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thetomorrowshow · 5 months ago

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learn to play it right

Final installment of the trust au.

There will, at a later date, be short stories set in this universe.

“What is going on?” Jimmy whispers.

Scott peers down, down at the massive crowd of people gathering, at the long line twisting down the mountain side and into the city.

“I have no clue,” he whispers back.

There are—there have to be hundreds of elves down there, all dressed in black robes, waiting outside the church. And not just elves—others, fae, humans, royalty. Far too many for any normal event. Far too many.

What’s more, a large portion of those actually gaining entrance into the building below are royalty, many of which are elves, but just as many . . . aren’t.

Scott and Jimmy are lying on the roof of the Church of Aeor, early on this cold morning, where they’ve been waiting for two hours—they had arrived just before sunrise, Scott’s exhausted wings barely carrying them to the church’s rooftop. There, with the vantage point it posed and the relative cover from any onlookers, they’d heard and seen the arrival of hundreds of people—including Lizzie, surrounded by a guard of twenty soldiers.

Jimmy had almost gone to her right then. Scott had felt him tense, heard the slight intake of breath, had panicked at what might happen to them if Jimmy were to shout down at her. Scott had subtly readjusted his grip on Jimmy's upper arm, ready to pull him back if need be, his other hand in the air, ready to cover the man’s mouth if he decided to do something stupid.

Jimmy didn’t do anything, thank Aeor. He just gazed down at his sister, mouth moving silently.

Scott turned his eyes back to her as well, marching up the hill to the church. Lizzie looked . . . strong. Her chin was held high, her hair braided back perfectly, her jewelry shining in the weak morning sunlight. She wasn’t dressed in greys and blacks any longer, the mourning period for Jimmy long over, but where she usually wore pastel shades of pinks and purples, her current dress was a deep blue, pinned up again and again in graceful layers, a train spilling out behind her.

Her presence was a regal one, and every person already making their way up to the church had slowed and stopped and stepped aside, allowing her to pass.

She had come straight up to the church—and Ilphas, of all people, had greeted her outside—and they had ushered her in, while the main part of her guard was redirected.

Since Lizzie, they've seen Joel, Katherine, and Pix arrive and be granted entrance, along with various other figures of elvish royalty. Other elves—and guards of arriving rulers, such as fWhip right this moment and Scott’s blood positively boils at the sight of him—wait outside, silent, looking toward the church.

Then Gem arrives, and Scott’s heart collapses into relief that she’s actually still alive. By some miracle—dear Aeor, how had she survived?

Last time he’d seen her, she had been in a heap on the ground, hair white as snow. That sight has haunted his nightmares for weeks.

She’s here, though, hair as red as ever, face solemn as she enters the church, followed shortly by Shelby (who looks exhausted in her shabby clothes, head bowed) and Joey right beside her (Scott blinks back visions of Joey pulling on his wings to wake him up), adorned with far too much gold weaved into a headdress and around his neck, the most brightly dressed of anyone there.

In fact, all of those waiting outside the chapel are dressed in black.

Scott is starting to have a sinking feeling that he knows why everyone might be showing up to Rivendell’s church on an inconspicuous weekday morning.

Pearl arrives last of all the emperors, marching right on in, and Scott knows that there won’t be anything to see from out here.

Not that Rivendell isn’t an . . . interesting sight, at the moment.

The fog of the morning obscures the nearby mountain peaks, tinged red in a way that could be the rising sun (though Scott doubts it). The landscape and city aren’t dead, but . . . muted, almost, as if some of the color and life has been slowly drained. There’s no snow on the ground, and it is summer, but usually there’s a morning frost year-round. The earth seems cracked, dry, neglected.

And, of course, red—red tentacles, he supposes, thread through the city—still, perhaps, but Scott swears they shift when he looks away. One stretching from a normally-busy intersection, curled around a lamppost. Another that wraps all the way around the library, the stones buckling inward under its grip. The flowers of the royal gardens are overrun, large and small vines choking them out of the dirt.

The touch of his brother is clear, but to Scott, the most significant change is the eerie feeling of stale death haunts the air. Death that clings to the back of his throat, to the pads of his fingers, to his cracked lips.

He hates this. This is his land, his country, his people, and Xornoth—

No. Anger will get him nowhere but dead, and he can’t die yet. They have a purpose, here.

To think. He was so worried about Jimmy blowing everything by calling out to Lizzie, while Scott just has to look at nothing in particular to be tempted to scream out a challenge to Xornoth while his lungs still have air.

“We have to get inside,” Scott mutters to Jimmy, shamefully caring more about removing himself from his once-beautiful Rivendell as it suddenly overwhelms him and less about saving Lizzie. “There’s a window in the rafters with a broken latch—or, there used to be. I don’t see why anyone would think to repair it. We can go around to it and swing in.”

“Why do you know that?”

Scott shrugs as well as he can, belly-down on the roof, eyes still fixed on Ilphas below as the elf greets guest after guest. “Good place to hide out from my brother, growing up.”

Forgetting his anger, it might be best for them to get inside a building, anyways—every time Scott sees one of those horrid red tentacles out of the corner of his eye, he thinks it’s Xornoth come to kill him once and for all. They’re terribly exposed in their current place, and it’s a miracle they’ve not been spotted yet (though they’d had a close call with Pix glancing heavenward as he entered).

So Jimmy follows closely (close enough to touch, of course) as he shuffles down the roof, to the back of the chapel, where luckily nobody has begun to congregate.

It isn’t as easy slipping in through the round window there as it used to be—it swings out, for one thing, which almost knocks Scott off his balance entirely as his arm swings out with it. When he flips himself around and starts to slide down the edge of the roof, his feet dangle in freefall for a second (his stomach flips, though Jimmy has a tight grip on his wrist) and the windowsill is just too thin for the thick winter boots he's been wearing, his feet scraping against it for unfound purchase. With only a moment of panic, though, he manages to get both heels hooked on the inside and pulls with all the leg strength he has, slipping away from Jimmy, his back falling with another swoop in his stomach.

It’s more the flapping of his wings that helps to pull him in than it is his quad muscles, but Scott somehow manages to shimmy into the window, barely keeping himself from falling flat on his face.

He makes far too much noise, stumbling over his own feet and almost hitting his head in the cramped attic space, but once he has something of a breath in his chest he scoots over to the side (there's really only five square feet of space in there, after all) to let Jimmy in.

Jimmy goes about it in a . . . creative way, meaning that Scott’s heart almost drops out of his chest when he sees Jimmy fall past the window.

“Jimmy—” he gasps, reaching out far too late (frost brushing against the rough wood wall), just as he notices the fingers curled around the ledge.

Jimmy heaves himself up on his upper arm strength alone, and Scott knew he was betrothed to a swimmer but holy—

Jimmy falls into the room on his hands and rolls, landing hard on his backside. The entire tiny room rattles; they both freeze.

“Hopefully nobody heard that,” Scott whispers, voice pitched high.

