She felt a hand on her shoulder, and it was like a ripple on the water; it caught the tide of her misery and sent it out, freeing her just a little, but it was enough. The vision of the Goddess faded, and Emily looked up at Stephen, who was full of love and question and concern.
And she saw the great god bend down to the womb, his spirit so bright and shining, so strong against the darkness that held her still and quiet and alone, and she opened to him—
Emily let out a shuddered breath, then fought against the weight and reached up to catch Stephen’s hand. She let him help her rise, and she clung to him, using his strength to buoy her, letting it ground her and free her as it also helped her find the words to speak.
She turned to the androghenie. “I am not your mother. But I am here for you in her place until she can return.”
“We are so cold, Mother,”
the ghosts whispered. First one, then the others. Over and over again.
Emily shivered as she felt the power rising inside her again, building higher. It was great, and it was terrible. It was so strong, so huge, and with it, with Stephen at her side, supporting her, she could do anything. And yet still, it was so heavy. It seemed such work only to move. She knew everything, everyone,
everything
—she saw Charles and Timothy at the Veil, saw the Lord and the Lady, saw them become the Lord and the Lady, and as the locum, she felt herself become more as well…
She saw Timothy go, running through the door, and pain shot through her heart as she realized he did not intend, now or ever, to return. She saw the shards, and she felt their confusion and their pain, and she felt them rising.
Emily felt the power of Death biting hard and sharp inside her.
“I can give you death to end your suffering,” Emily said to the androghenie, “but you must then submit to the Lord when he returns and let him give you life. And this time you must not fear his gift.”
“We understand,”
they said as one.
“We have learned there are greater miseries than the suffering and pain of life.”
“There are greater joys as well,” Emily said. “You would do well to carry that lesson with you.”
“We carry it, Mother.”
But they still looked afraid as they drifted toward Emily. They looked like children, but children starved and hollowed out.
“Do not be afraid,” Emily told them. But she added only to herself,
Oh, be afraid. Be afraid of the shards of the Goddess if they find you.
“We are afraid,”
they said.
“We do not like what we have become, but we are still afraid of life. They will hurt us. We are afraid to go.”
It was beginning to overwhelm Emily. The words came so easily, and the Lady kept trying to overtake her, but beneath it all she was still Emily, still the bastard girl who lived on the moor and who had fallen prey too many times to her soft and tender heart. She felt the fire of what had been lent to her, but she felt herself as well. And in the face of the androghenie, her own heart overrode the other, and she did not know what to do.
Stephen squeezed her hand. “Let them come to us,” he said. “Let them come to us here if they are frightened.” She turned and looked at him. His red hair was glowing in the strange light, and he did not look any different than he ever had. And yet there was a change in him too. Something deeper. Something stronger.
He smiled sheepishly. “We could stay here and wait for them. We won’t let them hide, but we can give them a garden again. A place to rest.”
Emily looked out at the androghenie. “They were given this before, and they imprisoned the Lord and Lady.” She felt a trickle of cold fear as she added, “That would be us now.”
But Stephen is only a consort
, a dark voice whispered.
He will pass away with time. You, Lady, will go on in the darkness forever.
“I don’t think they will do that this time.” Stephen was almost cheerful, and there was no censure in his face as he looked at the wraiths, only love. “I would like to help them.”
And will they take him too, as they took the other
? Emily shut her eyes and turned her head away.
The ground around them began to shake.
“It is time,”
the children said.
“The Lord comes.”
They turned to Emily with hollow eyes pleading.
“Please, Mother. Give us death, so he may give us life.”
Stephen took her hand. Emily felt the darkness of Death rise within her, felt the bitter bile coat her throat and rise out of the top of her head. She gasped, then lost her breath as she heard the beating of heavy wings, and for a moment she felt herself pass into a shade and spread far and wide over the vast underground chamber.
In the span of her quiet heartbeat, ten thousand souls passed through.
