Epilogue
Kai
He’d wanted glory. His name to be remembered for generations. A unifier, a leader, everything his father was and more.
In a way, he got exactly that. He only wished it hadn’t come with a disclaimer: Kai Mahina, victor of the last war – after nearly drowning billions of people.
The light outside shifted, a cloud passing overhead.
Kai parted the curtains, let an arc of pale spring light splay across his worktable.
Diaries bound in old, cracked leather; countless loose, disordered pages and scrolls littered with spidery handwriting he could scarcely make out. Even trying to pissed him off.
He massaged an incoming headache from his temples and gave his eyes a break.
As Saros had planned, the tall lancet windows in his quarters in Caelos overlooked Lodestone.
A picturesque view. He imagined Saros standing where he was now, staring out at the world he loathed, gleefully awaiting the day it would all be under water.
Now, Lodestone appeared as it always did, as though it wasn’t almost washed into the sea just six months prior.
Even the blood staining the mountainside had been erased by the rainfall, although if Kai lingered too long at the window, he could still see it.
Feel it, smeared across his hands, streaming hot down his neck.
The ward he’d woven around Saros’s quarters – his quarters, now – reverberated, making his spine tingle. But it was only River, one of very few allowed through without permission.
Kai smiled, his heart swelling, the blood on his hands forgotten.
If briefly. “Joining me? I’m reading about…
” He chose a piece of parchment at random and squinted at the faded writing.
“Llyr waxing poetic about how beautiful Menon is. Ugh. Or – hold on, there was another one about how much Saros hated his father for not ‘using’ Menon right.”
“Pass.” River crossed over to him, one arm fitting itself automatically around Kai’s waist. “As much as I’d love to read about the inner-workings of my adoptive father – ”
“It is very Daddy Issues.”
“ – the councillors from Polaros have arrived.” He smiled wanly when Kai groaned. “I know. Your mum’s distracting them for now. All I caught was that you destroyed an entire coastline, and you are going to pay to restore it.”
Kai pinched the bridge of his nose, cursing.
While he wanted nothing more than to focus on purging Menon from himself, reparations had to be made for the cities that had been damaged and the seaside towns that had been swept away.
The resulting endless meetings with councillors and priests were Kai’s burden to shoulder.
Especially since Menon refused to help, which he complained about with vigour. It was important to have hobbies outside of work.
“Really,” Kai said flatly, half-dragging River to a dressing table to make sure he looked presentable. “Such wanton destruction doesn’t sound like something I would’ve done.”
River made a noncommittal noise and laughed when Kai swatted at him.
Kai held his own gaze in the mirror as he fixed his hair, already anticipating an afternoon of councilmen arguing over budgets. “That sounds like something fucking Menon did.”
Menon uncoiled, feeling to him like an ancient bloodhound waking from a nap. He was aware of Her, still conscious, as his eyes flashed silver in the mirror. “I have done nothing wrong,” She said loftily, “and I have nothing to apologise for.”
“Neither have I!” Kai shot back, slamming his hands on the dresser and making the mirror rattle. He glimpsed River’s reflection, behind him, waiting patiently for his partner to stop shouting at gods. “River – ”
“I’m not involved.”
Menon took over again, stern, almost matronly. “You are the one who drank that man’s blood every day for months without realising. Your perfect storm of arrogance and stupidity is what led you to being warded; you will be the one to handle the fallout.”
“Oh, aye, because the Celestial Pearl can’t even bother Her hole to – ”
She cut him off. He hated that She could, although in fairness, were their roles reversed, Kai would’ve walked them into an active volcano if it meant freeing himself.
“You are tedious,” She said. That had become a catchphrase.
“Direct your complaints where they belong, and do not summon me otherwise. I despise lumbering around in your body.”
A wave of ice screeched through him, a parting gift, and She was gone.
Kai’s shoulders slumped. Even brief possessions, what he called guest appearances, took a toll on him.
He was thankful they were few and far between: unless Sowelan was in the room with them, Menon did not enjoy life on the mortal plane.