Jimmy nods, laces his fingers between Scott’s, and scrambles to his feet (though still bent over to accommodate the low ceiling). “Yeah. Where to?”

Scott pushes past him to the only door in the room, an old, roughly-hewn door that probably hasn’t been opened in decades, lifting it just slightly to avoid scraping it along the floor.

The sound of low murmuring reaches Scott’s ears, along with the gentle strains of harp music. He takes a deep breath, then looks out.

The door leads to a dark drop, though Scott knows that in the darkness is a corner of the chapel partially walled off to hide a ladder. If he sat down here, on the sheet of wood before the door, his feet would find the first rung of the ladder on the wall below. But if he instead slides to the left, tiptoes along the wall a bit, that sheet of wood leads to the beams of the open main rafters—an access path for fixing the light fixtures.

And that is where Scott goes, carefully stepping across the beams, wings flared to keep his balance.

Jimmy is right behind him, his hand now clutched tightly around the joint where Scott’s wing meets his shoulder blade, keeping up a steady stream of whispered curses as he steps behind him. “Scott—if I fall—”

“You’ll probably land on some duke, so don’t do that,” Scott advises, glancing down at the dizzying array below. Sure enough, that looks like the Duke of Evien right under where Jimmy would land.

It’s an absolute miracle that nobody is looking up to the dark rafters, because the church is packed with people. The chapel seats close to five hundred, Scott knows, massive as it is, and yet every pew is filled, people left standing, lining the walls, crowding the entrance.

Scott tears his eyes away and creeps along, careful to test every step before putting his full weight on it, until he reaches a sheet of wood a bit more like a platform than the walkway, where he can kneel and peer down below. Jimmy joins him, slides their hands together.

“What’s going on down there? Why is Lizzie here?”

Scott scans the room, trying to spot everyone. All of the emperors are seated near the front—Lizzie behind Shelby and Joey on the left side, fWhip and Gem on the right side beside Katherine and in front of Sausage—and seated at the very front is Joel, then a priest that Scott remembers kind of liking whenever he attended chapel, then two empty seats.

And before them is the altar. Atop the altar is an unwrinkled white linen, with a very familiar crown resting on it. Scott's own crown. The one that had been hand-crafted for him when neither of his parents recovered from their horrible illness.

It’s a rather beautiful crown, if he does say so himself. A golden base, threads of gold crawling up to support and wrap around several white crystals, clear gems woven into the gold. Scott’s always been impressed by the workmanship that must have gone into such delicate materials to make them into the sturdy thing, and it’s clearly been polished recently, as the crystals catch every ray of light and absolutely sparkle.

Ilphas is walking down the aisle, he notices, and they pause right beside the altar for the briefest of moments before turning out to the crowd.

“Respected guests,” they say, voice ringing through the vaulted ceiling of the chapel. Everyone immediately hushes, turning their eyes forward. “The service will begin with a traditional elvish hymn, written thousands of years ago. The lyrics are in the Old Elvish tongue, but they envision the glory of the afterlife that awaits . . . that awaits. It will be performed by Sarelir of Arde’s Line and Cacil of the Far Forests.”

They incline their head and step back down to sit beside the priest, who shifts slightly, as the harp once again strikes up and an elf stands from the front row, rolling their shoulders.

Scott is absolutely transfixed.

“What’s going on?” Jimmy whispers again. “What is this?”

It’s so surreal, Scott’s not even sure what to say.

“This—this is my funeral,” he finally manages. “We’re watching my funeral.”

“This is so odd,” Scott whispers, for what’s probably the seventh time.

“It’s not fair, is what it is,” Jimmy tells him. “Did I have a funeral?”

“Yes, of course,” Scott says absently, too focused on the priest’s readings in Old Elvish to even look at Jimmy. ‘It was a lovely service.”

“I wish I'd been there,” Jimmy grumbles. “Who spoke?”

“Joel gave the sermon, but . . . several people spoke. Er, Lizzie cried during her speech.”

“Wow. Was it sad—I mean, she cried, right—but like, sad, or a good sad?”

“Why are they doing this in Old Elvish?” Scott wonders aloud. “Usually, the priest wants people to understand the blessings. My funeral ought to be entirely in Common.”

As a testament to the lack of understanding, the mourners down below are beginning to look a bit bored. Lizzie is paying rapt (if somewhat vacant) attention, and Gem seems to have some sort of idea of what’s happening (as she’s taking notes), but Joel is fidgeting with the buttons on his purple coat, and Sausage is pelting little pieces of paper at fWhip’s back.

Even the native elves seem confused, disinterested. Some are frowning, focusing hard to understand (and those must be scholars, librarians, and priests, those who have studied the language for a considerable amount of time), but most are simply gazing forward with no sign on their faces that they are even listening.

His people. . . .

His people look unwell.

Their skin appears somewhat wax, though perhaps that’s just the low lighting and the black clothing—even so, many familiar faces are certainly thinner than Scott remembers, and their eyes are dull and redrimmed and scared, and Scott can’t stand to see them so.

But how on earth is he going to make this any better? How will he do anything but fail?

There’s a quiet noise from below, almost a snort, and Scott looks away from the elves to see Joey, head slumped back and eyes shut, mouth half-open in sleep.

“I wasn’t gonna say it, but this is kind of boring,” murmurs Jimmy. “My funeral wasn’t, right?”

“Jimmy, I honestly don’t remember much of what happened at your funeral right now.”

“I wish I could’ve seen it. Then I would be able to compare.”

The priest finishes up cyr sermon with a statement that Scott recognizes despite the language barrier, one that’s spoken at every kingly event he attends—“Blessed by Aeor may our king be.” Then ce sits, and after a moment, Joel gets up and stands behind the altar.

He takes a moment to look out over the massive congregation, the scribes waiting to write down every word he says, the fellow emperors before him.

Scott sees Joel’s shoulders raise in a deep breath, then he speaks.

“When I was asked to do this bit, I was . . . kind of intimidated,” Joel says, straightening his sash. “Jimmy’s was different—there weren’t very many traditions I had to know about, but it seemed like every day I’d get a message from Rivendell informing me of whatever other thing I would have to keep in mind. I’m honestly just glad that there isn't a body—I never quite figured out which shoulder I was supposed to pour oil on.”

A couple of chuckles, mostly from royals of other empires. Some of the elves shift uncomfortably; Scott can just barely see Ilphas from this angle, but he can practically hear the elf’s disappointed sigh at Joel’s flippancy with sacred customs.

“We do the whole mourning thing a bit differently in Mezelea,” Joel says. “I know when Jimmy died, Scott had his year-long bit, and Lizzie had forty days. Mezelea has three days—and only that much if you’re close to the person who passed.

“I took those three days. I may not have known Scott too terribly well, but we were friends, I guess. We were friends, and I know what he’d want me to do.”

Joel looks out over the crowd again, massive as it is, head turning left and right.

“I’m not going to say what Lizzie did at Jimmy’s memorial,” says Joel, voice hard. “But know that I mean it. And the emotions that Lizzie incited in your souls then ought to be roaring right now. Can you feel that? Can you—”

CRACK.

