Epilogue
One Year Later
The second time I walk through Kenyan’s gate, I’m not running from anything.
This is the difference I notice first. Not the buildings, which are the same cold gray stone. Not the ivy in its thick dark veins against the walls. Not the fountain at the center of the courtyard, running now, its basin full.
The difference is in my body. The way I walk through. No inventory of exits. No threat assessment. No invisible asterisk pressing into my skin. Which is a different thing entirely from arriving because you had nowhere else to go.
Rose is already there.
She stands near the fountain where I met Saint on my first day. She looks like someone who has learned something difficult and carried it well. She looks, I think, exactly like herself.
She sees me, and her face brightens as we close the distance. “You came!”
“You asked,” I say.
We pull back and look at each other in the October light. “How is it?” I ask, now that she is with Garret.
She considers the question. “Different. Better in the ways that matter. Still complicated in the ways that don’t go away just because an institution collapses. But you can feel it.”
The scholarship students moving across the quad don’t have the presence I remember. The low awareness of being watched and sorted and known in the wrong way. They move like people who came here to learn something and believe they will be allowed to.
The selection committee is gone. The Prey list is gone.
In its place is a governance board that includes the Consortium. The sons of Kenyan managing their respective estates.
“Tell me about the board,” I say.
“How is he?” Rose asks about Saint.
“Himself,” I say. “Which gets easier and harder in equal measure depending on the week.”
“The Crowned Families are not simple. Nothing about any of it is simple. But he is —” I find the word. “Becoming something powerful. It’s both liberating and terrifying at the same time.”
“And you?”
“I’m figuring it out,” I say. “Where I fit in.”
Rose smiles. “Good.”
We stop at the almost empty fountain.
“I thought about leaving,” she says. “After everything. After finding out what it was.” She looks at the fountain. “And then I thought, if I leave, where do I begin again if I found myself here? I’m staying.”
“You were always going to,” I say.
She smiles. “Probably.”
We stand at the fountain in the October light. My phone vibrates.
Saint: How is it?
Not a question because he knows exactly where I am. He never asks questions he already knows the answer to.
I type back.
Amy: Good. Different.
Three dots.
Saint: Come home.
I look at the fountain one last time, then at Rose.
“Gotta go,” I tell her, waving my phone.
“See you.”
Three weeks later, the full council of the Crowned Families convenes for the first time in a generation.
Seven chairs. Seven houses. Seven names that do not appear in any public record but move through the world like they’re felt before they are seen.
Six of the chairs are filled.
The seventh, the heir of House Devereaux, takes his seat.
The council is complete.
What comes next is not the Order.
What comes next has no name yet.
It’s not over
THE FALLEN SERIES
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