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He sighed. She could tell he wanted to call that out, her use of humans as if she wasn’t among their number. But she wasn’t, and they both knew that. A hundred years, nearly, and she was exactly the same.

People are better , Raihan had said. The world is better.

“The fact is,” Malcolm said finally, “that a religion is going to spring up around this. It’s inevitable.

People look for things to believe in.” He held up Raihan’s books.

“You can’t control what they end up thinking about you.

Hells, I feel like the time is coming when you won’t really be able to keep them away from your island.

But you can give them the truth. You can try to trust them.

” He paused. “Lore, isn’t the whole point trying to make the world something you can trust? ”

It felt strange to hear her name. She hadn’t thought of herself by it since her mothers died. She wasn’t really Lore anymore, she just… was.

The Fount bubbled, thinking.

She hunched forward, arms crossed on her bent knees. “I don’t want to make the same mistakes,” she whispered. “I’m so fallible, Malcolm. It would be so easy.”

“You won’t,” he said.

You won’t , the Fount agreed.

“You were never one for belief, Lore. But if you have to believe in something, let it be yourself.”

He took the books with him.

100–200 AFA

In the next century, people started coming to the island. She could have stopped them. She didn’t.

They mostly left her alone. They never even approached the top of the mountain. They knew she was here, and clearly they believed in what she was, in the story Raihan had meticulously written down. But if they worshipped her, they kept it quiet and left her out of it. For that, Lore was grateful.

You could go to them , the Fount said. If you are lonely.

“How can I be lonely with You yammering in my head all the time?”

It splashed at her.

One day, after the pilgrims had been on the island long enough to revitalize the villages and build more of their own, a girl came up to the courtyard of the Fount, all curiosity and big eyes.

“You’re a goddess,” she said simply. “And you’re waiting.”

“I am,” she replied. There was no reason to quibble over it. She knew what she’d become.

The girl cautiously came closer. Sat on the broken tiles in front of the Fount. Lore had never repaired them, never repaired the cathedral. There were some paths whose ruin needed minding.

“My great-grandmother knew you,” the girl said. “Rosie. You were on the Burnt Isles together, before the Liberation.”

Rosie, who’d covered for her that night when she and Dani met Raihan. Such a small thing, a tiny moment in her too-long string of them, but Lore remembered, and she smiled. “I remember Rosie.”

The girl smiled back, small and trepidatious but genuine. “Will you tell me the story? I’ve read it,” she hedged. “Everyone on the island has read the Book of Waiting.”

So that’s what they called it.

“But I would like to hear it from you,” the girl continued. “The whole story.”

And Lore told her.

The Fount listened, and churned, and thought.

200–300 AFA

The tradition started there. Every one hundred years, the people on the islands would pick a girl, usually young, and send her up to the Fount and Its guardian, to ask the story and write down the truth.

A truth that had already been written, many times over.

But honesty needed renewing all the time. History needed a recounting.

The Goddess of Waiting knew it wasn’t necessarily an accurate way to get a picture of the world, but everyone they sent was infallibly kind. The villagers took care of one another. No one ever went cold or hungry.

The goddess told the same story every time someone came.

It became the way in which she counted time, this century-marking storytelling.

It reminded her of who she had been, as her unnaturally long life and proximity to magic changed her—not utterly, not like when she held the world’s soul, but she didn’t look human anymore.

Her hands were seamed like the Fount’s stones to the elbow, her skin cracked rock with gold waiting beneath. Her eyes shone gentle light.

The goddess remembered what she looked like when she used to channel Mortem. The white eyes and black veins. She wasn’t sure which version of herself she preferred.

Every time she told the story, the Fount listened as if it were the first time.

300–400 AFA

She told the story for the fourth time. It was nearly rote at this point, but for this telling, she let herself feel it all. Her eyes pricked with tears, and when the story was done, she bowed in on herself and sobbed.

