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EPILOGUE

THE GODDESS OF WAITING

T he 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.

Alie sat cumbersomely on the lip of the Fount. “So,” she said. “when are you going to come back?”

Lore arched a brow.

“The Empire is dissolved,” Alie said. “The continent is at peace. The weather and the seasons are back in order. What else do you have to do?”

“Keep watch,” Lore said.

We would not make the same mistake twice , the Fount burbled grumpily.

“Just in case,” Lore added. “I need to serve my time.”

Because this was a prison sentence, as surely as her time on the Burnt Isles had been. All that death on her hands. Everything she’d done possessed by Apollius, yes, but the things she’d done on her own, too.

“Come on.” Alie tried to sound playful, but there was a note of desperation there. “You’ve more than atoned. It will be five hundred years before they come back; you just plan to sit here that long?”

“I have to guard the Fount,” she replied. “That was the deal.”

A deal that sat so heavy, most days. But those were the days that made her feel better, more human. The scary days were the ones she could barely feel passing. When her burden was light, as if this was a weight she’d always been meant to shoulder.

The Fount bubbled but said nothing.

Alie sighed, tossing a corkscrew curl up onto her forehead.

“I know, but…” She stopped. Huffed a laugh.

“It’s so odd, seeing your friend become a god.

I mean, we’ve already done it once, but to see it happen again, like this…

” She trailed off again, the sentence one that wound through weeds.

“I just didn’t want this for you, is all. You deserved a life.”

“I’ll have one,” Lore said. “I just have to wait for them first.”

Alie took her hand.

After her daughter was born—one she named Loria, a combination of two names that made Lore want to cry, hers and her mother’s—Alie mostly just sent letters. Lore understood.

Her mothers came back at least once a year after taking the research positions, but when age made traveling difficult, they resigned and settled back on the island. It felt like a blink of an eye to Lore, and then they were dying.

She was with them when they did, holding their wrinkled hands in her still-young ones as they breathed their last, as the bright Spiritum in them turned to Mortem.

Lore saw the threads, weaving in and through everything.

Sometimes the world appeared more like a tapestry than something living, something real.

It scared her a bit, to see it like that, to feel herself becoming less and less a part of it.

Val went first, forty years after Lore had become the guardian of the Fount. Mari went soon after. It was peaceful for them both.

“Will you be all right, mouse?” Mari asked. Her voice was thin with age but still warm.

Lore put her mother’s hand on her cheek. “Of course,” she lied.

Mari closed her eyes. “None of us wanted this for you. But I suppose the world had other plans.” Her eyes opened, already clouded at the edges, knowing the next time they closed would be the last. “Remember to live, Lore. I know you have to wait. But when the time comes, when you’re free, do everything you ever wanted.

You saved this world; don’t let your years go by without seeing all of it. ”

She buried them next to the cliff where Nyxara had once thrown her wedding ring. They’d liked the view. When she sat back, her hands caked in dirt, she allowed herself to cry.

Is it like this for everyone? the Fount asked softly. Such a deep wound?

“Usually,” Lore said, cleaning her palms on her trousers and wiping her eyes.

The Fount took a moment, considering this. We are… sorry. The word sounded strange, coming from It. We see now why there is so much to fear.

“That’s what makes life worth it, though.” Lore stood, stretching out muscles that should have been sore from such labor, but weren’t. “You have to appreciate everything, because it ends.”

Raihan didn’t last much longer than her mothers. He came to the island once a month or so, meticulously interviewing her about her day-to-day—she never had much to tell him. He had far more to tell her about the world beyond, now that he’d returned to Kadmar and led the university there.

“Things are better,” he said the last time he came, his voice creaking with age. “More countries are trying a delegate system, letting the people rule themselves. They send aid when needed, food and supplies. People are kinder to one another.”

Lore smiled tremulously. “So people are better now.”

“And thus the world is,” he said.

The Fount didn’t respond. But she could feel It thinking, churning over Itself.

When Raihan died, he left behind neatly bound stacks of manuscripts detailing what had happened the day she made her deal, everything that transpired afterward, the true nature of the Fount and of divinity.

At first, Lore didn’t want to do anything with them, wanted to continue her quiet existence where she was nothing but a rumor, the stories of her all true but not widely shared.

She knew how religions worked and wanted no part in making one.

It was Malcolm who changed her mind.

He didn’t come as frequently as Alie—he and Michal settled in Caldien, and the journey was hard as he got older—but he came sometimes, Michal in tow, and once brought their children with them, who gamboled around the Fount like It were a plaything.

Lore let them. The Fount bubbled contentedly, as if It enjoyed their presence.

One day, Malcolm came up the mountain alone.

“He died in his sleep,” he murmured, settling beside her on the lip of the Fount, wincing as he did.

His hair was still cropped short, snowy now, and his kind eyes were surrounded with wrinkles.

“Our children were with him. It was painless. I don’t think I’m far behind.

” He cracked his neck. “Hopefully not, anyway. Who knew I’d be the one to live so gods-damned long? I’m fucking tired.”

He stayed with her longer, that time, the two of them enjoying the other’s company mostly in silence. It was a special grief, to have lost the people you shared a life with, and they both were intimately familiar with it.

Before Malcolm left, he went into the ruins of the cathedral and came out with his hands full of Raihan’s manuscripts. Lore was already shaking her head when he placed them on the broken tiles of the courtyard with an air of finality.

“I understand,” Malcolm said, not giving her a moment to voice her displeasure. “But they deserve the truth, Lore. What was the point of having him write everything down if you aren’t going to share them?”

What indeed? the Fount asked.

She sat on Its lip, watching the waters within churn and gyre, the glowing threads tangle. “I don’t want to be worshipped, Malcolm.”

It’s nice, sometimes , the Fount offered. But We do not blame you.

“I’m not saying you have to be.” Malcolm came to sit next to her, moving slow. “But didn’t you do all this so that anything known about the Fount would be purely truth?”

“There can never be pure truth so long as humans are the ones interpreting it,” she said.