“And now we have the means to do that properly,” Nazar adds. The priest’s voice remains, as always, even and patient, but there’s no denying the glint of interest in his eyes. “The Divhs have shown us that the Blessed Plane connects to all realms. With proper guidance and respect, we could learn so much.”
“Proper guidance being the key phrase,” Fortiss says. He absently touches the satchel at his hip where his crown now rests, a brighter mirror to the one I carry. Even without seeing them, I can feel their power humming faintly, their connection only drawing Fortiss and I closer. There’s still so much we haveto learn, and Fortiss’s next words echo my own thoughts. “We’ve seen what happens when that power is misused.”
My hand finds his, our fingers intertwining. His skin is warm against mine, callused from sword work but infinitely soft against my own rough palm. “That’s why we’ll do it together,” I say quietly. “All of us. The Divhs, the skrill, the warriors and scholars both. The old ways of separation served no one.”
The conversation flows on, but my attention is caught by a familiar hooting call, far away and somewhere else. I imagine Gent floating on his starlit lake. My connection to him hums strong and true in my chest, all the more powerful for having been lost and reclaimed. At my thoughts, a rolling wave of joy floods through me, pure and fierce and perfect.
We fall into comfortable silence as the last rays of sun paint the sky in deeper purples and blues. The night air grows cooler, carrying the promise of stars and a future filled with more discoveries.
“To new beginnings,” Miriam says finally, raising her cup. “But may we never forget the past that brought us here.”
“To the Light,” Nazar adds as Caleb also hefts his cup.
“And to learning.” He grins. “Light knows we’ve got a lot of training ahead of us.”
“To the Protectorate and all she has brought us.” Fortiss looks around, his shoulder warm against mine. We all fall silent then, drinking deep as we each consider how far we’ve come—and how far we are so blessed to still be able to go.
I look around at these people who have become my family through fang and fire, trust and even love, then up at the starlit sky, imagining the Divhs who have helped make it possible. In this moment, I can feel it all—the weight of the future, the strength of our bonds, the power of what we’ve built here in such a short time.
“Together, we will fight,” I remind them, and Fortiss turns to me, his eyes glittering with the magic he possesses as well as something deeper, truer, that will bind us together in both Light and darkness, wherever our paths may take us.
“Together,” he agrees, “we cannot fail.”
Epilogue
ONE MONTH LATER.
The day dawns in absolute splendor across the wide, grassy plains, the sun rising over the eastern horizon turning the world into an endless sea of gold.
Off to the right, his great form throwing a monstrous silhouette against the Meridian mountains, Gent tips his head back and howls. The hair on my arms goes up, every nerve pricking to awareness.
In the nearly three months that I’ve been banded to my colossus, I have heard him howl in many ways, for many reasons. For joy, in excitement, in battle rage, in despair. But this is different. This howl seems to shake the very mountains and make the skies tremble.
Before us on the wide plains, the long sinuous grass shivers and writhes, whipped by an unseen wind. It’s not just the elements of this plane that respond, either. The sky snaps tight and suddenly the field before me is filled with Divhs.
Remarkably, none of them have wings. There are enormous four-legged cats, bulky-bodied bears with fists the size of manor houses, and beasts that seem more spikes than body—but all of them heavily muscled, broad—and howling.
“What’s this?” Fortiss yells above the cacophony as he joins me on the overlook of the Eighth House…well, what is nowmyhouse, the Thirteenth. It will take some time for me to get used to that, to everything that’s happened since we sent the Imperial delegation back to the heart of the Imperium with spices from the south, precious metals from the northwest—and casks filled to bursting with Twelfth House wine.
Fortiss’s shoulder brushes against me as he moves closer, his hand finding mine with that unconscious ease that still makes my heart quicken. Even in the midst of this astonishing display of Divhs around us, I’m acutely aware of him—the clean scent of his skin, the warmth of his palm, the way his breath matches my own without either of us trying. We’re together here as in all things, and I may never get over the wonder of that.
Tales from our spies who followed along in the path of the Imperial delegation have also been reassuring, and for that I’m truly thankful. There will be no more soldiers, no more politicians to placate, at least not anytime soon. Instead, we can focus on rebuilding our troops of warriors and Divhs and creating new connections between our finest councilors, artists, and tradesmen and the mighty giants of the Blessed Plane.
Not just the Blessed Plane either, I think, as my gaze strays to the ridiculous statue that yes, still stands of me…or of Ehlyn, as I prefer to believe. A reminder of what’s possible for women in the Protectorate, and what’s possible in partnership with some of the most extraordinary stone masons and illusionists I’ve ever encountered, the skrill of the Western Realms.
There’s so much ahead of us, but this morning, with Fortiss at my side, my eyes are only for Gent as he whips around, throwing his massive arms wide. He turns his palms up, open to the sky—first the right, then the left. Then he slams his hands together with a percussiveboom!that proves too much for a section of the Meridians. I hear the rocks explode outward,feel the rumble in the earth. For a moment, I wonder what great caves he’s now revealed, what windows into the mountains he’s just opened for us, and know the Savasci will probably be exploring just that before the day is done.
Then Gent once more puts his right hand out and his left, palms up. He swings around to stare at me, and in my mind, I see two spinning crowns entangled together.
“He wants us to put them on,” I shout to Fortiss, the words lost in the howling wind. But Fortiss hasn’t come this far, nor grown so close to me, that he can’t hear me when I speak.
“Heart to heart!” he shouts, grinning. He reaches into the pouch slung to his side and pulls out the golden crown—pristine and gleaming as he holds it high. “Plane to plane!”
I follow, though my fingers are far more clumsy, my heart shivering with dread even though I know—know!—that the danger of separation is past. Still, I doubt I’ll ever forget the moment my tie with Gent was severed without warning, that devastating ache of loss that filled me and emptied me at once. I also know that together, Fortiss and I have overcome the fearsome prophecy of his solitary death foretold in the room of this great house—if only because we returned to that same room, now fully cleaned and cleared with sage and Savasci healing rituals, and saw an entirely different prophecy unfold before us, one I still can’t quite process…but which I look forward to with every echoing heartbeat.
Now, however, Gent’s howl only increases in urgency and excitement at my hesitation, and I fumble out the second crown of wings, Ehlyn’s crown. I hold it up with trembling hands, not missing the difference between the two circlets—Fortiss’s polished and loved, mine battered and bent, but both of them shining in the sun, the work of master craftsmen long ago lost to history.
Fortiss catches my eye and in that glance is everything we’ve endured together—every battle, loss, and triumph. I remember the first time I saw him, a cipher in the forest, and marvel at the man before me now, eyes bright with adventure and possibility. How far we’ve both come from those first teasing exchanges, from reluctant allies to this—a bond so complete it feels like it’s written into my bones.