A red tentacle bursts through the floor, and before anyone can do anything, before anyone can draw breath to scream or even acknowledge its existence, it smacks into Joel with enough force to send him flying into the wall to his right, where he slumps and lays limp.

“No—!” Lizzie cries out, standing, but she doesn’t rush forward as with a flash of darkness—all the candles and torches go out, flickering back as red, darkness seems to sweep the room like the death outside, and Scott swallows against the ill, sticky feeling in the back of his throat—the demon himself appears, standing before the altar.

His life as the usurping ruler of Rivendell must be treating him well. Gone are the torn robes, the grimy grey armor—he wears clean armor, matte black in the near-darkness, his robes below grey, a black cape fixed around his shoulders.

His hair is still unbrushed, long and scraggly, and the crown—or, perhaps, a physical pair of antlers—is still on his head, red glistening from the tips. Scott can’t see his face, but he’s dreamed it so many times that he doesn’t need to.

He can picture the way those horrible, bulging maroon eyes rove amongst the crowd, the too-sharp too-big smile with too many teeth as he surveys his prisoners, his prey.

Scott shudders.

He’s been (almost) killed by Xornoth once already.

Can he stand a second time? Can he walk calmly toward that horrifying visage, give him the deranged joy of his brother going to him as sacrifice, a futile attempt to save his people?

The new lighting bathes the chapel in an eerie glow and mist rolls out from Xornoth, obscuring Scott’s vision even further. Gasps and screams from the sudden appearance go silent as everyone waits, dreadfully, for the demon to speak.

Xornoth takes a long, deep breath, an inhale through his nose as he tilts his head back, taking in all the mourners in black.

“There is such power here,” he says eventually, distorted voice bouncing around the high ceiling. Jimmy squeezes Scott’s hand, silent and radiating terror.

Has Jimmy ever seen the demon? A nasty sight for the first time.

Or does he just sense the end, as awful and impending as it is for Scott?

“Such power. Godly power. And many don’t even know it,” Xornoth says, each word deliberate and dripping. “Who knew that the gods still dwell on earth?”

He stares out at—at someone, but Scott can’t tell who.

What? Gods?

There’s Aeor, of course, but Aeor isn’t physically present. Nor is Exor, despite both gods’ champions being here.

Scott knows that other gods exist, but most others aren’t terribly bothered with the elves. Different cultures have different deities, and of those of the Thirty-Three, only the two brothers had ever been documented in contact with the elves.

“And I will soon be more powerful than them. But first . . . a little victory, a personal achievement for me. Elf?”

Xornoth looks behind himself, and Ilphas, slowly, rises.

“Declare me king with my brother’s crown.”

Oh, now that is going too far.

Scott can feel his blood positively boiling. Of course, Xornoth has to have this. Not only is that his crown, it’s also entirely against every burial tradition and even ancient law! It’s nothing but a way to gloat, a move of blatant disrespect and total power.

Nobody will stand against him, though. Nobody can. All they would be met with is death.

And yet, as Ilphas carefully picks up the crown, held in their right hand, they tuck their left hand into their robe.

Scott sees it before anyone else, he thinks. Xornoth takes a knee at the altar, head bowed, setting his dripping and blackened crown of Exor (so it is a crown, not antlers—though—are those bleeding holes in the top of his brother’s head?) on the white burial sheet. The demon doesn’t see a thing. Not the way that Ilphas draws near, nor the way they hold the crown far from Xornoth’s head. Not the flash of silver that Ilphas pulls from their robe and drives into Xornoth's back—

In a fluid move that sends his dark cape swirling around him, Xornoth rises and spins on his heel and grabs Ilphas by the throat, just as he had Scott so long ago.

The hundreds of people in the chapel cry out in a cacophony of sound—Scott can’t see them, Xornoth stands and lifts Ilphas, Ilphas’s shaking hands drop both the crown and the dagger as they futilely push against Xornoth—

The elf chokes, Xornoth’s grip so tight that Scott just knows his windpipe is being crushed—

Xornoth throws Ilphas to the ground with a solid thud and raises his right hand, turned out so the audience sees all that happens. They all fall silent, waiting, dreading.

A red mist—or a flame, maybe, some kind of magic that glows and burns Scott’s eyes like smoke—begins to form in Xornoth’s hand, swirling and intensifying.

“Let this,” he growls, “be the first example of the punishment that awaits insolence.”

He closes his hand, curling the magic into his fist, and points it down at Ilphas—Ilphas stirs slightly, but not enough to move, to dodge the blast about to come, and Scott isn’t going to let another person die while he stands by and watches—

He doesn’t think. Scott throws himself down from the rafter, falling, air rushing through his ears and the ground speeding closer as his aching wings flare out at the last second to catch him, landing one knee on the ground, one hand out to steady himself (ice spreads out across the floor in a crackling radius from his fist), in front of Xornoth.

Silence.

And then the chapel bursts into noise.

Scott straightens up, dusts off his hands, even as Xornoth stumbles back, face slack with shock, the magic vanishing from his hand.

He may be about to die, but Scott feels that he ought to be acknowledged in history books for that entrance.

He’s about to say something cool, like “miss me?” or “I’d like my crown back, thank you” when there’s a whoosh of air right beside him—

Followed by a thud and a loud crack!—

As Jimmy lands in a heap beside him, one leg bent in a way that it surely shouldn’t be capable of.

Scott stares. Xornoth stares. Ilphas stares.

Jimmy raises his head, grabs onto Scott’s rough tunic and drags himself up, hands clinging to him, careful not to put weight on his leg.

“Did you just break your leg?” Scott hisses.

Jimmy nods, face scrunched up in pain.

“Why?”

“It’ll heal,” Jimmy gasps. “Just—just give me a second.”

“Jimmy?” a familiar voice cries, and Scott glances out to see Lizzie, vaulting over the pew between her and the front of the room. “I—what—?”

“What the f—” Sausage’s quite reasonable question is cut off by fWhip’s exclamation of “How are you both alive?”

Lizzie doesn’t get close at all before Xornoth points at her; another horrid tentacle bursts through the ground in an explosion of stone and wraps around her legs, tearing her dress. It swings her through the air over their heads and slams her into a marble pillar near the back of the chapel, which cracks and crumbles onto her motionless body.

The church goes silent again, every person who just moments ago had been rushing to get out of their seat and to the door now frozen in place.

“So,” Xornoth sneers, squaring his shoulders. “Back from the dead? And your little fish boy, too. Was losing once not enough?”

Kind of his thoughts exactly, really. Glad they're on the same page.

What on earth does Aeor expect him to do?

Why is he back?

He has to say something. He has to look like he has some sort of plan, because literally every second of this mission has been last-second decisions with nothing concrete to follow and he hates that, he can’t give Xornoth a reason to gloat atop everything else.

But Scott doesn’t even have the chance to come up with a witty comeback before literally everything explodes.

There’s a ringing sound.

A piercing ringing, drowning out every sound that might be expected, and when Scott goes down, it’s almost . . . slow.

