Yuma nodded.
Lysandros held out his hand as the black rain continued to pour down. “Come with me. Let’s go back together. We can still be happy. The three of us.”
“Inquisitor,” said the Grim King, “how little you know.”
“This is a family matter, Eldred. Stay out of it.”
“You think this is a family matter! It was you who called the Chief Herder the King of Danras. Do you think a king would consider words like ‘the three of us’ with anything more than contempt?”
At a speed that seemed unbelievably quick for his bulky armor, Lysandros strode through the rain up to the cackling Eldred and punched him hard in the stomach. The Grim King stumbled backward, grabbed on to his throne, and collapsed into it. Lysandros pointed a finger at him.
“You are a relic of the past. The waves of the Empire will wash you away. And I am the first wave of them all. The tip of the spear that will skewer the world into one.”
The Grim King didn’t answer, his speech knocked out of him.
Lysandros stepped up to Yuma. “I don’t know how that tyrant deceived you. But think of the time we spent together. We fought the Grim King side by side, did we not? You were the first to run to me when I fell.”
Yuma looked back at Lysandros. In the last six months, his Mersehi had become perfect. Yet he truly had not changed at all. And he would never change. She took a step closer to Tychon.
“I came here on my own two feet. Of my own free will. Our child has aptitude in sorcery. If I stay with you, he will be wrapped in bandages and turned into a Power generator. And Merseh will belong to the Empire forever. But if I stay here—”
“Chief Herder. There is no more ‘here.’ This castle has fallen. That thing—” He pointed to the Grim King. “That thing will die here and his body will be taken to the Capital. Whatever you were thinking, this place, in one hour, will become as much a part of the Empire as Danras.”
“Is it wise to keep me alive for as long as a whole hour, Inquisitor of the Empire?” said the Grim King, taunting.
“Indeed, an hour is too long.” Lysandros strode up to him, picked him up by his robes of shadow and fire. Eldred’s crown felloff his head and rolled on the dais. Carrying the Grim King, Lysandros jumped up to Apollyon’s hand, Eldred’s feeble resistance doing nothing to slow him—the Grim King was exhausted from the last grand summoning he had performed. Without any more ado, Lysandros climbed up Apollyon’s arm and then impaled the Grim King on the long spike on the gigatherion’s shoulder. Instead of a scream, the tyrant sighed long and deep, and his struggling ceased.
Centuries of abject tyranny, millennia of peerless sorcery, ended with the subtlest of sighs. That sigh was Eldred’s final gift to Yuma.
The sky crackled with lightning. The black rain intensified, as if mourning the death of the Grim King. With the thunder, the floor shook. The throne of bones crumbled first, and the crown slipped off the dais and fell into the depths below.
Yuma walked backward until she stood at the very edge of the dais. Hearing her footsteps, Lysandros turned and saw her.
“Yuma!”
“Lysandros. You said you were the first wave, and I’m going to be swept away like everything else here.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Tychon will become King of Merseh… if the prophecy comes true.”
“Those prophecies are just nonsensical poetry! Step away from there!”
“If you hesitate now, you won’t be able to save Tychon. Don’t do that to me too.”
Lysandros shouted, “Of course I will save him! He’s mine. And so are you.”
He leaped from Apollyon’s shoulder to the dais, which tiltedlike a spinning top. He quickly regained his balance and strode to the obsidian crib. Watching him, Yuma took another half step back.
“Yuma, no!” shouted Lysandros. “If you still have the nullstones, use them now. You said they could stop Powered machines, right? You can’t stop the Grim King’s defeat, or the liberation of Merseh. But if I have done you wrong, if I was ever untrue to you, I shall rightfully die here and now.”
Before she realized what she was doing, her hand went to the stones inside her hat. But there was nothing she could use them for now. Not even for revenge. For what was there to avenge? Merseh was finally free of the Grim King.
“No.” Tears welled in her eyes. “You’ve done nothing wrong. And that is the problem.”
“I don’t understand. Please just talk to me,” said Lysandros, taking another step forward.
“We’ve freed Merseh together, haven’t we?” Yuma said, taking one final glance at her child.