He likened Her to a gorilla shaking the bars of its cage, but She didn’t find that funny.
A cool hand laid across his brow, making Kai sigh, contented. Things weren’t all bad. Kai pressed his hand over River’s, pinning its comforting weight to his forehead. “Ineen made a much better Menon than me. Menon at least liked her.”
River smiled. “You aren’t as bad as you think.”
“I might believe you if Menon wasn’t extremely vocal about how She yearns to rend me limb from limb and slither away on my lifeblood.
Those words, too. I’m still a little nervous when I shave.
” He lowered River’s hand and kissed it, his eyes roving across the room to his worktable, his bookshelf, all brimming with Llyr’s and Saros’s writings.
The only things left of the Archpriest in this shrine.
So much knowledge. Studies, experiments, treatises; Llyr’s experiences summoning Menon, Saros’s attempts to recreate it, to bottle it and make it his and his alone. Kai’s job, now, was to parse what was factual, serviceable, from what occasionally looked to be the ravings of two obsessive madmen.
“Soon,” he muttered, holding River’s hand against his cheek, “I’ll figure out how to get rid of Her. Sowelan, too.” He let his eyes fall closed. “I’ll free us all.”
“Until then – ” River held his face, brushed his thumbs across Kai’s cheekbones.
As always, he brought Kai back down to earth.
“ – we can at least be thankful to have been given time. You have to admit it’s good of Menon and Sowelan to watch over things until we can assure some level of peace.
And not walk you into the hypothetical volcano you keep mentioning. ”
Kai swallowed another complaint, granting him that. “Charitable of them,” he said, kissing him. “It would be awkward having to save humanity twice.”
Although Menon hated to be called to intervene, She had done him a good turn once or twice – most notably in the beginning, when priests from both sects demanded his death.
He is dangerous, they’d declared, like half of them hadn’t just been rooting for him.
He is poisoned by Saros’s madness. Let us release the Celestial Pearl from his accursed form.
Sowelan stood up for him first – as such, he liked Sowelan much more than fucking Menon – and perhaps grudgingly, Menon awoke then to stave Her attackers off.
When it is time, She had said to them, icy resentment glittering, I will return to my sphere.
Until then, this human is just as divine as I and will not suffer your censure.
Sowelan sounded kinder, tranquil, as She added, One more needless death will solve nothing. We ask for your support, your tolerance. She smiled, unreadable, Her mild voice laced with a thinly-veiled threat: And that you do not let your old prejudices destroy you.
So they were all locked together until Menon and Sowelan believed that the two sects were over their generations-long desires to annihilate each other. In other words, until Kai and Lina died naturally, in all likelihood. Bastards.
A knock on his door made them both jolt apart, don their respective facades. River, a guardian in regal indigo and silver, his expression aloof; Kai, shoulders squared, less than pleased for this increasingly-rare moment of quiet to be disrupted.
He opened the ward a fraction, allowing in a nervous high priest, young and newly-appointed – and someone Kai had guaranteed had no involvement with his or Ione’s suffering.
“Your Holiness,” he greeted him, bowing almost in half and missing Kai gesturing at him to hurry it up; River laid his fingertips over Kai’s wrist, lowering his arm.
“Her Holiness Lina Almenara, vessel to the Sun Goddess Sowelan, requests an audience.”
“Next time,” Kai said sullenly, “you can just let them in.”
Lina had taken to her new station far better than Kai had.
She smiled at the priest as she glided past him, her head high, unafraid now to meet Kai’s gaze.
She was the warmth of the sun itself in a gold-threaded dress embroidered with flowers, her curls woven into a simple coronet.
On her right, Ione gleamed like a moonbeam in a heliade’s attire, part dress, part armour, with gilded accents decorating her shoulders and waist and a ceremonial dagger at her side that she liked pointing at Kai.
Kai waited for the priest to shut the door again to relax fully, to let his true self be seen. “Sowelan, Ex-Wife,” he greeted them facetiously. “What brings you all the way up my mountain?”