Slow . . . slow, as if by some consideration, the air has decided to thicken to the point of near-water, taking Scott down . . . down. . . .

Scott’s sent flying forward, something hard crashing into his back, holding to Jimmy for dear life as he probably shouts but can’t hear anything but the ringing. They both crash to the floor, Scott beside Jimmy, his eyes squinted shut, one arm pulled up to cover his head.

A hand grasps the back of his coat, pulling him back, dragging him away from Jimmy; an acrid smell washes over Scott and he knows who has him even if he can’t open his eyes for all the dust and grime in his vision—

And then something else knocks Xornoth aside, and Scott stumbles to the side and rubs at his eyes enough that he can squint and see that the entire left wall of the church has been blown off entirely, right behind where he had just been standing.

Rivendell outside, not long ago looking more muted than anything, is bathed in the same red dimness as the chapel. The clouds overhead are dark, darker than a normal raincloud, the ground absolutely writhing with dozens of those massive red tentacles.

His Rivendell, his beautiful Rivendell. . . .

Xornoth is on the ground in the settling dust and splinters of the destroyed marble and spruce wood of the walls, wrestling with—with Katherine, of all people. Jimmy’s still on the ground, covered in scrapes and dust but sitting up, pouring from his waterskin onto his leg, and there are other guests everywhere, panicking and pushing—and the ringing fades, just slightly, then more and more and they’re shouting and screaming and trying to make their way out.

Scott ignores them and stumbles outside through the very large new door, tripping over chunks of marble. The air inside the church is thick with dust, and if he can get out of there maybe he’ll be able to properly see what’s going on.

Once he steps outside, however, something in the air shimmers. Then wobbles.

Then, out of literal thin air, the Grimlands army begins to emerge (clearly identifiable by their strange boxy uniforms and leather helmets), marching through the gardens between the palace grounds and the rest of the kingdom and inexorably toward the church and the masses there.

“No way,” Scott tries to say around the dust choking his throat, the words escaping as more of a cough.

He turns back around, ready to warn everyone to flee—

The guests, just moments ago a mass of chaos, are slowly forming rows behind him, each with a weapon drawn—lots of daggers, of course, but some short swords, some spears, some maces.

Where—what?

How? Why?

The mourners—all these people here to mourn Scott, not just those that were permitted into the chapel, but the hundreds outside as well—have somehow become a small army.

And Joel comes limping through the center of the crowd (they shuffle aside, clearly looking to him for guidance), covered in the dust of the rubble, a bit of blood trickling down his temple.

“Glad to see everyone’s here and ready to fight,” Joel shouts, heading up toward Scott. “We’ll be joined by more as soon as they notice.”

He turns, claps Scott on the shoulder, then points to the approaching Grimlands soldiers. “Fight!”

Their little band, so far no larger than the force of rebels that Jimmy had been leading across the prairie (so many less than the Grimlands, surely), breaks forward at a run, some yelling, some brandishing their weapons. In the middle of it, Scott and Joel stand (and Scott instinctively takes a couple of steps back, fully aware that he has zero control over his curse right now).

Joel looks exhausted—Scott had seen how hard Xornoth threw him into the wall, so he’s honestly surprised that the man is even walking. And not only walking, but apparently leading an army?

“I don't know how you’re alive,” Joel says, grinning, “but it’s good to have you, for however long it’ll be.”

Scott’s imagined this moment several times in the past weeks—reuniting with friends who thought him dead would be inconceivably emotional, perhaps even distressing (as it was with him and Jimmy). But instead of all the planned phrases he came up with for Joel, all he can manage is,

“Why does everyone have weapons?”

Joel chuckles. “We got them to everyone who needed one before the service.”

“You handed out daggers as party favors for my funeral?”

“We’re trying to take back Rivendell, we had to do something! We didn't really expect you and Xornoth to show up, honestly. Can you still do that ice thing?”

“I can’t control it without Jimmy,” says Scott, and as if to punctuate his statement, several icicles shoot up from the earth.

If Joel is confused by his mention of Jimmy, he doesn’t show it. “You don’t need to control it, you just need to not hit our people.”

Joel runs off before Scott can say that part of having a lack of control means that he can’t exactly avoid hitting their people.

There’s people running, yelling, fighting. Xornoth and Jimmy (and so many others) are somewhere in the rubble of the half-destroyed church behind him. Red tentacles are bursting out of the ground all around, lifting up their ragtag bunch of fighters. fWhip’s army is approaching, growing larger and closer by the minute.

And Scott’s here in the midst of it.

He flexes his fingers and runs, ice spreading from every pounding footstep.

Jimmy watches, biting his lip, as his leg mends, the bone tingling and straightening. The pain dissipates bit-by-bit, and though it isn’t fully done, Jimmy stands, shaking it out.

Joel’s on the ground, by the wall that collapsed, and Jimmy stumbles over to him. Miraculously, none of the wall fell onto him, but he’s still unconscious, blood dripping down his cheek.

Jimmy pours some water from the skin on his belt onto his fingers, lightly touches his head. Joel stirs, starts to sit up, starts to rub his eyes, as if he had never been more than stunned.

As much as Jimmy longs to stop and hug him, or talk to him, he moves on, over to the altar, beside which Katherine lies in a heap, alone on the floor, blood seeping out under her.

Where’d the demon go? Not his problem. He needs to help these people, then probably—Lizzie? Find her among the rubble? Go after Scott?

Jimmy kneels and places both hands on Katherine’s shoulders, holds her for a moment, letting the tingling feeling leave his fingers and enter her.

After a moment, Katherine moves a little, mumbles something, and Jimmy heads to the next person, just beyond Katherine.

Scott’s advisor, Ilphas, is sitting against the back wall of the chapel, massaging their throat. They look at Jimmy with something like wonder in their eyes as Jimmy kneels down before them and places a gentle hand on their throat.

Ilphas flinches back at the touch, but the appearing bruise recedes under Jimmy’s fingers, and when he draws back, they prod at their throat, apparently amazed.

“You . . . you are a god,” breathes Ilphas.

“Cod, actually,” Jimmy corrects, then heads to the other side of the room, toward a woman cradling her arm.

“Jimmy!”

Jimmy whirls to the side as someone grabs his elbow—Pix, smiling, eyes shining. He’s covered in dust, like everyone else, but he seems almost . . . happy.

“It’s time,” Pix says. He nods once, pats Jimmy’s shoulder.

“Sorry, time for what?”

“The sword.”

Right. Right! Pix had given him the sword, ancient and covered in runes, with the strict instructions to give it up when the time came. Jimmy’s been waiting, assuming that he would instinctively know the time, but apparently it’s . . . now.

He reaches over his shoulder, grasps the hilt, but Pix shakes his head.

“Not to me,” he says. “Scott. Give Scott the sword. Hurry.”

Oh. He can do that.

Which way did Scott go?

Lizzie is dying.

She knows she’s dying, because her vision keeps going grainy around the edges, and she can’t feel her legs, and a huge chunk of marble has pierced her stomach, blood seeping out all around it.

