but said nothing.

Alie sniffed again, once, then dashed her hand across her face. “So it’s over, then,” she said. “The Fount has all the power. The world will right itself.”

“Some of it,” Lore said quietly, still feeling her gaze drawn upward, toward the Golden Mount.

“Some things are on us. A higher power can’t fix everything.

” She snorted, lightly. “It doesn’t want to.

It isn’t human. It can just make another world, reuse the bits of this one to create something else.

But this is the only world we have, and we’re the only ones who can make it good. Who can prove it’s worth something.”

Val sighed. “I’m about past believing in the goodness of humanity, frankly.”

Lore pressed her lips together.

“It could happen again,” Malcolm murmured. “Someone coming here. Taking part of the Fount. It wouldn’t be exactly the same cycle, but close enough.”

They stood in silence. There should be a feeling of victory here. A crisis surmounted. But there was no triumph. Just something that felt like waiting.

Mari shook it off first. She turned to Lore with a smile that was only slightly strained. “Let’s go, mouse. We need to get Alie back to Dellaire; Finn has agreed to escort us. There will be plenty to do once we arrive, I’m sure, but first you’ll need to rest…”

She trailed off slowly, timed to Lore’s shaking head. “I can’t,” Lore said, not realizing what she meant to say until it was already out of her mouth. “I have to stay.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Val snapped, the same tone she took with poison runners who’d fucked up a drop, though there was less vitriol and more fear behind it. “There’s nothing here, Lore. It’s done.”

“But it’s not,” Lore said. “At least, not forever. Malcolm is right; this could all start over again, so easily. Someone has to make sure it doesn’t. Someone has to make sure the cycle doesn’t begin again.”

“But it doesn’t have to be you.” Mari’s dark eyes shone; her hand on Lore’s arm was gentle and pleading. “You’ve done enough. Let someone else do this part.”

She couldn’t, though, because this part was hers. Gabe had been the catalyst, rushing in to save her like always, freeing her from Apollius but only through the worst circumstances. And Bastian had been the consequence, a sacrifice to close a cosmic door.

And Lore was, as always, the end.

So she just shook her head. Smiled at her mothers, at Alie and Malcolm and Michal.

“I have to,” she said simply. Then she turned, headed back toward the Fount.

Behind her, she heard the scuffle of Val wanting to follow, of Mari doing the same.

The low murmur of Alie, of Malcolm. They both understood.

The ghosts of divinity made these kinds of things clear.

Before Lore crossed the tree line again, she turned around. Looked at Raihan. “Come with me.”

He startled back, brows furrowed. “Why?”

“Because things should be written down, and I know you have a notebook.” She pushed through the burnt trees. “We need to make sure it’s only the truth, this time. The truth and nothing else.”

Quickly, quickly; back up the mountain, past the broken settlements, back to the made-whole Fount, gold and shining and singing.

Raihan walked with his mouth agape, peering at everything as if he wanted to memorize it, but Lore stalked into the courtyard with the same stance as she’d once stalked into a boxing ring, hands on her hips and feet planted.

“I have a bone to pick with you,” she said to the Fount.

The singing didn’t stop, but it softened, became a buzz of background noise. The Fount’s voice moved sinuous through the air, allowing Itself to be heard. “ And what is it that you want? ”

“What I want is my men back,” she said, “but I’m willing to talk terms. You need me, still.”

From the corner of her eye, she saw Raihan wrestling a notebook of his pocket, hurriedly finding a pen. He looked around for somewhere to sit and write, then decided on the ground.

She let him get settled before continuing. There needed to be a record of this.

“ You grow arrogant ,” the Fount said. It wasn’t cajoling anymore, not now that It had what It needed from her.

Ridiculous to think of a magic fountain as sounding irritated, but at this point Lore was used to ridiculousness.

It was rather rude, though, all things considered.

“ You are not a god, to demand things of Us. ”