Chapter 27 #2
Romy elbows her. “She’s apologizing.”
Celine softens a fraction, tilting her head.
“You did show me,” Nessa continues, “show us we could have belief in ourselves and aspire to more than what we are given.”
“Can I—” I open my arms, hesitant, asking without demanding.
Nessa’s smile breaks through the ash and exhaustion, and she barrels into my chest. Romy follows, wrapping her arms around us. Even Celine grudgingly steps forward, muttering under her breath as she burrows into the embrace.
A lump swells in my throat. I pull them all closer. “I’m sorry I hurt you,” I whisper. “I care deeply about each of you. I hope you know that.”
Sniffling fills the space between us. Three heads nod against my shoulders.
“You can do great things. I believe in you.”
Nessa tilts her face up, eyes shining with unshed tears. “And now, we believe in ourselves.”
The embrace lingers, then one by one the girls peel away. Romy tugs Nessa toward the healer’s tent, and Celine mutters something about needing to scrub the ash from her skin. I watch them go, my chest tight but lighter, as if some snarled knot has finally come loose.
My gaze drifts over the lush landscape and rippling waters. The Player is on her knees, tears cutting fresh rivers through the makeup. Around us the caravan hums with a dozen new conversations, but the dais is empty, thrones abandoned in the wake of this remembered world.
Hand in hand, Solara and Zephara pick their way toward me through the lush grasses swaying around their knees.
Solara stops and looks across the verdant landscape at the Tower—at what it was and what it has become—and then her eyes find mine.
“You brought it back.” Her voice is loose with astonishment, wonder, respect. She is no longer a monarch but a woman who has watched the rebirth of a kingdom and now must decide where to go from here.
“No,” I answer, throat thick. “You chose to remember.”
Zephara squeezes Solara’s hand and turns to me, admiration softening her sharp features.
“We are not naive. We were taught the old stories—that the Tower took and kept, that its light must be guarded against. We were taught the Great Families rose to power to keep the peace and provide for our kingdom as the Tower bled it.”
“We were taught wrong,” Solara adds. “We were taught fear and hate and were raised to prize pageantry and to fold emotion into performance. Spectacle made it tidy and kept it contained.”
Zephara nods, the painted flames at her temples lined with ash and sweat. “In doing so we let show become the substitute for the truth.” She takes a deep breath and the corner of her mouth slides into a small smile. “We see that now.”
I bite my lower lip and sweep my gaze across the camp. “If you mean it, then do the work. Let your actions prove you understand the truth.”
“We shall.” Solara’s brow furrows, and her eyes narrow, the gears of a plan clicking into place. “No one party will own the story of our kingdom. We will honor the past, and we will change what failed us.”
“We will do it together.” Zephara claps her hands. “As a kingdom united.”
The sisters walk away, and I watch them tend to their people. Unburdened by the old lies and no longer chained to spectacle and secrecy, they will be the kind of rulers this place needs, the kind of rulers this kingdom deserves.
Tall grasses graze my legs as I climb back onto the stage.
“What’s next?’ Declan asks, smiling up at me.
“Dying and being brought back wasn’t enough?”
A cool breeze encircles us, and the Wheel of Fortune card flutters down from the dawn-lit sky. Like it did all those days ago in Declan’s club, it lands between us.
I can’t help but laugh as I help him to his feet and we stare down at the tarot card.
The image begins to move. The wheel turns, the designs around it shifting as if they can’t quite decide what they want to be. The card’s edges curl and smolder, sending up the scent of cinnamon and dust.
A hairline split races out from the wheel and cuts across the stage. Red, orange, and yellow light wells up beneath the boards in a surge of molten color that brightens and pulses until the planks bow with the heat. The fissure yawns open, revealing a rift in the center of the stage.
I know immediately: It is a way home, a new beginning.
Declan closes his hand around my uninjured one. His shirt is crusted with dried blood, his scruffy cheeks are streaked with ash, his hair clings to his forehead in dark, sweaty ropes. He looks like hell. He looks alive.
And I can’t look away from this man who infuriates me, who told me the truth even when it gutted me, who died and came back because of my choices, who I love with my whole heart.
He leans close. “I think that’s for us,” he says, nodding toward the wheel burning at center stage.
I lift my face to him and smile. “Are you ready?” I ask. “When we go through, everything changes.”
“I’m not afraid of change anymore. I’m not afraid of living.” He brushes my hair back and kisses my forehead. “Not if it’s with you.”
I squeeze his hand until my knuckles ache. Together, we step into the glowing rift between worlds.
The last thing I see before the fire closes in around us is the Everspring unfurling, green and endless, across the Kingdom of Wands.
Beneath that new life, beneath all life, the Wheel of Fortune continues to turn.