There’s something that she has to do, then.

She promised herself over a month ago that if she was ever dying, she would do it.

So Lizzie reaches with numb, trembling fingers into her satchel, past the cold hilt of a dagger and landing on the squishy-yet-solid mass that had been left in the pouch with the mysterious book.

Scott pushes a piece of hair behind his ear, rolls up his sleeves for the third time. He’s just narrowly dodged away from a soldier viciously slashing about with his sword, hidden briefly behind a tree that he had once read a history book under.

He’s in the midst of the battle, and he really doesn’t have any sort of control over all of the snow and ice, and he hadn’t carried any other weapon, so he's been trying to avoid just about everyone—

“Scott!”

He whips around—

Gem.

He’d seen her face back then, stone-like and motionless, her hair white, her body slumped in a way that clearly communicated she wouldn’t be getting up again any time soon.

He was certain he’d killed her when she wouldn’t respond to fWhip’s shaking.

But now, she’s alive. She’s alive and moving and breathing—and she’s hurrying toward him across the battlefield that used to be a very lovely park, her bag outstretched.

“You’re going to get him now, aren’t you?” she asks breathlessly, shoving her bag into Scott’s chest. It ices over as he accepts it.

“The crystal’s in there, and one of the boots—we couldn’t find the other,” she tells him with a grimace. “We’re really doing it this time, right?”

Scott just stares at her, his arms burning where her fingers had brushed them.

She’s okay.

He’s spent so many nights remembering that final moment, when the ice exploded out of him and she collapsed, when he barely had a moment to mourn before he was gone, too.

She’s here now, and there’s a bruise on her temple and her red hair is coming out its braid, and her face is smudged with dust, and she’s grinning and so very alive.

It feels good to know that he didn’t kill one of his friends.

Scott opens the bag, and sure enough, the crystal is sparkling within, a familiar, hated boot squished in next to it.

“Well?”

Scott looks back up at Gem, at the hope shining in her eyes, at the smile that he never thought he’d see again.

Does he tell her that he’s dying?

That she’ll have to go through it again in a matter of hours, at most?

Does he prepare her in some small way, or give her a couple of moments of freedom from the grief?

Scott doesn’t have time to make a decision, however, because something to the left crashes.

They both turn, toward the church, not too far away but far enough—

It happens as if in slow motion, crashing through the rubble and still-standing bricks, straightening to full height as stone cascades off it and any people nearby flee.

There’s a monster bursting through the remains of the collapsed wall.

A monster.

Hasn’t enough happened?

The monster is blue, and scaly, and twelve feet tall at least, with long pink hair that tangles down its shoulders and covers its face. It stumbles out of the church, stretches a little, and immediately grabs a Mythland soldier with both claws and chucks him as far as it can.

“What in the world—?” Gem gasps, running toward the monster.

As fun as it sounds to run directly toward the killer lizard thing, Scott decides to turn the other way, looping Gem’s bag over his other shoulder so it doesn't bang against his satchel. The monster, luckily, keeps heading down the path, towards the city itself and not toward his palace, which overlooks the entire city from its place beyond the church.

Scott heads that way, scaling the ivy trellises on the low wall between the gardens and his palace grounds, where already the battle has spread. There’s soldiers and Rivendellian rebels fighting right and left, and horrible black-and-red flags (hung in the place of Scott’s typical blue and gold) have been torn down and trampled, like rags under the feet of the battle.

Scott dodges through the fight—he isn’t sure where he’s trying to get to, just somewhere away, somewhere he can maybe pray for the strength to face his death with dignity—

There’s a storm coming. A snowstorm, judging by the dropping temperature and the little flurries that fall before Scott’s eyes. The land round about is growing even darker, the clouds above looming more and more threateningly.

Scott shoves past a falling soldier, stumbles over an uneven chunk of frozen ground, straightens and continues—

A flash of lightning, followed by a rumble of thunder—

He’s there.

Oh, no.

Xornoth is right there, up ahead maybe . . . maybe forty meters, waiting.

Staring at Scott.

His eyes are maroon pits of nothing, his skin grey and distorted. His blackened lips are stretched into a smile, his long, matted hair falling down around his shoulders. Again on his head is that horrid, dripping crown of antlers, in such opposition to the golden antlers in Scott’s satchel.

He is doom, he is death, and Scott can taste it on the frosty air.

This is the end.

Scott retrieves Aeor’s crown from the Codmade satchel at his side, sets it carefully on his head. Lightning flashes again—Xornoth is closer, red mist rolling out around his feet, spreading across the grounds.

The fighting gradually comes to a standstill—some unspoken beckon brings all eyes toward them, shifting in their formations until there's a good crowd of onlookers surrounding them, watching. Waiting.

Scott doesn’t have a weapon. With Jimmy’s hand in his, he hasn’t needed one—he’s been one.

But Jimmy isn’t here.

And Scott is going to die.

At least Jimmy won't have to see it.

He squares his shoulders, fumbles in Gem’s bag for a moment, extracting the crystal, cool and heavy in the palm of his hand. He lets her satchel fall, ignoring the boot within.

Xornoth actually laughs, the sound barely carrying to Scott over the growing wind.

“You’re going to try that again?” he calls, slowly striding toward Scott, each step deliberate, more mist clouding out with every thud of his clunky boots against the ground. “It failed, brother. Why would it work now?”

Exactly Scott’s question. But he doesn't really have a choice, at this point. It’s not like he can run from the demon.

The wind whistles in Scott’s ears, almost like the ringing of the earlier explosion.

This is it.

Xornoth draws his sword with a shiiing—black, and, like his crown, dripping. He didn’t have a sword before, back on the windswept plateau, did he?

Scott swallows back the cold fear in his throat at being run through with that sword, darkness spilling into his insides, but he puts up one hand, ready to send a burst of ice or something—

People are screaming, yelling over the wind—

There isn’t any ice—

Scott’s hair is whipped into his eyes by the wind and he can’t see much but he sees Xornoth come forward, sword ready to strike—

He can’t move, his feet are literally frozen to the ground—

He squints his eyes shut, dear Aeor please—

Something warm collides with Scott, holding him in a suddenly-warm (warm, home, his Jimmy) hug and he hears a sound kind of like a squnch followed by a gasp in his ear.

The wind dies—not calm, not dwindling, but sharply, leaving silence and the sound of Scott’s heaving breaths and thudding heart.

He opens his eyes to golden, too-long hair, and he feels just barely like he has a tenuous hold on his curse.

He feels warm.

Scott leans back just the slightest bit. Jimmy’s right here, and maybe it’s selfish, but he just wants to see his beloved once more before he dies.

Jimmy’s pale lips tremble as he gives Scott a small smile.

Blood drips from the corner of his mouth.

Jimmy is holding him, and Scott looks past his shoulder to Xornoth right there, holding. . . .

