The message from Darius appeared on the wall moments after Anura’s poem slipped from Angus’s fingers. I had known it would. He must have thought her visit would prime my desperation, that it would prepare me for any corruption.
My mistake, thinking you were ready before, Darius wrote in glowing letters. But things are different now, am I right?
I could rise as a ruler of Nautilus—if I betrayed Lore and let Gus prolong his life once again. But now I understood what should have been clear to me all along.
Anura would never accept a reprieve bought at such a price. I could beckon her home from a throne the size of a cloud, but she would not return to Nautilus. I might endure for an eternity, a vicious queen alight and alive with death; it would gain me nothing. Anura would choose to die rather than accept my help. The body Darius had made for me would be the husk of my desolation.
Things were different now, indeed. Tomorrow I would be gone.
If I was gone, that is. I believed Gus’s death would cancel my undeath, that it would release me into nothingness. But, I realized, that belief was only theoretical, especially now that the link to my hauntee was severed. The proof is in the pudding, as they say.
Either way, Anura’s final message to me had consequence. It coursed through my mind as I chose, and at last I chose to honor her choices.
I knew that Darius must be watching for my answer—quite expensive, such magical surveillance across the barrier, and difficult to maintain. I let him wait for some moments, with willful spite. He knew what I was doing, of course, and I could feel his sour grin on the air.
Then I wrote my reply on Angus’s face.
Only once I felt certain Darius was gone did I read the poem again. And again. I understood something that had long eluded me, and that understanding sharpened the blades I turned against myself.
You could have chosen differently, Anura had said.
I could. I can. And now I have.