She didn’t scream. The beast beneath her, all those that flew or crawled sizzled away like water in the sun or melted like ugly chalk drawings in the rain.
Day burst back to life.
She fell into the circle, the mother of lies, eyes glazed with fear and madness.
“I am a god.” She croaked it out as her hair thinned, as her flesh shriveled.
Doyle gripped the sword in both hands. “You’re nothing.” And plunged it into her heart again.
The blood bubbled black. Her fingers became bones that clacked together. “I want. I want.” Black eyes wheeled as the flesh of the face flaked away.
Doyle gripped Riley’s hand when she limped to him. Looked around once as the others, bruised, burned, bloody, came with her. “We ended you.”
She withered to bone without a sound, and the bone went to ash.
“She can’t come back?” Annika hugged close to Sawyer. “She’s gone?”
“Look.” Bran gestured.
The hundreds of branches of the tree leafed out green, bloomed with fruit and flowers. The air, so full of the sounds of battle only moments before, now sang with birds and breezes. A doe wandered out of the woods to crop at the grass.
The stones stood silver and shining on the hill of Glass. The king stone bore the guardians’ coat of arms.
“Good answer.” Then Sawyer dropped to his knees. “Sorry. Ow.”
“Let’s have a look. We’ll do what we can here,” Bran added, “then—”
“We’ve only to ask,” Sasha remembered. “I’m asking for us to be brought back. If we’ve done what we were meant to do.”
“You really think they’re just going to— Oh,” Riley said as she found herself, and the others, standing at the start of the path. “Excellent.”
They began to limp and wince their way toward the palace.
“We couldn’t just wish to be healed?” Annika wondered.
“People should see their warriors. They should see what it costs to stand for the light,” Doyle told her, and put an arm around her to support her. “To do what’s needed.”
They wept, and they cheered as the six passed by. And wept and cheered all the way to the doors of the palace where the goddesses waited.
“We will tend you now.” Celene stepped forward, raised her voice. “Tonight, there will be celebration. Tonight is for music and dancing, for wine, for joy. Tonight is now and forevermore, the Night of the Guardians.”
“I’m going to bleed all over the floor,” Sawyer began.
Luna stroked his wounded arm. “You will not. Come now to be tended and fed and bathed and rested. We are your servants today.”
It wasn’t so bad having a goddess as a servant. At least not when, Riley decided, it included luxuriating in a sunken tub full of hot water that a pretty young maid scented with jasmine. Or having every ache in your tired body rubbed out with oil.
She didn’t even mind—too much—putting the dress on again. Not when she had permission to explore, take samples. Some stones, some scrapings, a little dirt, some sand. A couple of flowers she’d never seen before.
When she rushed into the sitting room to find the others, she was all but flying. “You won’t believe what I’ve seen. They have chickens that lay colored eggs. I saw a baby dragon—the adults prefer caves. A freaking baby dragon.”
She grabbed a bottle, poured a glass not caring what it might be.
“And the library in this place? It makes yours look like the book turnstile at a gas station, Bran. Every book ever written, in every language. I mean freaking Hogwarts doesn’t have what they have.”
She gulped down what proved to be wine. “And their society? No war, not since that whole uprising with the Bay of Sighs—which, by the way, is back. People like their work, whatever they choose. Farmers farm, weavers weave, bakers bake. If they need to cut a tree, they plant another. Always. And— What?”
“We got around some, too,” Sawyer told her. “Annika got to swim with some merpeople in the Bay of Sighs. Sasha’s done half a million sketches. Bran, he’s been holed up with other magic types.”
“We went up,” Bran told her, “consecrated the ground within the circle.”
“Doyle’s been busy, too.” Sasha continued to sketch.
“Yeah? With what?”
“Nothing much.”
Sasha lifted her head, stared holes through him.
“Fine. All right.” He stood up, pulled something out of his pocket. “I got this.”
Riley stared, dumbfounded, at the ring. The pure white stone sat in a simple band. Its brilliance needed no adornment.
“You don’t like fuss,” he said.
“No, I don’t. But how did you . . .”
“Just ask, right? I just asked if there were any jewelers, and I had about a hundred rings pushed at me.”
“Sasha and I helped from there,” Annika told her. “Because it was confusing.”
“I don’t happen to have any money on me that works around here anyway. And they didn’t want any. But . . .”
“He had in his pocket a pipe—a musical pipe—he made as a boy,” Annika said helpfully. “He traded.”
“That’s . . . Jeez, that’s sweet.”
“It gets sweeter,” Sasha told Riley. “He asked Bran to engrave it.”
“Engraved.” Riley snatched the ring from Doyle’s hand, turned it to look inside the band. “Ma Faol.” Her throat simply closed as her heart leaped into it. All she could do was look at him.