EPILOGUE

ELARA

WITH THE DRAGONS GONE, THE WORLD CONTINUED TO CHANGE. They buried their dead: Mireya and Gavriel in unmarked graves, Torrey cremated and her ashes kept by her parents, a commissioned portrait of Gael in the Soto family tomb beside Signey and Jesper’s mother and older sister. Torrey and Gael received medals of valor for their sacrifice, at Jesper’s insistence. In his opinion, no one had sacrificed more.

Then there was Aveline.

Aveline was honored in a state funeral attended by so many people that the streets of Seaview were packed. She was buried at her ancestral home, alongside her mothers, in a ceremony that carried on late into the night. In San Irie, a funeral was not just about the person’s death, but about their life. Food had been served, music had been played, and stories about Aveline’s legendary exploits had been told.

Afterward, Elara and Faron had stood in the back of Renard Hall, on the cliff overlooking the dark ocean. Elara had built an altar with a picture of Aveline on top, a candid photo taken during the war in one of the few times they’d all tried to feel like children again. Elara and Faron had pressed their cheeks against the teenage queen’s, making faces while she rolled her eyes. After returning to San Irie, Faron had been the one to find the photo among Aveline’s things, in her bedroom at Pearl Bay Palace.

Elara could still remember how hard they’d both cried, that picture in their hands. She had cried for Reeve, who had watched his parents die knowing that they hated him. She had cried for Faron, who had never learned how to trust other people and had made decision after decision that almost turned her into someone she had never wanted to be. She had cried for Signey, who had survived the war but still sacrificed so much. She had cried for Barret, who had lost out on years with his family, and Jesper, who had been kidnapped, and even for Gael, who had wanted to be a hero centuries ago and had achieved that only when there was too much blood on his hands to wipe clean.

Above all, she had cried for herself, and how she had resigned herself to there being no such thing as a happy life after war. There was only the struggle of living.

As one, Elara and Faron made a sign of prayer and turned their eyes to the stars. “Thank you, Irie,” said Elara, “for bringing us together.”

“So ends the Renard Castell line,” Faron said. “May they be forever blessed.”

“May they be forever blessed.”

In Aveline’s absence, a council of representatives from each parish was appointed to rule San Irie. Desmond Pryor was one of them, but Elara was confident in everyone else’s ability to keep him in check. She was more concerned about Faron, who had declared that she was done with school, that she wanted to leave San Irie entirely and figure out who she was without an entire island to tell her who she should be.

Maybe her parents had been expecting it, though, because they didn’t fight her. They’d only hugged her tightly and asked that she at least wait until her eighteenth birthday, so the family could have some time together before it was too late. After two wars, this peacetime looked as if it would be the one that would finally stick. They would have time to be a family again.

Elara had gone to the Port Sol Temple to speak to the gods. Though she was meant to give back their magic, she couldn’t bear the idea. In the month since Lightbringer had been defeated, Étolia had begun to invade a weakened Langley. Barret Soto had been ousted in favor of the Hylands, who were already willing and ready to bring the country back to war. All the countries Langley had conquered were declaring their independence, and Elara knew that the power-hungry Hylands wouldn’t take that lying down.

“Zephyra once told me that I want to fight for something I truly believe in. That I’m capable of great things,” Elara had told the three gods spread out before her. Saying Zephyra’s name still brought with it a pang of loss, but it was getting easier. War was loss. She’d known that for years. “It took me a while to figure out what that great thing was, but I think it’s this. Protecting people. Fighting when I’m needed. Doing my best to do what’s right. So if you’ll continue to lend me your power and trust me to do the right thing, I’ll continue to protect our people as best I can.”

“Our decision has been made, Empyrean,” said Irie. And then: “I am incredibly proud of all you’ve done. Yet I will not allow our magic to continue to influence this world, not now. But if things are ever this dire again… if you pray to us, we will come to your aid.”

Since that was a better answer than Elara had expected, she bowed her head. “Thank you. Thank all of you. For everything.”

Mala had hugged her for that. Irie had smiled. Even Obie had nodded once, as if he were unsurprised but pleased to be proved right.

And as they took back their magic, leaving behind a dizzying weakness that made her sway on her feet, Elara felt that pang of loss again. But at least this time, it was temporary. After all, she would see them again.

She just hoped it was later rather than sooner.

Luckily, the weeks hadn’t yet brought with them any cosmic threats to San Irie. In light of the Hylands’ rise to power, and with nothing else keeping them in Langley, the Sotos had decided to move to San Irie. After losing so much of their family in war, they wanted to learn to love San Irie as much as Celyn and Eugenia had. And with Desmond Pryor moving to Port Sol, they ended up buying the old Pryor house.

It was nice, having everyone in Deadegg: Faron and Elara back with their parents; Cherry on leave to greet them; Jesper, Barret, and Signey settling into the house on the block. Aisha’s family, the Harlows, hadn’t come to see Elara, but she hadn’t expected them to. That pain might never go away, and she’d accepted that. They were at least willing to see Cherry, who reported that they were “as well as could be.”

Now, sitting in the same empty field where Elara had once practiced combat summoning, Jesper and Signey asked a perplexed Reeve if he was interested in coming to live with them.