She came back to her body in a rush, gasping, falling against Stephen, who looked a little ill. But he said nothing, only took her hand and led her on through the darkness, away from the glowing door.
“Hurry,” he said, pulling her faster. “We must leave this place and go back above the ground.”
Emily followed, still half possessed by the vision of darkness, and she could not speak; she could, in fact, barely walk, but she stumbled on behind him anyway. She didn’t know how he knew the way out, or if he even did. All she knew was that one moment they were running through the darkness, and the next they were running through the halls, then out the front door and out, finally, into the light.
The abbey was falling down, tumbling in great lumps of stone to the earth, all but the tower, which stood fast. The ground was shaking, making even the trees tremble. But though debris and dust fell all around them, none of it touched Emily or Stephen. For a moment they watched, simply stunned by the destruction coming down around them.
Then the fire began building anew in Emily, but it was a different sensation this time. She felt her blood begin to hum, and her spirit begin to rise. She held fast to Stephen’s hand, because as the energy built inside her, she felt herself rising quite literally from the ground. Stephen came with her, his eyes wide, but he said nothing as he floated beside her into the air.
“
Fire
.”
The word erupted from her, and as she said it, fire appeared. The trees, the rocks, the earth itself became a roaring blaze, heat swelling around them, pushing them up higher and higher on the wind it made.
Stephen held tightly to her hand.
“
Water
.”
Behind them on the moor, the haunted lake began to rise. It rose like a cloud and rolled over the moor like a wave, but it did not touch the ground, not until it came to the abbey. There it split, rising into the sky as a cloud and falling as a great, soaking rain as the rest of it rushed across the scorched and ruptured earth.
“
Air
.”
The wind rushed around them, whipping through the trees, streaking across the last of the fire. Only one blaze remained, burning deep and bright in the center of the place where the abbey had been. Emily watched it now as it burst back into life, this time glowing a strange, beautiful blue-green. It raced across the floor and up the ruined walls, across the melted abbey stone and up, up, up into the air, racing higher and higher until the entirety of the remaining abbey was caught up in the brilliant flame. Emily lifted her hands higher, and Stephen joined her, and together they felt the rush of joy as they saw something bright and shining streaking slowly across the sky.
“
Earth
.”
The ground trembled again, but this time it was not crumbling; it was rising. The stones rumbled and rolled themselves back into place. The trees regrew in seconds; the flowers that had choked and died beneath the weeds rose up tall and strong. The walls of the abbey built themselves again, stronger, brighter, better than they had ever been before.
And above them the streak of light grew even brighter, coming faster.
Emily shut her eyes and lifted her face to the sky.
“
Spirit
.”
She gasped as the light shot through her; Stephen caught her, holding her as they drifted gently back down to the ground. But as she descended, Emily saw. She saw Charles: Charles for all he was, all he had been, and all he would be. She saw him, and as the Lady, she loved him. As the locum, she made her heart a bridge for him, and she wished it fervently to help him on his way, to let it bring him home.
When she opened her eyes, she saw that the abbey stone now gleamed pure, pristine white, the same as it had when it had been laid all those centuries ago.
Stephen took her in his arms, kissing her, crying out with joy, swinging her around in his arms. “You were so beautiful—so amazing, so beautiful!” he cried, and he laughed and kissed her more.
She laughed too but quietly, and she closed her eyes. Oh yes, there was pain, and in the end, there would be only misery for her. Timothy had warned her, but she had taken the cup, and now it was hers. She might end up as he was now one day, broken and lost and scattered. Would Stephen come for her, the way Charles intended to reach for Timothy? Would Charles succeed? She did not know. She knew no answers, and the fear and emptiness of the unknowing began to knit itself around her, a soft, invisible barrier against the world.
And once it closed, she felt easier. She smiled, and she closed her eyes and watched them again, watched the souls gather and rise, and she watched their Lord take them away, sheltering them in his arms as he took them to the tower to give them the most wonderful, amazing, terrible, brutal, and precious gift the world would ever know.
