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.
My mother used to say that family, blood or found, was our salvation. It was the net that caught us when we drowned and gently lifted us up out of the raging waters. She was wise, my mother.
My niece would be sad when she awoke, but then she’d get over it. She had a husband and a son to look after, and the Shar no longer troubled her. It was time to let her breathe. We’d meet again and soon.
The brush on my left side stirred again. The third time now.
“Come out,” I said.
A black-and-white horse edged her way out of the woods, carrying a pale-haired rider. Julie.
“Running away from home?” I asked.
She raised her chin. Funny child.
“Yes,” she said.
“Is this about your sticking it to your mother?”
She shrugged. “Yes.”
“Go back. I don’t have time for liars.”
The child of the steppes looked me in the eye. “It’s about me. She promised to never do the thing she did, and now she’s done it. It will eat at her. She will hate herself for it. She will think that for a few seconds she turned into Roland. I don’t want her to feel bad about it. She took me in when nobody cared if I lived or died. I don’t want to be a walking, talking reminder that she didn’t stick to her promise. It will make everything complicated.”
Life was complicated. Being dead was a lot easier.
“Either way,” she said, “it’s time for me to go. I could stay, wait for her to get over it, and go on just like I have been for years. Never changing. Never leaving the city. But I want more. I want . . . my own. I thought about it for a long time, even before everything happened. It’s time to go.”
“Where are you going?”
“Anywhere but here. I left her a long letter, so she wouldn’t think I ran off in a huff.”
I sighed. “I suppose you can tag along.”
She rode up next to me. She sat like she was born on a horse. Blood always breeds true. I’d told Im this and he didn’t believe me. My brother with his crowded mind, so filled with ideas. He often forgot that people weren’t simply cogs powering the machine of his ambition. Well, look who was sitting in a dragon lair now.
“What’s our first stop?” Julie asked.
“Mishmar. I have a promise to keep to my mother.”
“If Kate is my mother, does that make you my grand-aunt?”