Epilogue

THE ORACLE LEANED back, resting her head against the wall behind her, and smiled. She never knew for certain whether the plans she put in place, the tweaks she made, sometimes over a hundred years in advance, would actually work. She had hope, and she had faith—and she had her dragons—and that was usually enough, but there had been mistakes and accidents in the past.

A prime example was the state of her Monastery right at this very moment, with half of her dragons choosing to live abroad, and the other half so damaged in mind and body that they were only now starting to recover. Her Dragon of Earth had been greatly hurt by her actions, a mistake she had barely managed to fix, and her neglect of her Monastery while focused on a different threat had allowed her Dragon of Water to be utterly destroyed. She knew all about mistakes.

This time, though, she hadn’t made a single mistake. She couldn’t afford to. It wasn’t just the need to prevent Sin’s escape. If it had just been that, she could have thwarted his plan eighteen years ago before Corey’s birth. She had seen her brother’s pain and loneliness and sought a solution to that too. It was only luck that a chance to stop both happened to coincide.

Of course, there were other futures that could have occurred too. She had seen Corey grow up alone with no one to care for him. He had learned to hate and to crave and demand what he wanted from others around him. In that future, he had not only freed Sin but had taken the lead in destroying the world. Not even her dragons could have stopped them. That was the worst of the possible futures and to prevent it, she had ensured the woman carrying Corey would end up giving birth in the same small town as a childless couple desperate for a baby.

There were other futures, some she had acted to avoid and some she had hoped would occur. Her last act had been to let her brother know where to find Corey, and then it was out of her hands. All she could do was watch and hope.

Sin would not have the power to mount another plan for a few hundred years, and even then, those plans would be weak. Maybe in another five thousand years he might come up with something viable. It was too far away with too many uncertain futures for her to know for sure, but she would keep watch on the future, just as the Sentinel would watch the present, and the Mage would protect the Tower.

She closed her eyes and Saw again: this time just a few minutes in the future. Snow flying under the paws of their dogs and from underneath the blades of the sled. The sun beginning to set overhead, but still a few hours of good travel left before they needed to make camp.

Two men sat on one of the sleds. One was bundled head to toe in blankets and furs, but he had one arm out and wrapped around the chest of the second man sitting in front of him, who was leaning back into that embrace.

Flash forward a few days, and the same two men were curled together in a massive bed in a room surrounded on all sides by windows. The sun shone down on their sleeping faces, but as she watched, her brother rolled over, accidentally pulling the blankets aside to reveal one completely bare leg.

She fled, unwilling to invade their privacy. Months, and then years, and then more went by. She saw turmoil and stress, yes, but that was the case with every relationship. Above all, she saw love, and that was what really mattered.

The Oracle opened her eyes and sat forward. The time for meditation had passed. Now it was time to finish healing her Monastery. It might be too late for the current Dragon of Water, but she and her Dragon of Earth could fix the wrongs in this lifetime so that when her Dragon of Water returned, whomever they were would not suffer the same fate.

Resolute, the Oracle stood and left her meditation chamber. There were people to speak with and plans to make, but in the back of her mind she was still smiling because her brother, the Sentinel, was happy.