Life.
* * *
In the top of the tower, Jonathan watched the light arrive.
He had been waiting for the fire and earthquakes that had taken the rest of the abbey to claim him too, but they did not; when the light streaked in through the windows, bright as the sun, Jonathan could not help but lift his head, hoping this, at last, was death come for him. He watched through blood-soaked eyes as the shape began to form: hands, head, legs, chest… His lids fell closed, and he prayed.
Please, Goddess, take me. No more. I can take no more of this
. When he felt the hand brush his face, he flinched and tried to pull away, but he did not have the strength to move.
“Jonathan, it’s all right. No one will hurt you any longer. It’s just me.” The touch came again, soft as the wings of a butterfly against his cheek. “Charles.”
Jonathan opened his eyes again, trying to frown, but his face would not work. It
looked
like Charles. Demon, he thought, but even as the idea formed, he knew it was wrong. The demon was gone. This was not the demon. This truly was Charles. He tried to lift his hand to touch him and be sure, but there was too much pain in his arm to lift it. He could do no more than wiggle his thumb.
“I’m so sorry,” Charles said, his voice soft but not unsteady. In fact, he had never sounded stronger. “I’m sorry you had to endure this.”
“Die,” Jonathan croaked. “Please, let me die.”
Charles stroked his hair. “I can do many things, at least for the next few minutes, but that, Brother, is not one of them. Even without the unusual complications you bring to the act, it is not in my power to bring you death. And I would not kill you now, especially when there are so many waiting to heal you.”
Jonathan blinked, then winced. Charles was so bright; just being near him made it hard to see, even without his ruined face. But then Charles stepped back, and Jonathan saw that they were no longer alone in the room. The ghosts had returned, but they were very, very altered.
They were still transparent, still not quite alive, but they looked good and strong and healthy, and they were all of them smiling. Some were boys, some were girls, and some were impossible to tell. Some were older. Some were very, very young. They filled the room, and the walls seemed to expand to accommodate them; the room was now, in fact, many, many miles wide.
Charles was crouching in the middle of them all, fashioning something together on the floor. “Please excuse me,” he said, sounding a little anxious. “I don’t have much time, and it’s been a while since I’ve done this.”
Jonathan watched, more than a little amazed even in his weariness and pain, as he watched Charles fumble with four objects on the floor. They were the sword, the coin, the cup, and his own sword stick. Charles arranged them hastily, moving them around, twisting them, shaping them, bending them in ways they should not go, and yet the objects were happily accommodating him every time he moved his hands. The sword remained the same, but the coin fell away, and the steel changed from gleaming silver to pure white. Charles turned the cup into the hilt, glowing gold and bright, its runes set in stark contrast against the metal. The coin he placed at the end, like a cap on the bottom of the cup. Then he held the sword stick in his hand and whispered a word. It became first a staff again, gleaming silver-white, but then it seemed to become a sort of snake, and it wrapped around the whole of the sword, curling and twisting until its mouth was reaching just over the tip. The sword glowed. Then it went quiet, and Charles smiled at it as he lifted it slowly before him and aimed it at Jonathan.
He was stronger, yes: stronger than Jonathan had ever hoped his brother could be. But he looked sad, Jonathan realized. So very, very sad. And as he realized what must have caused this sorrow, he felt its weight seep into him as well.
“Timothy,” Jonathan whispered, daring to hope. But he saw the answer already in Charles’s eyes.
Charles’s smile died, and the pain Jonathan saw there was worse than anything he was enduring in his body. “I must search for him. I
will
find him.”
I will help you
, Jonathan wanted to say, but he doubted very much he would live another hour. “Madeline,” Jonathan said. His throat hurt so much, but he had to speak. “He said…find her.”
Charles paused, shutting his eyes as if he were searching his mind. “Yes, she’s there, but…where? I can’t see.”
“He said—” Jonathan coughed, then winced. “Look…where you found her before.”