not dreading it the way I would have expected.
After all, I’ve chosen against my purpose now too. I let North go free. I chose him over destiny.
The thought makes me go still, heart pounding. The guiding principle of my whole life was that I would not be like Jezara. Yet here I am.
I start rolling the prophecy back up, about to turn away from the view and begin picking my way back down the path to the valley floor, when something grabs my eye.
A small blossom of orange light, unfurling before me … no, not small, very far away. On the other side of the valley, where Jezara’s house is …
And then the sound comes, a staccato crack and a rumble of stone, echoing back to me from every cliff and rock face, fragmented like a reflection in a broken mirror.
An explosion.
My voice tears out of me in a cry, and I drop to my knees, staring. The initial bloom of the fire is overtaken by smoke and dust, a massive dark cloud rising from the place.
I asked Jezara, surprised, if she really believed her own daughter would harm her. She did not answer in words, but I should have known what I was seeing in her face.
Gods, why didn’t we understand what she was telling us? Why …
The mother of light cannot speak at all now.
Pieces of prophecy are crumbling all around me.
I shut my eyes, my fist tightening around the scroll until the ancient parchment crackles. My thoughts spin so violently I feel sick, hurled about like a boat in a storm. The torrent of what-ifs feels like knives, cutting me more deeply each time they swirl around me.
I’ve failed them. I’ve failed all of them, because I was weak. Because I was human. Because I loved …
Loved?
I open my eyes, my spinning thoughts crystalizing. I may have failed destiny, I may have chosen my heart, chosen North, over the prophecy a thousand years in the making. But there is one way I am not like the goddess who came before me.
I will not run away.
I cannot save the world, but I can save a few. Matias and Elkisa and Techeki and my acolytes and Hiret and the riverstriders and everyone who attended the Feast of the Dying … Inshara has them still, because I was forced to flee. My life, my purpose, was too important to risk in a confrontation. I could not fight then.
But now …
A trickle of mist condenses out of the air, gathering around me. It is no gentle, calm pool—it is as wild and hungry and full of fury as the most violent of storms. But it bends to me, snapping and tugging, like a pack of dogs trained to attack, chained to my will.
Now I have power—now I can defeat her.
Because now I have nothing left to lose.
The air thickens as I draw nearer the river, the humidity wrapping around me like a familiar blanket. I’ll make better time traveling by water than on foot, even upriver—I must see if Orrun’s boat is still there. Though it’s invisible now, I can feel the ambient mist in the air all around me. I could unbeach the boat with a thought, undoing what it took North and me both to do by hand.
The sun set a few hours ago, leaving the land in darkness that will hide me from any watchful eyes. By now, Inshara’s people may well have figured out that I made my escape from the temple city via the river.
I try not to think about North making his clumsy way through the wilderness in search of his people. The bindle cat must surely be with him—and though others might scoff at the idea of a single cat for protection, they don’t know about his uncanny ability to see the approach of danger.
Heart aching, mind conjuring a vision of warm brown eyes and a crooked smile, I’m almost upon the river’s edge before I register the bright orange glow through the trees.
I stop dead for a moment, confusion gripping me as it seems as though the river itself must be ablaze. Then I realize what is burning: the riverstrider’s boat.
Breaking into a run, I burst out of the trees just as the upper deck of the boat collapses with a dull crash, sending a spray of embers skyward. I reel back, raising my arms against the heat, searching for some way to quell the flames—but the boat is lost, pieces of it