Someone else was screaming. I finally realized it wasn’t me and turned around. My aunt sprawled on the grass, shaking with seizures, naked, mad as hell, and very much alive.
“Oops,” Curran said.
I cried. I lay on his chest and cried.
* * *
• • •
I SAT ON our porch and watched Conlan play in the grass in the fading light of the evening. He pounced on lightning bugs like a big human kitten. Curran sat next to me, his arm wrapped around my shoulders. One week had passed since the battle.
With both Neig and Roland gone, their troops had scattered. We’d won, but we’d lost so much. We buried Adora’s ashes on the small hill behind our house. I’d cried at her funeral. I cried every time I thought about it.
Christopher got caught in the dragon fire, too. He didn’t die, but he lost a wing. None of us knew if it would grow back. He mourned his flight the way people mourned the death of a child. Desandra lost her beta couple. They were friends and her grief was still raw. Jim lost his sister. The witches lost Maria. The power drain had proved too much for her. Of Curran’s elites, only five remained.
Saiman never came back from the battlefield. He’d always been terrified of physical pain, but for some reason he had assumed his true form and run into the thick of the slaughter. Maybe he’d panicked, maybe he’d become enraged, maybe he’d been trying to protect someone. We would never know. They brought his body to me. He’d been pierced with four spears. I grieved. He’d left a will. He wanted to be buried in Unicorn Lane. We followed it to the letter. It was the least we could do.
Curran the God didn’t make it. None of his divine power remained. His hair no longer grew unnaturally fast, although he’d kept his added height, for how long was anybody’s guess. He’d lost the mystical awareness of us. His divinity had enabled him to know where Conlan and I were at all times, but he couldn’t preternaturally sense us anymore. He said it felt like he’d gone blind. It was a death, of sorts, but I couldn’t have been happier about it.
There was another death I didn’t mourn. Sharratum also died on that battlefield. When Curran resurrected me, I no longer felt the pull of the land. The claimings hadn’t survived my death. I was once again just me. I’d kept my power, but I was now free of Atlanta and the portion of Kings Row.
Ghastek had come to me after the slaughter. He’d seemed lost. He’d told me I would always be the In-Shinar. I told him that he was still my friend, but now he was free.
We buried friends and grieved, but slowly, little by little, Atlanta was waking up from a nightmare. The dragon was dead. Biohazard had claimed its bones, and Ghastek and Phillip had nearly come to blows with Luther over it.
Hugh and Elara both survived and returned to their castle in Kentucky. Hugh didn’t heal Dali. Jim asked her to delay it by six months. From where I stood, that just gave her six more months to work on convincing him, and my gut told me Jim would lose that fight.
Christopher and Barabas set a wedding date. Barabas made a terrible fuss over Christopher’s injuries and kept feeding him gallons of chicken soup, hoping his wing would regenerate. The Druids paraded down the streets in their furs and claimed credit for their part of the victory. Martha was seriously injured, and Mahon got to nurse her back to health. He tried to bake her honey muffins, and they were terrible. My aunt wasn’t speaking to either of us. She took her resurrection personally. Apparently, she had wanted to stay dead.
Julie wasn’t speaking to me either.
I deserved it. I went back on my word. I’d tried to talk to her, but she’d just walked away from me. I had made a promise and I’d broken it. I didn’t know if she would thaw with time. I hoped she would, but even so there was no going back from what I had done. Time would help. I hoped.
“I better do it,” I told Curran. “It’s been a week. He must’ve cooled off.”
“Give him another year,” he said.
“If a week won’t do it, a year won’t.” I set my glass of tea down. “I won’t be long.”
I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, I walked across the drawbridge of Neig’s castle. The place lay empty. Nobody greeted me. Nobody tried to kill me. The lack of drama was rather disappointing.
The stones shook under my feet. Oh no. Spoke too soon.
The castle yawned and swallowed me. I hurtled through it, or rather I stood still, and it spun past me until I was face-to-face with my father in the throne room. He was back to his older self. He must’ve been waiting for me to show up. He was the anchor of the realm. For all intents and purposes, he was the realm. He could never leave. And since we shared a blood bond, I could come and see him whenever I wanted. Conlan, Julie, Hugh, all of us who had the benefit of his blood, could call on it at any time and waltz in and out of his realm as we pleased. It had to be killing him. I did my best not to laugh, but it was really hard.
“You lived,” he said.
“My husband resurrected me,” I told him. “He gave up his godhood for me. He resurrected Aunt Erra, too. She sacrificed herself to keep me alive, and apparently, we were in the same body just long enough for the two of us to get hit with the same resurrection wallop. She’s rather upset about it.”
“You banished me,” he said. Fury shivered in his voice.
“It’s not banishment.”
“Then what is it?”
“Retirement, Father. You’ve had lifetimes. I’m on my first one, and if you had it your way, I wouldn’t even get that. It’s a very nice castle. The library is to die for. Think of all the things you can do with this place.”
“The world needs me. I will save it. I will make it better.”
I sighed. “I love you, Father. I’ll bring Conlan by when he is older.”
“Kate,” he said. “I will find a way out.”
“Possibly. If anyone can, it’s you. But it will take you a long time. Meanwhile, we will have peace. It’s what you always wanted, isn’t it? Peaceful idyllic existence, free of the ever-present doom?”
“This isn’t over,” he said.
“Yes, it is, Father. And should you ever find your way back, I’ll be waiting.”
I closed my eyes and leaned against Curran.
“How did it go?” he asked.
“About as well as could be expected. He’s furious. He’s also easily bored, and within Neig’s realm, he has ultimate power at his disposal. The next time I visit, the place will likely resemble the Water Gardens. I think Conlan will enjoy playing there when he is a little older.”
I kissed my husband. We sat together on the porch and watched our son play with fireflies.
“We should have another one,” Curran said.
I smiled at him. “Maybe.”
“Don’t you want a little girl?”
“I do. Once Conlan grows up a little. We have time now, right?”
Curran grinned at me. “All the time in the world.”
EPILOGUE
ERRA
THE SUN WAS about to rise. It was already warm. It could’ve been warmer, really. I was used to hotter summers. I was used to better horses too, although the Friesian was pretty and he stomped down the quiet crumbling road with great enthusiasm.
I could never resist a black horse. Or a black-haired man. Although there’d been a few blonds in my lifetime.
My niece was still asleep. I’d checked on her, her husband, and their son before I left the house. I didn’t go in—they kept their door locked—but I sensed them beyond it, warm and safe together. They’d earned it.
I didn’t do safe. At least not just yet. A woman had certain expectations after being resurrected, to live life to its fullest. There was no place for me in their world now. I had taught Kate everything she needed to know to survive. My niece had changed me in a way she would never fully understand. Kate had needed a mother, and I had stepped in to fill the spot, never expecting anything in return. Then she’d had her son, and he’d needed a grandmother.
I’d thought Eahrratim was dead. She was a silly girl, the Rose of Tigris, pretty and dumb in the way the very young sometimes are. She played in the water, grew flowers, liked pretty dresses, and made silly little plans for the future. A husband. Children. Nieces and nephews. Family feasts. A life that was happiness and warmth. I had buried her in the ashes of war, so I could pick up a sword. I thought she had melted into the ages of pain and suffering, until only the City Eater remained. But now she was back. She was no longer young or naive, but she was within me.