Echo knew better than anyone that death wasn’t always the end. Sometimes, death was a beginning.
The tug faded, but it would come back, stronger and stronger, just as it had every day since the battle.
Patience was not one of her middle names, but maybe it could be, if the cause was just.
And so Echo would wait. She’d wait as long as it took for Rose to fulfill her promise. The tether that connected the two of them had thinned, but it had not snapped. Rose could reach her. And if Rose reached Caius, then Echo could reach him too.
Nothing was ever so lost that it couldn’t be found again.
After all, she had found herself, and that had been hardest of all. She had been many things in her life:
A lost child.
A lonely girl.
A survivor.
A savior.
A thief.
This last descriptor felt the truest in that moment and every moment before it. She stole things. And she was good at it. And when something was stolen from her, she always found a way to steal it back.
A childhood.
A life.
A love.
She’d never been much good at taking no for an answer, even when the laws of physics and magic were determined to say it.
She’d changed the world once, and she would bend its rules once more if she had to.
Echo opened her eyes and breathed deeply. The air was still thick with smoke and dust, but there was something else there. Possibility. Potential.
There were so many stories left to tell. This one was not over.
No, this one was just beginning. And what a beginning it was. Echo let herself mull over the threads of the story they had started, all of them together, her heart sputtering because Caius wasn’t there to see it.
Yet.
A crown needed a head to rest upon, and in the vacuum left by Caius’s sacrifice, his closest friend had risen to take his place, at least until a proper election could be held. As far as Echo knew, not a single Drakharin soul objected to Dorian’s ascension to interim Dragon Prince. He had remained loyal to his prince when so many of them had proven faithless. Jasper had accompanied Dorian to Wyvern’s Keep, and no one had objected to that either, but Echo suspected that had less to do with the respect they felt for Dorian and more to do with the glares Dorian was capable of leveling at anyone who so much as looked at Jasper with anything but the utmost reverence. The ferocity of these glares was lessened not one bit by the fact that he had only one eye. Echo’s magic had healed the wounds from the battle, but nothing older. Dorian had thanked her and said that was enough.
A Dragon Prince with an Avicen consort. They truly had changed the world, in the most unexpected of ways.
The war was over. There would be other wars in the future. There were always other wars. But for now, there was peace.
And so it goes, Echo thought. It was a line from one of her favorite Vonnegut books. A pithy phrase summing up the tragedies of life and death and the incalculable cruelties people were capable of inflicting on each other. Tomorrow the moon would set and the sun would rise and the world would keep on spinning, held together in all its delicate fragility, so easily shattered.
She looked up, raking her eyes over the familiar constellations she recognized. There was comfort to be had in familiarity. In her mind, she drew lines connecting the stars. A frown creased her brow when she noticed a star that had not been there before.
It was possible that it had been there and she simply had never noticed. It could have been obscured by clouds or pollution, or maybe its flickering light had only just made its way to Earth. But there was something that felt new about it. It burned brighter than the stars around it, as if beckoning for her attention.
The Dragon Princes, Caius had told her, were said to ascend to the heavens at the end of their reigns. It was one of the many stories he had shared with her as they had lain awake on a rooftop of a warehouse in London, hiding from those who wished them harm, surrounded by safety that had proven to be an illusion. The war had found them. And it had claimed him. Perhaps, in death, Caius had taken up his rightful place among the stars.
Her throat constricted. She drew in a breath, and longing filled her lungs. She was no stranger to the optimistic ache of wishful thinking, but this felt different. Her eyes were locked on that star, the sight of it knocking loose something that had been trapped inside her. She felt something give in her chest. She exhaled, and that sick cloud of sorrow began to thin. Hope—pale and weak but there—unfurled deep inside her, blossoming like a trampled flower.
I’ll find him, Rose had promised. And Echo was beginning to believe that maybe she had.
“Thank you.” Echo breathed words into the smoke-laden air and hoped that wherever Rose was, she heard. A cool breeze carried the words up into the night sky as if lifting them toward the stars.
Echo heard the scrape of boots on gravel. The footsteps were slow, as if the person was taking deliberate care not to spook her. Or perhaps they were unsure of their welcome.
Echo let them approach, but she did not turn around. There was no sense of danger now. Everyone who wished her harm was dead, dying, or detained. And she did not have the power of the firebird anymore. She had turned it over to people who needed it more than she did, and now she was free. Free of its prison. Free of its potential. She was just a girl standing among the ruins of a demolished library, staring up at the stars.
The person stopped a few feet behind her. “I can come back,” said a familiar voice, “if you would rather be alone.”
Rowan.
She had come up to the roof seeking solitude, but he was a warm presence at her back and she had no wish to send him away.
“It’s all right.” Echo turned to look at him, forcing her lips into a small smile. It wasn’t as difficult as she thought it would be. “I don’t mind the company.”
Rowan nodded, his hands thrust into his pockets. He looked different. It wasn’t merely the cut on his brow—hastily stitched by the battlefield healers working frantically below—or the plaster dust that clung to his skin and clothes. It was as if something fundamental within him had shifted. He was not the person he had been. And neither was she.
“Are you okay?” Rowan asked.
“No. Not really.” Echo kept her answer honest. “But I will be. Eventually.”
Another nod. His hazel eyes drifted to his feet. He scuffed at the cracked masonry with the toe of his boot. Silence stretched between them, punctuated by the shrill wail of sirens in the distance. The city was stunned, but it would recover. It always did.
“I have an idea,” said Rowan. “Let’s start over….I’m just me and you’re just you and we’re meeting for the very first time.”