It was quieter here, most of the fleeing people having gone to the docks. I could see them in the distance, a huge, squirming mass illuminated here and there by flickering torchlight. I didn’t follow them. There weren’t going to be enough boats, and anyway, I had no way to get there. The sledge was already starting to drag the ground; in a minute, I wouldn’t be able to move it at all.
So I headed for the little tent belonging to the launderer. It was somehow still standing, maybe because it was sheltered by a couple of spreading oaks. The dirt road in front had turned into a river, rushing like a torrent. But the tent was on higher ground and still dry inside when I pulled open the back flap. And shoved the sledge inside.
I looked around, panting slightly. The young couple must have had to leave in a hurry, because their freshly dried wares were still in place. Including a pile of them on a woven mat just inside the back that looked incredibly comfortable.
For a second, I just stood there, feeling bad about messing them up. It had started to rain harder on the way here, and we were both soaked. And then I wondered what the hell was wrong with me, worrying about laundry in the apocalypse.
I tipped Pritkin off the board and into the middle of the pile, and sat beside him, because there was nothing else to do. Except wonder if that last battle had finally drained Jo, or if she’d be back. And why she cared.
If it had been anyone else, I’d have understood the attack as a personal vendetta. But Jo had been planning death-by-god anyway, allowing Ares’ return to wipe her out of existence along with the rest of us. So, at best, I’d pushed up her timetable a little, which hardly seemed worth this kind of risk.
And if she was still afraid I’d manage to interrupt her plans . . . how? I was exhausted, out of power, and dragging around a guy with a possible concussion. As far as fighting went, I was done. And possession drained ghosts faster than anything else. She was risking missing the big finale, and for what? Killing someone likely to die anyway? It didn’t make sense.
Especially considering what was happening in the skies above us.
Because Ares was winning.
I pushed the tent flap out of the way and stared as a torso the size of a skyscraper shoved its way into the world. The sonic boom of ripping space and time came again, but it seemed distant this time, dull. Like the rain blowing in to wet my feet, like the burning sensation in my throat, like everything. Grayed out, unimportant. Lost in shock and pain and grief so great it didn’t matter anymore.
And then came a light so bright that for a moment it seemed like day. And an explosion so huge it rocked the ground underneath me, and rained dirt and debris and a small piece of bright red wool down in front of me. Rosier’s color.
I watched the burning piece of cloth be doused by the rain, and felt my face crumple.
I guessed I could feel something after all.
Like the arms, coming around me from behind. Not an attack this time, but an attempt at comfort. From someone who deserved it more than me.
“It didn’t work,” I said unsteadily, before he could ask. “The device was destroyed, but Ares . . . he’s too far in.”
He was having to struggle for it, to fight. But he didn’t just have his foot in the door now, but half his body. Rosier’s sacrifice had been brave, and ultimately successful. But it didn’t matter.
You can’t close a door if someone’s standing in the middle of it.
“Your name,” Pritkin said suddenly, his voice hoarse.
“What?”
“Your name.”
I huffed out something that sounded strangely like a laugh. And maybe it was. What else was there to do at the end of the world? “Does it matter now?”
His arms tightened, and when his voice came again, it was desperate. “Your name . . .”
I twisted, trying to look at him, but his arms held me fast. “If it really means that much to—”
“. . . is Cassie.”
I just sat there for a second, unmoving. And then I did turn, having to fight his hold. And when I did—
His eyes were emerald. Not green, not jade, but pure emerald, shining in the darkness like a light was behind them. Because one was.
Soul light.
I felt like crying and laughing all at once. He was finally here, the person I’d chased through centuries of time. Only to arrive too late.
“Tell me! That is your name?”
Pritkin looked like my answer was important. Like it was the most important thing in the world. Like it was something he’d clung to, through whatever personal storm he’d been living all this time.
I got up on my knees and took his head between my hands. “My name is Cassie Palmer,” I told him steadily. “And I love you.”
Chapter Sixty
I kissed him, and he tasted the same as before: like ash and smoke and spent magic. Like I probably did, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything but the warmth of his mouth and the strength of his arms, and having someone with me at the end. And not just someone. The person I wanted more than anyone else, that I’d searched for, loved for, God, so long.
As I’d have admitted a long time ago, only I was really good at ignoring the impossible.
But it wasn’t impossible now. Nothing was. And I guessed he thought so, too, because the next moment he was pushing me back into the mountain of clean laundry and pulling my dress over my head.
Outside, things were deteriorating rapidly. The sounds of battle came in gusts, blown on an increasingly violent wind. Burning sparks cascaded past the tent, adding the scent of fire to the smell of linen and mud and ozone. The sky was burning, with boiling mountains of clouds streaked with the light of that terrible wound.
I barely noticed.
The unnatural light haloed Pritkin’s head as he finished stripping off his tunic, reflected in his eyes, made him look more like his father’s side for a second. And then more like his mother’s, when sparks like fireflies danced in his hair. But when he bent over me, he was once again the man I knew, finding my lips, pulling me into an embrace that blocked out everything else.
And then fire took us.
But not with devastation and fury, as I’d half expected. Not with the wrath of an angry god. But with something else, something that had been waiting a very long time. Something that was rushing at us like a massive wave toward a beach. And this time, there was no one to stop it.
It broke over us a moment later, in a storm of mouths and hands and hearts beating together. It swept away clothes, quieted inhibitions, masked pain. Pritkin’s hand smoothed carefully over my side, because a ragged bandage hid an injury that was nowhere near healed, but I didn’t feel it.
I didn’t feel anything but hunger.
And power. I could sense it puddling on my skin wherever his hands rested. Could track the prints of fingers and lips as they explored me. Could feel it scintillating off that terrible hair as it swept across my body, brushing breasts and stomach and thighs as he kissed his way down. Could feel it flood inside me when he found my center, when his lips closed over me, when he—