Epilogue
Morrigan and Cadell were finally able to leave the hospital. After a battery of scans and pokes and prods, they both were declared healed of their wounds from the archaic weapon that Dumol had used.
Cadell’s vision was almost back to normal. Ula had been popping in every day to check him and do “minor code modifications,” as she called it.
Mori found it hilarious.
Luke Cadell had turned into Ula’s pet programming project. As much as Luke grumbled about it, he privately admitted that he felt a little bit better every time she left.
An officer—a high-ranking officer, to be precise—from Transdot spoke to them both, asking specific details about the assassination. He even brought a series of images for Morrigan to look at, to see if any of them were the victim.
Unfortunately, none of them were her.
Mori wouldn’t forget the woman’s face, even if it had been a vision. She could still make her out behind her eyes. Part of her just needed to know that the woman was all right.
She’d been paying attention to the news, and no reports had come in of any unexplained deaths in The Colony. Minor skirmishes, a few cultural issues, but no deaths.
It was mostly peaceful.
“Mori,” Cadell said.
She glanced at him. “Luke.”
He took a step toward her. He looked tired. She imagined she did too. The last few days, the connection they had kept weakening.
Their bond was disappearing. Sure, they’d come together, and lived out the moment of her visions, but that didn’t mean that he was her true love or anything so dramatic.
He was Cadell.
She was Mori.
What else was there?
But did anything else matter?
“Mori.” He took a step toward her and took her hand. “Can’t you see anything?”
She shook her head.
“Can you tell what I’m thinking?” he asked.
She shook her head again. “Not at the moment.”
A bit of a smile turned up on one side of his face. “Good.”
“Why?”
“How can I surprise you with a marriage proposal if you can hear my thoughts?”
She blinked. “But... Why would you— “
“Stop worrying,” Cadell said. “Marry me.”
“I—”
“I never cared about anyone or anything as much as I care for you,” Luke said. “I don’t care if we’re bonded. I don’t care if your Novian and I’m human. We’ll figure it out.”
“But, what if, I’m not—”
“You’re Mori. That’s all that matters.
She smiled and he pulled her into his arms. They embraced and came together, kissing each other with the same passion and desire they’d felt before.
Without the intensity of someone trying to kill her underneath.
And it was beautiful.
It should have lasted longer.
However, Fate had horrible timing.
A woman and a man walked into the room, both in doctor-type clothing, looking very official.
And they would have seemed no different than any other doctors walking the halls, but the man wore a patch over his eye.
Morrigan took a step back.
Cadell’s posture stiffened, and she noticed that he blinked three times, which would have clicked on his HUD.
Morrigan put her hand on his arm. “No,” she whispered.
Cadell glanced at her, and then back at the doctors.
“How did you get in here?” he asked.
The man gestured behind him. “Through the door. I would have thought that obvious.”
“No,” Cadell said. “How did you get here? Like in The Colony?”
“A portal,” Morrigan said. “Krevik passes from his plane of existence to ours through a portal.”
Cadell took a step forward, twisting like to protect Morrigan.j
“I see you have blossomed, Morrigan,” the man—though Krevik, even in human form rarely looked like a simple man—said.
She bowed. “Yes, Sire.” Her hands trembled as she spoke, for the last time she’d been in the presence of Krevik, he’d banished her from Nova.
“Among the humankind, there are many challenges. You have handled yourself honorably.”
“I have done what I must to survive, Sire.”
“As required of anyone touching this plane.”
Morrigan waited. Why were they here? Had they been watching? Waiting for her to fail?
“Your choices,” Krevik said, glancing at Cadell, and then back, “were the best you could do, as limited as you were.”
“Hey, she wasn’t that limited.”
Krevik glanced at Cadell like a bug that needed to be squashed. “You know nothing, human.”
Cadell took a step forward. “I know that I will fight for her and defend her until I die.”
Shodrid, the leader of the Novian, snorted.
Morrigan touched Cadell’s arm. “His position has nothing to do with your appearance. Why are you here? Didn’t you destroy me enough for one existence?”
“It is time for you to come home,” Krevik said.
“But I was banished.
Krevik waved his arm. “Everyone gets banished. Even Shodrid did once, did you not?”
“Yes, Sire.”
“You had your banishment. Learned your lesson—”
“What lesson is that?” Mori asked.
“That you follow orders.” Krevik blinked at her, like she’d gone mad.
But she had.
Mad with frustration at Krevik and his assumptions. “Even if the dying soldier still has a life?”