Oh, little goddess , the Fount murmured. We are sorry, We are sorry.

The girl they’d sent to hear the story stood carefully, approached as if the goddess were a loaded gun. She put her hand on her shoulder. “How much longer do you have to wait?”

“One hundred years,” the goddess said, and the weight of every single one of them settled so heavy.

The girl’s hand trembled on her shoulder. “You should rest,” she said quietly. “You’re almost done.”

She hadn’t slept since she made her bargain with the Fount. Her body didn’t need it. Every day melted into the next, sunset to sunrise again, and she’d watched them all.

But the girl was right. She did need rest. It was almost done, almost finished, and she was so tired.

The goddess stood when the girl was gone.

Go on , the Fount whispered, like a mother sending a sleepy child to bed. We’ll wake you if We need you.

She went to the cave where the god before her had waited. The irony was not lost.

You’ve done well , the Fount soothed. Guarding Us all these centuries.

She smiled listlessly at the ceiling, tear tracks drying salty on her cheeks. “And have You learned anything?”

Already, she was drifting into sleep. But she heard the Fount when It answered.

Many things.

500 AFA

Little goddess.

A gentle nudge. A quiet song.

It is time to tell the tale again. Softer, almost sad: And then your waiting will be done.

Finally. Finally.

The goddess rose. She went to the Fount.

The girl chosen to write down the story this last time was a pretty young thing, maybe twenty, all green eyes and red hair.

The goddess knew that the world beyond the island had changed, but she didn’t know how, and no one told her.

They dressed the same, in trousers and shirts and boots.

They wrote with pens, in notebooks, and though they looked slightly different from century to century, they didn’t change all that much.

When she approached, the girl stood. She smiled eagerly. “I begged them to let it be me. I’ve wanted to hear this.”

The goddess arched a brow and settled on the lip of the Fount. She began her story, once again, for the last time. Anxiety thrummed through her as she spoke. The world seemed to bend, to rush her on.

We see , the Fount said, running beneath her thoughts. We have heard this so many times, and We see now.

The girl wrote dutifully, asking questions. The goddess tried not to be annoyed when she was interrupted. She wanted to get this done. She had things to do.

This girl peered up from her notes, eyes narrowed. “Which one was your favorite?”

The Goddess of Waiting laughed. It was an unexpected thing.

She hadn’t laughed in so long, and it felt so good, that she did it again, louder.

Something seemed to fall away, a shroud that she hadn’t realized she’d spun around herself.

She’d been in stasis for so long, as if her waiting had enclosed her in a cocoon, the goddess-self a mask she’d drawn over her real face.

But this was the fifth time she’d told this story, this was her five hundred years, and the life she’d waited for was so close, she could taste it.

Her debt was nearly paid. There was a hum in the air, building as she told this story, making all the hairs on her arms stand up.

The waters of the Fount sloshed forward to gently touch her hand.

“Neither,” she told the girl. “I loved them both equally, wanted them both the same. Gabriel kissed like fire. Bastian wanted me in control. They were so different, and so perfect, and I loved them both so much I’ve been waiting on this damn rock for five hundred years for them to come back.”

The girl’s eyes went wide, and so did her smile, her pen moving fast over her notebook.

Lore—that was her name, her name was Lore, and yeah, she was technically a goddess, but hopefully that particular trial would be over soon—leaned forward. “What’s your name?”

“Kenna.” The girl’s eyes were saucer-wide. The goddess did not often ask for names.

“Well, Kenna,” Lore said, “you’ll be the last to hear this story.”

Yes , the Fount said. Yes.

Kenna’s eyes were going to fall right out of her head if she widened them any more. “I… are you sure?”

“Very sure.” Lore stood. “I have plans.”

Kenna left in a dreamy haze.

Lore’s time was up. She could leave. But before she did, she turned to the Fount.

“So You said You’ve learned something.”

The waters bubbled and frothed. We have, hearing the story. Watching you.