The sword in Xornoth’s hands is buried in Jimmy’s back, and Scott looks down—the point of it is sticking out of Jimmy’s gut, shining with blood. His tunic is rapidly becoming soaked with blood, and Scott realizes that Jimmy is less hugging him and more collapsing onto him.

He’s going to throw up.

He’s going to sob.

Jimmy is dying right in front of him, and Scott can do nothing but hold him.

Xornoth catches Scott’s eye, smirks, and twists the sword.

Jimmy grunts, eyes fluttering closed.

Horror wells up in Scott—horror and anger, cold and terrible, and the snow begins to fall properly as lightning flashes against the dark clouds.

His betrothed is dying in his arms—Jimmy threw himself in the way of the sword to save Scott and now he’s dying, he’s dying again, Jimmy is dying in his arms—

“Scott,” Jimmy breathes, trembling against him. “Scott . . . the sword. . . .”

“I know,” Scott says, frantic, not sure where to put his hands or what to do because everything sounds like it’s coming from underwater and he feels sick, he doesn’t know how to help, “it’s okay, I’ll get the sword out, you’ll be okay—”

“No,” Jimmy interrupts, the sharp nails of his left hand digging weakly into Scott’s shoulder. “Take the . . . the Rune Sword, Scott. . . . It’s time. . . .”

Scott’s eyes catch on the hilt of that sword that Jimmy always wears on his back, that he doesn’t unbuckle even to sleep, the one with the sparkling runes carved into the leather grip.

Xornoth notices it, too. His face goes slack with shock—and maybe a little fear—

In one fluid motion, Scott reaches around Jimmy and withdraws the sword from its sheath with a rring!

The effect is immediate.

Deep inside, the broken parts slide together perfectly with a satisfying click. A tingling spreads down Scott’s limbs, the ice around his ankles melting instantly.

His chest feels like it’s going to burst with something close to elation. Everything feels so—so right, so whole.

He feels like he can take in a full breath without fear that his soul will crack apart.

He feels like there’s a little warmth in his bones—not that the frost is melting, but that it’s a proper part of him.

He’d described it, once, as a door. A door that he had to push against with all his might to keep it shut, and he only had the strength to do so when with Jimmy.

That wasn’t quite right.

It isn’t a door. It’s a piece to a puzzle that has finally been recovered, set in place in the center of his chest.

He feels like everything is right.

He feels powerful.

Snow whirls around him, and he raises the rune sword.

Xornoth tugs his own sword out of Jimmy (who slides to the ground and lays there, crumpled) and raises it, more in a fighting stance than an execution this time.

Scott moves more on instinct than anything else—and not his own. The instinct of someone from long ago, someone who once wielded this very blade against Exor’s Champion.

He parries Conal’s—Xornoth’s attack, swinging the sword like he was born for it. He was trained with a sword, wasn’t he? Long ago—years—centuries—

He steps into Xornoth's space, keeps walking him back—Xornoth is definitely concerned, now, and it’s as if power is literally radiating down his entire body from the crown of antlers. This feels right, this is perfect, his every vein and nerve are singing in perfect harmony—

Alinar attacks relentlessly, frost curling down the sword, illuminating sparkling runes on the blade. The ground beneath them has become ice, and the demon slips with every shuffling step back and he was made for this. He swings and blocks and steps like it’s all a great dance choreographed by the gods, perfectly in time with his God on High, and the music within him swells as he spins Conal around, steps too close to him, and pushes him to the ground, kicking out his knee.

“Please,” Conal-Exor-Xornoth gasps from the ground, his sword fallen to the side, “please . . . Aeor, have mercy. . . .”

“This is mercy,” Alinar-Aeor-Scott says, and he drops the crystal onto the demon’s shoulder before plunging the sword through it, dropping to his own knees to drive it as far as possible.

The crystal ripples as the sword passes through like water, and straight into the demon’s shoulder—

Scott screams, it burns, his arm—

Conal screeches as well, writhes on the ground where the sword has him pinned, red mist is bursting out of him and slowly being absorbed by the crystal and it hurts, it’s as if a sword has cleaved through his own shoulder but Alinar holds on, he has to save his people—

And then it’s over.

The crystal lands on empty, frozen ground, now purely red.

The demon is gone.

It hurts too much to keep going.

Scott had fallen to his knees to push the sword into Xornoth, and now he falls the rest of the way.

He slumps to the ground, sword under him, and knows no more.

It nudges at his cheek, hairy and soft, and Scott’s eyelids flutter as his vision blurs and clears, barely focusing on the stag’s noble muzzle.

Scott lets out a breath, short and shallow. His whole body aches, from the tip of his forehead down to his toes, and he cannot even find the strength to raise his head, see his injuries.

For a moment, it seems that blood streams down from between the stag’s antlers, as it so often has.

He’s lying on the forest floor, spongy mud and soft grass under him.

It gives him a moment of vertigo—usually he looks down on the ground, no?

Then the stag speaks, its white eyes fixed on him. It doesn’t move its mouth, just stares at him as Scott hears its words echo through his head.

“Ni’iun ñe ndie Ndíoxī xi’iun, se’eii. A va’a?”

Scott’s mouth whispers the response.

“Va’a vá.”

The stag huffs, nudges again at his cheek.

“Kunda’avi iniyuu yo’o, se’eii. Kundi yu’u nu takundi’i ña’a, ra kuvi kī’viun ñe ndiviyuu xi’i kūsūnku.”

His eyes roll, just slightly, as the stag blurs in his vision.

“Va’á và,” his lips breathe. “Tixa’viniu.”

“Kūsūn, se’eii.”

Scott’s eyelids are almost too heavy to open.

His body aches, somewhere not quite beyond the realm of consciousness. It feels. . . .

He isn’t awake. Not really. Just drifting toward wakefulness, the pain more present with every passing moment.

There are strange, oddly-shaped words on the tip of his tongue.

The way his body is laid is beginning to be uncomfortable. He shifts a little to see if it’s a better position, and it is for a moment before becoming exponentially worse, so he shifts back to how he’d been.

Where is he?

(A forest floor?)

His first thought is Jimmy’s little tent out in the woods, but whatever he’s lying on is far more comfortable than Jimmy’s worn bedroll. And his second thought is the Rivendell infirmary, but he banishes that thought from his mind as soon as it appears. There’s no way that would be possible.

Maybe it’s just a really soft patch of ground?

Scott forces his eyes open, blinks a couple of times to adjust. It’s very . . . white, he supposes. Very clean.

Very familiar.

This . . .this is the Rivendell infirmary, isn’t it?

He tilts his head up as much as he can, looks around himself.

It’s rather dark. Only one lamp is burning on a bedside table across the room, all the curtains drawn.

And beside him, snoring in a chair, is Pix.

Of all people, Pix isn’t really the one that he expected to see here. He didn’t really expect to see anyone. Usually when he wakes up in the infirmary, he’s all alone.

Why is he in Rivendell?

It takes a moment of retracing his steps—traveling to the Ocean Kingdom, getting sidetracked, taking all night to fly to Rivendell, crashing his own funeral—to get mentally caught up.

