Chapter 73 Kai
KAI FOUND SOLACE IN NIGHTMARES. There was a sense of peace in them now. Perhaps going to the very depths of hell had left a mark on him, giving him a better appreciation for this realm of sleep and death.
Or maybe it was that he had shucked away all his anger, so that it did not weigh on him as it once did.
He realized this when he visited Farran in a nightmare, not long after they’d come back from the godsworld.
The nightmare seemed to be a blend of memories drawn from both Thames and Farran: They stood in what looked like the Treasury and the Belly of the Beast combined, with the foul stench of the abyss in the air and the incessant ticking of clocks filling their ears, like an echo of the god of balance’s workshop.
All the places where Thames and Farran had died and come back and been taken advantage of, imbued with such horror and despair, it had Farran hugging himself like a scared child as tears ran down his face.
Kai pulled on the nightmare’s darkness, gathering it into him until it wasn’t so frightening anymore. His shoulder brushed Farran’s, who looked up at him with relief, unsurprised at his presence.
“Thank you,” Farran breathed, the lines of him relaxing a bit as he took in the scene around them. “You’d think as a former Fear Eater, I’d be better at confronting my nightmares.”
“You were never as skilled as I am.”
That drew a smile from Farran, but it quickly vanished as he looked at Kai with stark sincerity. “I truly am sorry, you know. For everything I’ve done.”
“Not your fault,” Kai said with a shrug, and realized he meant it. “You were compelled by fate, after all.”
Farran’s brows shot up in surprise. “I didn’t expect to get off that easy from someone who’s repeatedly told me to go to hell. Thought you hated my guts.”
“If there’s one thing hell taught me, it’s to let bygones be bygones. Time to move on.”
“Speaking of which.” Farran scuffed the floor with the tip of his foot. “I, uh, have decided I’m done with this iteration of my life.”
A weight fell in Kai’s stomach, a chill going through him at those words. “What the fuck does that even mean?”
Farran gave him a wry smile. “I’m not technically alive, am I?
I’ve died before. Twice. And now I want my soul to go into the fountain and be reincarnated for good this time.
Equilibris denied me a life of my own when he made me a puppet on a string, all my actions playing into fate’s design.
I was made a dupe by Clover, an errand boy for gods, and I’m tired.
I want… I want to start over fresh, make my own choices knowing they’re entirely mine. ”
Kai understood. And yet, it felt bittersweet to say goodbye. “See you in another life, maybe,” he told Farran.
Farran smiled. “You’ve got a good one here. Don’t waste it.”
Kai did not intend to.
It was part of the reason he’d decided not to take up the gods’ invitation to join the Veiled Atlas. The gods might be eager to turn the page on everything that had happened, to prove that they cared about their worlds in their own fucked-up way, but Kai wanted no part in it.
Turning the page for him meant turning his back on the gods.
Choosing to lead a life that was all his own, just like Farran had.
It meant advocating for the Eclipse-born harder than ever, because the strides they had made were a start, yes, but nowhere near good enough.
It meant packing up his many copies of Song of the Drowned Gods and giving them all away.
Letting go of this book that had shaped him, this story that was darkened now by the ugly truth that had shaped it.
There were plenty more stories out there just waiting to evoke wonder in him again.
Turning the page meant sitting quietly with Baz at nightfall, drinking tea instead of gin—Kai’s trusty flask forgotten, because there was no need to keep the nightmares at bay anymore—and seeing Baz scribble in a notebook, a spark of inspiration behind his glasses.
“I know for a fact Selandyn didn’t give you any research to work on over the summer,” Kai teased him. “So what are you writing?”
Baz looked up from his journal with a smile. “I don’t know yet. And that’s the beauty of it.”
A story all his own, perhaps. Not one bound to him by fate.
There was one thing Kai could not turn the page on, one thing he mostly kept to himself.
That often, he tried to search for Emory and Sidraeus in the folds of darkness beyond the path of stars, and sometimes, he thought he felt them, always just out of reach.
But it was like a phantom wind, there and gone again in a flash, making him wonder if he’d imagined it.
They were gone. Yet Kai spoke to the darkness all the same.
“Everyone misses you,” he would say, imagining it might bring some comfort to Emory to know this.
He told the darkness of all the things Baz had accomplished, of Romie’s travels, of what he himself was striving for with Jae and the Eclipse-born.
He told Emory of how her parents still grieved for her, but assured her they weren’t alone—that Henry had struck up a close friendship with Theodore and Anise and Jae; that Luce had finally been reunited with the other Kazans; that together on the shores of Harebell Cove, the two of them kept Emory’s memory alive between them.
Kai communed with the faraway void in the hopes these words would reach her, if she was there at all.
And when he woke in the bed he shared with the boy he loved, he wrapped his arms around Baz a little tighter.
Not out of fear, but gratefulness for what they had, and hope for what was to come.