Her brows climbed. “Watching me?”

For five hundred years, you have waited for love.

For five hundred years, you have treated your friends with kindness, as they go and make the world kinder in turn.

The water splashed up, wetting the hem of her skirt.

We are not human. We will never be. But We have learned human kindness, and it is something worth saving.

This world is worth saving, because people like you are in it.

She smiled, her eyes wet. Strange, how easily she could cry now. “Proud of You.”

The Fount sloshed at her again. Now go. Like you said, you have things to do. People to meet.

Her heartbeat kicked up in her chest, anticipatory sweat on her palms. “I’ll be keeping an eye on You. As long as I’m able.”

Live your life, little goddess , the Fount said. Make it full and beautiful and kind, Lore. We will keep this world, and watch it become better.

Lore put her hand on the lip of the Fount, over those pieces that had once been broken. Then she turned away.

Moss furred the floor of the cathedral, grown up around the fallen beams. It made the ruins look softer. She supposed years would do that. They had certainly softened her.

On the other side of the ruins was another cliff, one she’d discovered in her long imprisonment here.

It was hidden from view, only reached if you climbed through the underbrush, the now-blooming trees and vines that crowded the back of the once-grand structure Apollius had built.

Only the stones stood now, everything else long rotted away.

Lore climbed through it, the hum in the air intensifying, every nerve in her body alight.

And as she did, the vestiges of godhood fell away like a shed snakeskin.

The cracks in her hands healed over, hiding the gold. Her eyes dimmed down to hazel.

They stood on that cliff. They looked exactly the same. Bastian and Gabe, both here and both hers, holding hands.

She fell into them.

They all sank to the ground, and she didn’t realize she was sobbing until Gabe brushed a tear off her cheek, until Bastian pulled her close and kissed her forehead. “There, dearest,” he murmured. “Compose yourself.”

She laughed, the feeling still odd, burrowed into his shoulder. Gabe laid his head in her lap, and she ran her hands through his hair, across his neck.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I’m so sorry.”

He caught her hand, kissed it. “Don’t be. It’s in the past.” He chuckled. “Long past.”

“So what…” She didn’t really know how to ask, didn’t know what she wanted to ask. She looked between them, her monk and her prince, at a loss for words. “How… was it?”

A moment of silence before they all burst out laughing, collapsing into one another again. When they quieted, Gabe’s hand on her cheek and Bastian’s running through her hair, Bastian sighed. “Good news,” he said. “Apollius was lying.”

She sat up from where she’d reclined against his chest. “He what?”

“Not lying, I don’t think.” Gabe ran a hand down her arm, like he had to keep touching her, his head still in her lap. “But His experience of the afterlife wasn’t everyone’s.”

“He made His own hell,” Bastian continued, picking up the strings of Gabe’s conversation like they were of one mind. “And it was a dark void where He was powerless.”

“So where did you two end up?” She almost didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to imagine them locked in hells of their own making.

“Not sure,” Gabe said, smiling. “But I think it was the Shining Realm.”

She’d accepted the former god’s word as fact, made her peace with this life being all there was, and after only darkness. But apparently she hadn’t bought into that quite as fully as she thought, because some heavy weight on her heart lifted, with a flood of intense relief. “What was it like?”

“Oh, you know.” Bastian shrugged. “Endless wine, perfect weather, the sound of singing all the time.” He looked at her, soft-eyed. “They’re all there, Lore.”

Her family, her friends. People she’d see again, waiting beyond that starry doorway.

But first, a life. Here, with them.

Bastian read the thought on her face, gently kissed her brow.

“But as of right now, I am more concerned about this world than that one.” Bastian stood, held out a hand.

Lore took it. Gabe took her other one and planted a kiss on it, then her cheek.

“We’ve kept our lady love waiting long enough, I think. Let’s go see the world Lore saved.”

The Goddess of Waiting ended. Lore began.