“I saw you. That’s who she was, the form, for me. Whatever the hell it means, we make it work. We’re not losing this. I’m not losing you. So we end it. Gear up. Let’s get moving.”
He stalked off.
“Doyle’s happy,” Annika said. “He loves Riley. He’s going to get her a ring.”
“We’ll worry about the last part after we end the bitch. And I’m damned if I’m doing it in a dress.”
She peeled off, followed Doyle.
He stood studying the new items in the wardrobe. “You’ll be happier with this.”
“She looked like me?”
He took out Riley’s gunbelt, set in on a table. “I didn’t know you when you were sixteen, but yes. Your face, your hair, your eyes. Those are eyes I trust, and that’s what I felt. We’re not going to lose this.”
“All right then.” Riley put her hands on her hips, scanned her wardrobe choices. “This is more like it.”
In sturdy trousers and a leather vest with pockets for extra clips, she went back to the sitting room with Doyle. She picked up a hide canteen, sniffed the contents. “Water.” And strapped it on cross body. “Couldn’t hurt.”
Sasha and Bran joined them. Bran patted a leather satchel. “Salvaged from the boat. A few light bombs.”
“Water.” Riley offered Sasha a skin. “Any idea how long a hike?”
“I don’t know.” She turned when Annika and Sawyer came in. “I guess this is it. I thought—it seemed—as if we came together to find the stars, get them here. But this is it. We’re guardians, and it’s always been leading here.”
“We will guide you to the path.”
The three goddesses stood in the doorway of the terrace, backed by the warm light of the sun.
They walked together, two by two, down to a courtyard where a fountain spewed rainbows, where flowers soared and spilled and fruit dripped from trees like glossy jewels.
People stood in silent respect. Children raced and waved.
They moved through a gate, past a grove, then a green field where a man and the boy working with him stopped, doffed their caps.
Riley heard the cluck of chickens, the coo of doves, the throaty hum of bees. A woman with a little girl on her hip smiled at Riley, dropped a quick curtsy. The little girl blew kisses. Others stood outside of cottages, tidy as postcards, hats in hands or hands on hearts.
In a small bay, fishermen stopped casting their nets and saluted.
“The people of Glass are with you.” Luna gestured as they crossed a stretch of white sand toward the path. Flowers and baskets of fruit, glinting stones, pearly shells heaped at the verge. “Offerings to the guardians, and wishes for a good journey.”
“On this day, at this time, the path is only for you.” With her sisters, Celene stopped. “Only you can walk it. What waits at its end is only for you.”
“Brave hearts,” Luna said. “Walk in light.”
Arianrhod set her hand on the hilt of her sword. “And fight the dark.”
And they were gone.
“I’d say that’s god-talk for you’re on your own.” So saying Riley stepped onto the path, started up.
The first quarter mile was paved with stone, lined with trees, a gentle rise. It turned to hard-packed earth as the trees thinned and the rise steepened.
How many miles had they walked together since they’d started? she wondered. She should’ve kept a log.
In places the path narrowed so they went singly. In places it roughened so they navigated ruts, climbed over rock. On one outcropping Riley stopped, turned to look back.
The island went absolutely still below her, like something caught in a ball of glass. All color and shape without movement. A painting spread over sea and sky.
A bird caught in midflight, a wave frozen above the shore.
When the worlds still, she remembered. And so it had.
Then a deer leaped over the path, a bird took wing. The standard on the palace waved in the breeze.
At the end of the path, she thought, lay the end of the journey.
She leaped down, continued the climb.
The path wound, and a little stream bubbled beside it. Water spilled over rock, tumbled into a small pool where the deer drank.
“I ran this far last night,” she told the others. “Part of me wanted to keep going up, but something just told me not yet. I stopped by that pool, the water so clear I could see my reflection, and the moon’s.”
“Let’s hope we get up there, get this done before you see the moon again and go furry.”
Riley shook her head at Sawyer. “Last night was the third night here. But I’d sure as hell like to get it done before dark.”
She fell companionably into step with him. “I was thinking about Malmon.”
“Gone and no regrets.”
“That’s something I was thinking about. She chose him, lured him, seduced him, and turned him into a demon. One who worshipped her. He didn’t just kill for her, he very likely saved her life, at the very least nursed her until she got herself back.”
“And?”
“She did nothing to save him. Because he meant nothing to her. Look, he was a bastard when he was human, as evil and twisted as they come, but she ended that human life. As somebody who knows about change, I’m telling you that change had to be agony.”
“Hard to wring out any sympathy there.”
“With you,” Riley agreed. “The thing is, she didn’t have to change him to get what she wanted out of him.”