He remembers being . . . more. More than himself. Those moments are odd in his memory, as if in slow-motion, and he doesn’t quite feel connected to them.

Did he . . . did he defeat Xornoth?

No.

Against all odds, did he do it?

Did Jimmy die?

“Pix,” Scott croaks, swallowing. His throat is so dry. “Pix.”

Pix starts, sits up properly. “What? What is it?”

He blinks several times, pushes his shaggy hair out of his face (his crown is nowhere in sight) and scans the room until his eyes fall on Scott.

“Oh,” Pix says, eyes widening with clear surprise. “You’re awake. How are you feeling?”

Scott’s really not sure how he’s feeling. He feels sleepy, for the most part. Sore. Like his limbs are weighed down. “I don’t know. Jimmy? Is . . . is Jimmy okay?”

Pix smiles, just the slightest bit, absolutely still surprised. “Of course. Yes, he’s doing all right. Still healing, I believe—it takes more than a day to recover from a mortal wound, after all. Now, how are you? How is your arm?”

Jimmy’s all right.

Jimmy survived.

They both survived and Xornoth—

“Xornoth—?”

“Defeated.”

“And everyone else?”

Pix chuckles. “Everyone is fine, Scott. Well, Lizzie’s a little . . . different. But there were surprisingly few casualties from the battle, and Rivendell has been reclaimed—I believe Joel tried to claim it for his own, actually, so you may need to be reinstated relatively soon—but you needn’t worry about anything while you recover.”

While he recovers?

Recovers from what?

Why is he in the infirmary? Scott doesn’t remember getting injured. The last part he remembers is—well. . . .

He was different, wasn’t he?

It hurts his head to think about. It’s odd to try and place himself in those final moments, a sword that both was and wasn’t his dancing in his hands, the absolute rightness of the union within him, the fear on his foil’s face.

“How is your arm?” Pix asks again, and Scott looks down at himself.

Lying atop the grey blanket that covers his body, his arms look normal. They don’t feel out of the ordinary. He flexes the fingers of his right hand, then—

Pain shoots down his left arm as he tries to move it, and Scott can’t quite bite back a groan. Now that he’s aware of it, his arm just aches—his shoulder seems to pulse with angry heat, and it’s suddenly all he can do to not just lie his head back on the pillow and cry.

Dear Aeor, it hurts.

He doesn’t remember injuring his shoulder. He doesn’t remember getting hurt at all, but with his battle with Xornoth being so . . . odd (he remembers not being himself, thinking thoughts that didn’t belong to him) so it could have happened, he supposes?

There’s no wrappings on his arm, though. He's still wearing that old tunic that used to belong to Jimmy, and the tan sleeve of his long-sleeved undershirt hasn’t been cut away or rolled up. Nothing seems out of the ordinary.

“What happened to my arm?” Scott asks, doing his best not to panic, when a fresh wave of pain has mostly passed and he can speak without gritting his teeth.

Pix’s eyes are sad, old, and he takes a moment for a deep sigh. “You’re so young, Scott. Alinar was over six hundred when he defeated Conal. You’re just over a hundred.”

A strange statement to make, but not untrue. Scott waits as Pix seems to collect himself, resists the urge to demand more answers. Pix will tell in his own time.

“The sword that belongs to you,” Pix says after a long moment, “is a sword that was crafted by the God of Death for Aeor himself. He used the sword to bind Exor to the Void in the End, and when Conal found Exor and brought part of him back to this world, Alinar wielded the sword to bind him to a crystal. As you did with Xornoth this morning.”

Silence.

What?

“This is all—much information,” Scott says, head spinning a bit—Aeor? The God of Death?—as he tries to figure out what exactly Pix is and isn’t saying. Why does Pix even know these things? “But what does that have to do with my arm?”

“That sword,” continues Pix, “is a binding sword. The runes that adorn it are the magic of the God of Death—it imprints itself on one’s very soul. It bound your magic to you, instead of letting it run wild. And it now has bound Xornoth to the crystal that Gem created.”

Pix sighs, scrubs at his bearded cheek. “The sword could have been more precise, of course. But when two persons already are bound to one another, what the sword does to one will affect the other. And you and your brother have been bound together since before your birth.”

“I—how? Because we’re twins? Or—”

“I don’t wish to worry you with prophecies and the like,” Pix interrupts (which, for the record, sounds like an excuse to Scott). “But know that many have spoken of you, surrounded by the living gods as you are. And since both you and Xornoth have pieces of Alinar and Conal, and Aeor and Exor . . . even without the prophecies, you have been bound.”

That doesn’t make sense. Bindings? Gods?

Does it?

What sort of prophecies is Pix talking about?

“We’re really just lucky Jimmy never accidentally stabbed himself,” Pix mutters. “That would have been bad for you.”

“Sorry?” Pix waves him off. “Oh, nothing. We can discuss it more at another time. Just know that you and Xornoth are bound, and the sword is also binding, and in using the sword to pin Xornoth to the crystal you’ve also pinned your own arm."

He’s what?

“Does my arm still work?” he asks, trying to move his fingers again. His index finger just barely twitches.

“Not well, certainly. And it will hurt for the rest of your days. As far as I’m aware, and not due to his lack of trying, Alinar never discovered a way to regain the use of his own arm without freeing the demon.”

Right.

Um, that’s. . . .

That’s fine. That is absolutely fine. So his arm will always hurt. For the rest of his life, he’s essentially going to be one-handed.

He can process that later.

He’s curious. Terribly, terribly curious. How on earth does Pix know all this? Why has he chosen to tell Scott now, after everything, instead of saving him some time and giving him the answers before any of this happened?

Those questions pale in comparison to his most important concern, of course.

“But Jimmy—”

“Is going to be fine,” Pix finishes, smiling again. “He’ll probably be in to see you in the morning. Now, would you be all right alone? I have some other business to attend to.”

It’s maybe two hours later that the infirmary door creaks open again and Scott hurriedly wipes his eyes with his one working arm. He’s a king, and kings don’t cry when something bad happens. And in all honesty, something good happened. Something very good happened. He’s selfish to think of himself in this time.

“Scott.”

Scott’s head shoots up at that achingly beloved voice. “Jimmy,” he whispers desperately.

Jimmy’s standing there, in the doorway to the infirmary.

He’s a little green around the gills, and his green tunic is torn and stained coppery around his stomach, and the shadows under his eyes are deep and waxy, but he’s alive. He’s alive and right there and they made it.

It only takes a moment of staring at each other before Jimmy hurries over to his side (his stride is stilted somewhat, one arm clutched around his stomach) and kisses him.

It’s quick, and not at all deep, and just once Scott wishes they could have a kiss that isn’t urgent and aggressive with the thrill of survival, but it’s Jimmy and it’s kissing, so he supposes he doesn’t mind it too much.

Jimmy only breaks the kiss to pull Scott into a hug, and he smells like river and earth and is very damp, but Scott just hugs him back with his one arm and tries not to cry into his shoulder.

Jimmy’s alive.