“And just in time to watch Kai get his ass handed to him by Polaros’s councillors,” River added, smirking when Kai shoved him.
“A coastline was badly damaged, you see,” Kai said, hand over heart.
“A generation of seals, lost.”
Kai started, aghast. “Oh, fight me, River, they can swim.”
“Tell Polaros that.”
Sighing at the prospect of that conversation, Kai hastily cleared his worktable so that Lina and Ione could sit, unsure of what to serve them. He hadn’t had the stomach for tea since he’d got Saros’s binding ward out of his system.
Lina glided over to the table, lifting a piece of parchment and giving it a cursory scan; she scowled (it was an excerpt from Saros’s tumultuous adolescence, a classic) and flicked it back into the pile.
“We were going to visit next week,” she said, pulling Ione to her. “But Sowelan has been impatient.”
“We keep telling Sowelan She shouldn’t associate with such vile gods.” Ione combed a lock of hair behind her ear; unsubtly, a band on her ring finger crowned with a stone of the faintest pink glimmered in the afternoon light. “But She is a hopeless romantic.”
“Menon, too, it seems.” Kai hoisted himself up to sit on the edge of the worktable. “She’s already had a fit this morning.”
“It makes me think we should give Kai’s idea more thought,” River said, leaning beside him. “At least until he can untangle Saros’s mess of treatises, it would serve us all to agree on some terms.”
Lina traced the woodgrain on the table with her fingertip, looking pensive.
“We’ve thought about it,” she mused. “Sowelan gets pretty bad if She goes too long without seeing Menon. It feels like She’s pushing against my skin from the inside, like She’s trying to escape.
” She mustered a smile, embarrassed. “Just this morning She accidentally knocked me into a statue in Soliz.”
“It broke,” Ione supplied. “Ami and Cynthia thought it was hilarious. I did, too, but quietly.”
Lina nudged her, her nose wrinkling. “The priests weren’t as amused, unfortunately. Anyway – ” she went on, “We agree. We should come up with some visitation rights for them.”
Ione hung her head back. “Please don’t call it visitation rights. This isn’t a custody battle.”
“It kind of is,” River said, shrugging.
“Look, anything to keep me in one piece,” Kai cut in. “All the better if it keeps our children happy. And less volatile.”
Ione restrained a world-weary sigh. “We’ll work out a schedule, then. Make a family holiday of it.” She carried herself well alongside her mistress, as prideful and holy as ever, but there was affection in her voice as she turned and said, “First, we’ll get you through this meeting.”
“Oh, aye?” Kai grinned and followed them, River beside him, towards the door. “Is Sowelan Herself taking pity on this pathetic excuse for a god?”
“Lina is,” Lina said, flashing them a grin. “Lina also happens to think that your chat with Polaros will go much faster with an extra god in attendance.”
Despite himself, Kai smiled, grateful. While arguably just as much of an abomination as Kai for how she gained Sowelan, Lina had both the public’s fear and admiration on her side.
She was the one who reined Menon in and saved them all, but with Sowelan’s lingering reputation as a bloodthirsty warmonger, the people were still wary – and Lina let them be.
Anything, she had said, for an ounce of peace.
The cerulean tiles echoed beneath their feet as they strode through the halls of Caelos, priests and guards lowering into hasty bows as they passed, some awed, some frightened.
This, he supposed, was another symptom of the glory he had yearned for – different to what he had expected, a little stifling.
But he was different, too. Changed. Broken and built back up, bound together with fraying twine and expired glue. Despite everything he’d hoped for himself, he was twenty-three and still clueless, a mortal man worshiped and feared as the god who despised him.
River’s hand wrapped around his, safety and warmth, one last squeeze before they each resumed their acts. “Hey,” River whispered, his gaze soft. Steady. “I’m here. We’re here.”
Kai squeezed his hand back, his heart kicking. Yes – they were here. They had survived, would continue to. He felt secure in that, at least, as he followed his friends, his partner, into the chilly spring sun.
This life was not at all what he’d planned, but for the first time, he wasn’t alone.
None of them were.