“There is a reason, Morrigan, that I choose the warriors I choose, when I select them. You cannot understand the minutia of my choices.”
“Or your whims,” Morrigan said.
“Mayhap I am wrong. Perhaps you are not ready to return to Nova.” Krevik’s voice got louder as he spoke, and the air in the room began to quake.
“Do not go.” Cadell put his hand on her back. His emotions washed over her. “Stay here. With me.”
A voice from the doorway stopped all the conversations at once.
“Hi all!” A woman, dressed in maintenance clothing, came in the room, humming a tune. She glanced at everyone and stopped. “You don’t seem to have a leaky pipe, do you?” She glanced at the doorway, then back inside. “Oh, I’m in the wrong room,” she said.
Morrigan looked her up and down, their gazes met. “You’re not a bother,” Morrigan said.
The woman smiled. “Sorry to interrupt your, uh, thing here. Bye now.” The woman went back to her humming and darted back in the hallway.
She felt the nudge of Cadell in her mind. “Who was that?”
Morrigan smiled and glanced at him. “The ambassador.”
Cadell raised his eyebrow.
Krevik bellowed after the woman—the ambassador, the woman from Morrigan’s vision that Dumol had planned to kill.
She was alive and just fine.
“Be off with you,” Krevik bellowed, then turned his one eye to Morrigan. “We have to discuss this.”
“I don’t think we do,” Morrigan said, a strange sense of calm washing over her. Seeing the woman, knowing that she was okay, and that all of this really had mattered, more than even Krevik realized, filled her with a sense of calm that she’d not experienced since she’d been banished.
“And now you know the will of Fate?” Krevik boomed.
Morrigan shook her head. “I wanted nothing more from the day I was banished from Nova than to return. To come home. To repent my failings and return to your haven. To be once again in your great presence.”
“You have a funny way of showing it,” Krevik said.”
“Because that was all I knew, it was all I wanted.” Morrigan took Cadell’s hand. “I know more now. And your choices are not always right. You cannot have all the warriors. Some are supposed to live beyond the wars.”
“You cannot see the bigger picture,” Krevik snapped.
“Not like you, no. But I can see. I can finally see that sometimes we have to feel horrors in order to see the light.”
“And what light have you seen, Morrigan?”
She squeezed Cadell’s hand. “That I belong here, among the humans, with Luke Cadell. That even one person can turn a war. Can change their fate.”
“The Butcher that you created because you had a whim,” Krevik said. He glanced at Shodrid. “She has learned nothing.”
Shodrid held up her hand. “Wait, Sire.”
“I would not say that,” Mori said. “I have learned that there is more than what you show your Novian. And Fate does not care what you think about a series of events. Fate will determine her own path.”
“My fate is mine,” Cadell said. “She didn’t create me or make me. All she did was not claim me. I’ve been claimed by some faction or another for the last decade. I prefer to be unclaimed, thanks.”
“She made you.”
Cadell glanced at Morrigan, then back at Krevik. “She merely let me live. I made my choices. I live with those. What I did was not her fault.”
“Do you truly think this war between Novians and humans is over?”
Cadell shook his head. “It’s not. And it may never be. But I want to make my own decision about where I stand.”
“And so do I,” Morrigan added.
“Where do you stand?” Krevik asked. “With me, in Nova?”
“With Luke,” Morrigan said. “I stand with him, among the humans. My choices may not make sense to you, but they are mine. Not yours. Let me fall down. I will rise again.”
Krevik glared at her.
Then the old man turned to Shodrid. “Leave her.”
The woman nodded, and waved her arm. “I am sorry, Morrigan.” As soon as she finished the gesture, Morrigan felt the last bit of her powers draining. Worse than before, because she started to fall, and felt so incredibly weak.
Cadell caught her. “Mori.”
Krevik turned and walked out, followed by Shodrid. While Krevik didn’t look very pleased, Shodrid at least looked remorseful.
“Mori, are you okay?”
She nodded. “I will be.”
“What did he do to you?”
“He took my powers. All of them this time. Including my ability to see the future.
Cadell spat a curse, and stroked her head. “Are you going to be okay?”
She nodded. “I guess you’re stuck with me,” Mori said.
“I think I can handle it.”
She smiled. “I can too.”
He stared at her for a moment. Didn’t say anything. Kept staring.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Wanting to see if you can still hear my thoughts.”
She shook her head. “No, I can’t.”
He nodded. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“What question?”
“Marry me.”
“That sounded like an order.”
He smiled. “Maybe. But one I hope you’ll follow.”
“Yes.”
He grinned.