They’re both alive, and Xornoth is defeated, and they can finally just be happy.

They made it.

“I can't stay,” Jimmy says, voice muffled against Scott’s shoulder. “Lizzie and I are going to go reclaim the Codlands.”

Scott gives a wet little chuckle. “By yourselves?”

“Honestly, we probably could,” Jimmy laughs. “Have you seen Lizzie yet? She’s massive.”

“Sorry, what?”

Jimmy finally pulls away, eases himself into the chair that Pix had vacated with a bit of a grimace. “Yeah. Apparently she ate this weird, squishy ball thing that she found in an old book? And—”

“No,” Scott groans. She didn’t. “I literally told her—”

“—and it turned her into this huge blue sea monster. So she’s giving me a ride to the Codlands, and we’re going to kick Mythland out once and for all!”

Scott does recall seeing a monster break out of the church during the battle, before choosing to go a different direction. And that was Lizzie? “Is—is she going to turn back?” he asks incredulously.

Jimmy shrugs. “We’ll see. She and I . . . we have a lot to talk about. And Pix said something . . . odd.”

“Did he imply that you’re a figure of legend that had been prophecied about?” asks Scott drily.

Jimmy nods.

“Well, that makes two of us.”

Jimmy grins, looks down at the floor.

It’s quiet for a moment. A comfortable quiet, not strained or awkward or anything of the sort.

Scott takes a moment just to stare at him—at Jimmy’s straw-colored hair, the glimmering scales pushing through the scar tissue on his face, the sharp cut-off of one of his ears, the delicate spindles of the other.

In the low light of the moon’s glow, he’s gorgeous. He’s always gorgeous, of course, but something about the way the light cast from the window falls over his lover’s brow leaves Scott in awe.

Jimmy is beautiful.

Scott’s sorry there was ever a time he hadn’t noticed.

“I’m sorry,” Jimmy says eventually, just as Scott’s mind has turned back to pondering his arm.

“What?”

“For—for everything. For the whole—” Jimmy waves his arms. “You know.”

Slowly, Scott shakes his head.

“Lizzie told me—well, she said it was really hard. And I know it was, but I kind of figured that—well, I’m not that important. I didn’t think anyone would be very sad about my death after a week or so had gone by.”

Jimmy shifts, one hand on the back of his neck; something in Scott’s stomach squirms uncomfortably, something that he’s been resolutely pushing down since that hug that broke his curse.

“And Lizzie—Lizzie didn’t like that. She said that I don’t know what you all felt and went through, and I don't get to decide what you feel. She’s kind of mad at me, now. And I didn’t really understand why you were upset with me at the camp, but I think I’m starting to get it now. So, I’m sorry.”

It does still hurt. Scott can’t just forget crying himself to sleep almost every night. He can’t forget looking at himself in that black veil every morning, his eyes red and heart broken.

But Jimmy’s here.

“I’m not sure I really get it, either,” Scott confesses. He doesn’t, kind of. He had been so terrible with Jimmy, and for what? For being alive? “But . . . she’s right. I—I lost you, Jimmy. I thought I would never see you again. It . . . it was difficult to leave that grief, I think. It was difficult to have it all built up inside, then have the reason taken away. You’re left with all sorts of awful feelings and . . . and no reason to have them. Does that make sense?”

Jimmy doesn’t respond.

But after a moment, he reaches out and takes Scott’s good hand in his, thumb tracing over the back of Scott’s hand.

His stomach flips, just like every time.

“You don’t have to hold my hand everywhere anymore,” Scott says, more for a lack of anything to say than to try and push Jimmy away. “Something about the sword being magic and fixing it, I’m not really sure. But I can control it now.”

Jimmy frowns. “Wait a second—the sword?”

At Scott’s nod, he continues, “Does that mean that it was the sword all along? Because I, like, always had it with me?”

Wait.

Does that actually make some sort of sense?

Scott had thought it was the power of Jimmy’s love, overcoming even the most stubborn of curses, but maybe Jimmy was just a conductor of sorts for the sword, giving Scott a temporary binding whenever they touched.

Scott’s head hurts. They’ve won, yes (and how wonderful it is to think those words), but each of his current issues feel beyond comprehension. His whole body kind of aches with the need to sleep, the need to process everything that’s happened, the need to just take a break.

“What time is it?” he asks idly. Jimmy shrugs.

“Past midnight. I’ve been asleep for a while, so I’m not really sure.”

So has he.

Well, he’s spent enough time resting. He needs to get up, organize his country, help the injured, properly send fWhip’s army packing.

Jimmy tries to push him back down when he sits up, but Scott swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands, his left arm hanging limply (and hurting quite a lot) at his side.

That's going to take some getting used to.

Dear Aeor, he desperately wants to lie back down and rest until the end of time (or, at least, until Jimmy returns from the Codlands). He doesn’t give in to the longing, though, just squints his eyes shut for a very long time and eventually takes a step.

He really doesn’t want to sleep, anyways. Memories (bad, sharp, unforgiving) push from the sterilized scent of the infirmary, and now that he’s stood he just wants to leave.

He doesn’t want nightmares.

“A king never rests,” he says when Jimmy tries to convince him to lie down. “There’s a lot of work to do.”

“Let Pix and Katherine handle it, okay? Sleep—”

“But you’re going to be—”

“Lizzie and I will be fine, you can—”

“I don’t want to sleep without you,” Scott manages (which was absolutely not what he meant to say), and Jimmy goes a little pink in the cheeks.

“And I need to explain some things, and organize, and . . . there’s business that requires me. Just as there’s business that requires you.”

Jimmy shakes his head, gives him a gorgeous little smile. “Right. Just don’t overdo it, okay? I’ve got to go, but I love you.”

Jimmy leaves with another soft kiss—and Jimmy’s alive, Scott thought he’d gotten over the novelty of it weeks ago, but Jimmy’s alive and they’re back in Rivendell and they have their whole future ahead of them—

And then he leaves the palace as well, stepping outside to look over the kingdom, once again rightfully his.

Even in the dim light of the night, Scott can see the destruction. The very walls of the palace has been pulled down, rubble all over the grounds. The gardens are wartorn, the grass stained red with blood or demolished tentacles, and there are people here and there, cleaning or carrying away bodies. The full moon shines upon the destroyed church down the hill, illuminating its crumbled walls in a holy glow.

Scott limps down the stairs, down, down to the palace grounds—he picks through patches of destroyed grass, abandoned weapons and armor, exhausted people helping others. He walks down the lawn, down to that spot where the grass is so beaten down that it forms a clear circle where soldiers had paused to watch, all eyes turned toward where the final battle had taken place.

And in the grass near the center of the circle, he finds a cloudy red crystal, the size of his palm.

Scott picks it up, weighs it in his right hand.

Then he puts it in his pocket.

The language used to represent the language of the gods is Mixteco.

[translation:

“You have the power of god with you, my son. How do you feel?”

“Bad.”

“You are my beloved, child. Follow me in all things, and you will enter into my rest.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“Rest, my child.”

End translation.]