“Oh,” Reeve said, clenching and unclenching his metal fingers. Cherry had made sure he was fitted with a scalestone prosthetic arm sooner rather than later, and his physical therapy involved what looked like a lot of jerky movements and stretching. “I don’t—I wouldn’t want to impose. I can stay with the Hanlons.”

He didn’t sound as if he wanted to stay with the Hanlons. As far as Elara knew, they weren’t family as much as they were colleagues who lived in the same house. They hadn’t asked after him once during the war, likely assuming, along with everyone else, that he had turned traitor. At least Elara hadn’t seen them at the rallies, so, whatever they believed, it hadn’t stopped them from allowing him back.

“We’re not being polite,” said Jesper, sitting beneath the palm tree with a half-eaten guinep in his hand. “You… More than anyone, you understand what we’re going through. We want to keep you close. And if we can offer you a home that actually feels like one, we’d love to have you.”

“Unless you’re happy where you are,” Signey added, biting into her own guinep and then spitting the seed into the grass. Her free hand held Elara’s, their fingers tangled together, both familiar and extraordinary after all they’d been through. “But it’s just… it’d be nice. To have someone to talk to. About Gael and Langley and everything.”

Reeve blinked again. He looked at Elara, who shrugged. He looked at Cherry, who told him to continue his exercises. Then he looked at the ground, and a small smile crossed his face. “Well, if you’re sure. I’d really like that.”

Elara hid a smile of her own as Signey leaned her head against her shoulder, her skin warm from the bright Iryan sun. “Hey, where’s Faron? I thought she’d be joining us.”

Reeve snorted. “She’s bet your father thirty rayes that he can’t beat her at dominoes.”

And Elara couldn’t help laughing. Some things would never change.

Two days later, Elara opened the door to Faron’s bedroom to find her and Reeve tangled up on the bed.

She stared openly. She couldn’t help it. She had seen Reeve kiss plenty of people before; he and Wayne had been so insufferable that she, Cherry, and Aisha had forced them to study somewhere else so they wouldn’t have to watch them flirt. But Faron was not interested in kissing, or in boys or girls or sex. And yet here her sister was, her arms and legs wrapped around Reeve’s body, while he held her face and kissed her as if the world would end if he stopped.

One of them made a sound that made Elara want to smash her head against the wall. She cleared her throat. “This… is going to be an adjustment.”

They sprang apart. Reeve’s scalestone prosthetic snapped out toward the end of the bed, but he still ended up taking half the sheet with him as he tumbled off the side. Faron tugged her shirt down over her sleep shorts, then covered her face with her hands.

“How long have you been standing there, you fucking creep?” she asked, voice muffled.

“Too long,” Elara admitted. “Was this a goodbye kiss or…?”

“It was a mind-your-own-business kiss,” Faron said at the same time Reeve said, “It was a goodbye kiss.”

“You could go with her, you know.” Elara helped up Reeve, unable to hide her amused smile. “There won’t be much going on around here but crying and healing.”

“You and I have been apart for long enough,” Reeve told her, tossing the sheets back onto the bed. “The Sotos will need us. And Faron”—he glanced at his girlfriend, and the soft expression Elara saw there made her smile widen—“she’ll come back to me. She promised.”

Once he was gone, Elara and Faron lay side by side in Faron’s bed, gazing up at the ceiling and silently basking in each other’s presence. Elara wanted to squeeze in as much time with her sister as she could before they both had other promises to keep.

Eventually, they would be separated again, but at least next time it would be by choice. That was the nature of life, of relationships. Loved ones would always be separated by time or distance, but that didn’t make them any less loved.

“Thank you,” Faron said, her first words in hours. She did that sometimes now, falling into thoughtful silence and then breaking it with a statement that implied an entire conversation had preceded it. “You always believed in me. I needed that. I still do.”

“I’m your older sister. Of course I’ll always believe in you,” Elara promised. “Besides, you’ve always believed in me, too. I’ll never stop needing that.”

“Is it wrong,” Faron asked, “that I wish I’d saved him?”

Elara didn’t need Faron to clarify which him she meant. “He died a hero. Even if no one else knows that, we do. In that way, you did save him.”

“It’s not the same.”

“I know.”

Faron’s voice was small when she spoke again minutes later. “Are we going to be okay?”

Elara thought about it before she answered. Had they ever been okay? Two wars, several losses, separation and doubt and fear and fights. They had both found love, but they had both done things that would haunt them. When Elara closed her eyes, she still saw Aveline and Torrey being torn apart. She saw Zephyra the day she said goodbye, and her heart cracked open with painful longing. Sometimes in the middle of the night, she woke Faron from nightmares about the people she had killed. About the chains that had trapped her and the dragon who had lived in her head whispering approval at all her worst impulses.

None of that was okay, and maybe it never would be.

But they were alive. Elara could take a drake to Langley and visit Professor Smithers, Mr. Lewis, and any of the Night Saints. They had astral calls and fire calls, letters and visits. They had life, in all its painful and proud moments, and that was a gift many people could no longer claim.

Elara reached across the bed and gripped her sister’s hand in hers.

“We’re going to try,” she finally answered. “Every day, we’re going to wake up and we’re going to try.”

Faron smiled, and, for once, it didn’t look haunted. “Okay.”