Epilogue
T his was the space she would claim for herself here in the Nexus, Isolde decided as she looked around.
A few interconnected rooms on the top floor of one of the second-tier buildings.
They sat near the great library, a place she was desperate to explore in depth.
She liked to imagine a scholar once lived here, in this little apartment.
Someone who carried a book wherever they went, someone who tended the overgrown courtyard below, which she suspected had once been a greenhouse.
One room had a large balcony, and as she stepped onto it into the night air, the view took her breath away.
The Nexus was alive, threads of magic humming through every building, every statue.
The archway into the mountain pulsed with power, but it no longer called her.
It was at peace, at least for now, a gentle presence in the back of her mind.
What would be the inevitable consequences of her actions?
The mages had been wrong to bind the Arcaenum, and the method they’d used to do it was even worse still.
She knew it as certainly as she knew that the sun rose in the east. But they’d had a reason to bind it, all those centuries ago.
No matter how much Isolde would have liked to think that it was pure prejudice or ignorance, if nothing else Kaeloth’s words to Felix told her that the truth was more complicated.
She would have to wait and see how the newly freed Arcaenum would affect magic in the world.
Footsteps behind her pulled her out of her reverie, and she closed her eyes and leaned back as Felix slid his arms around her waist.
“Solving mysteries under the stars, like old times?”
Isolde smiled. Under the heavy blanket of guilt and grief he carried, his normal self was still there.
She was infinitely glad for it. “Something like that,” she said and tilted her head up at the sky, searching for the now-familiar shape.
“Do you remember the constellation I showed you?” she asked, turning to him.
Felix frowned. “Which one? The dragon?”
“The one with the triangle. That one,” she said as she pointed up at it.
“What about it?”
She traced the shape with her hand and eyes, the triangle of the shield, the form behind it.
The line that led to its counterpart. “It depicts a man with a shield. It’s called the Arcane Warden.
And right next to it,” she continued as his narrowed eyes followed the movements of her hand, “is the Arcane Vessel, a woman using magic. I could never remember her name until now. Until you told me what Kaeloth said.”
Felix eyed her curiously.
“They’re a pair,” she said quietly. “The Vessel and the Warden. They’re us. We’re them. Or, well, like them. Whoever named them all those centuries ago, named them for people like us.” She studied him, waiting for a reaction. His gaze was on the stars, his expression unreadable.
“Well,” he said finally, “I’m not the best with shields, but I guess I can learn.”
Isolde laughed, resting her head against his shoulder. No matter what came next, he’d face it with her. They’d face it together, and she was not afraid.