She laughs, the sound jarring. “Such a ridiculous term, isn’t it? How can our hearts be sisters? We’ve always been destined to stand on opposite sides of a war.”

“Maybe,” I allow, taking a wary step toward her. “But if you’d asked me before all of this, I would have said that I couldn’t imagine a future without you at my side. Sometimes I still can’t.”

“That is your weakness,” she says, but something flickers behind her eyes.

“Maybe,” I say. “But it isn’t only mine, is it?”

I call to the fire in me, and this time it comes readily, flames leaping to my fingertips like they are an extension of me.

Cress sees this and her eyes widen. “Don’t do it, Thora,” she says, her voice shaking. “Please.”

I take a step toward her, then another. “My name isn’t Thora. I am Theodosia Eirene Houzzara, and I am the Queen of Astrea,” I say before letting my fire loose.

It hits her squarely in the chest, and just like the dead spirits, she disappears as soon as it touches her, leaving an empty throne.

I need to take it. I know that as surely as I know my own name, and yet I can’t force my feet to move. The throne looms before me, large and dark and ominous. If I sit down upon it, I will not be the same. I will never be able to stand again without its shadows clinging to me.

“Someone needs to sit there.” My mother appears at my shoulder. She’s the mother from my purest memories, unscarred by time or the horrors of the Kalovaxians.

I swallow down tears. “But what if I can’t do it?” I ask her, my voice barely louder than a whisper.

“Oh, my dear heart,” she says, her hand coming to rest on my shoulder. And just like that it doesn’t feel like a dream or a memory or anything else because I feel her. As if she were standing right beside me. As if she never left. “It is a difficult path the gods have sent you down, but they would never give you more than you could handle.”

She says it with such conviction, but the words rouse nothing in me.

“Do you still believe in the gods?” I ask her. It feels like a dangerous question to even entertain, in the Fire Mine of all places, but I don’t know when I’ll get another chance to ask her. “After everything they’ve allowed to happen to us?”

She considers this a moment. “I don’t believe the gods exist to solve our problems,” she says. “But I do think they give us the tools we need to triumph. I think they gave us you, forged in fire.”

It isn’t an answer, but I suppose there isn’t one. Some questions are too complex to ever be resolved, but maybe that’s all right.

My mother holds my hand and we walk toward the throne together. Fear still gnaws at me, but with her at my side my steps are sure. When we reach the dais, I kiss her cheek. “I love you,” I tell her. “And I will try to make you proud.”

And then I climb the golden steps and lower myself down into the obsidian throne.

* * *

—

When I wake up, the sun is peeking over the horizon on one side of the ship, and on the other side, I can just make out the northeastern edge of Astrea. I pull myself to my feet and lean against the wall of the boat, staring at the shore—the cliffs that jut up, the cluster of ships in the harbor so far away that their sails are mere specks of red. And there, if I squint very carefully, I can just make out the golden domes of the palace, the white towers, the Kalovaxian flag flying from the highest one.

My breath catches at the sight, and I feel my mother’s hand on my shoulder, a ghost of the memory, the dream, whatever it might have been. I imagine her beside me, going home with me, ready to take back what was stolen from us.

In spite of everything, I wish that Blaise were here beside me as well. It’s our home, the place where we were born, the place where we were raised. I wish he could see it with me, like this. I wish we were sailing toward it together, ready to take back what is ours, side by side.

I’ll see him again soon, I tell myself, hoping that if I say it enough times, I’ll come to actually believe it.

“There it is,” S?ren says from behind me, sitting up on the blanket, sleep still clinging to his eyes.

“There it is,” I echo. “By this time tomorrow, it will be ours.”

“By this time tomorrow, it will be yours,” he corrects.

I understand why he says it, but part of me wishes he wouldn’t. It is a heavy burden to bear on my shoulders alone. I haven’t thought about that much, about what ruling Astrea would actually look like once the war is behind us. In an ideal world, my mother would have been there, to guide me, to prepare me. But she isn’t, and so I can’t help feeling I will never be prepared for it.

Her words from the mine come back to me.

“It is a difficult path the gods have sent you down, but they would never give you more than you could handle.”

I hope to all the gods that she’s right, but there is only one way to know for sure.

“Are you ready?” I ask him, leaning back against the hull wall to survey him. In the light of the rising sun, he looks like he’s been carved from pale gold. The scars that cover his bare chest are softer like this; they don’t stand out as sharply. It’s almost as if they are a part of him, as vital as his lungs or his heart—after all, in some ways, they’ve made him.

He smiles and shakes his head, oblivious to my thoughts. “I’ve been in a lot of battles, Theo. Many more than I can count. But I don’t think I’ve ever felt ready for one of them. I don’t think it’s possible, to be ready to charge headfirst into possible—probable—death. I don’t think that’s the kind of thing you can ever prepare yourself for.”

His words pool in the pit of my stomach like tar, sticky and dark. I shrug and try to look unbothered and confident. “Well then,” I say, forcing my voice to sound breezy, “I guess we’ll just have to not die.”

He laughs and holds out a hand to me. I take it, lacing my fingers with his and letting him pull me back down onto the blanket and into his arms. We kiss softly in the warm dawn light, and when he pulls back, he keeps our foreheads pressed together, his eyes closed, long blond eyelashes fanned out over his cheeks.

“That sounds easy,” he breathes. “Not dying. Why haven’t I tried that before?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I tell him. “Try it now.”

He must hear the worry leaking into my voice, because he opens his eyes, staring deep into mine.

“After all of this, Theo, I intend to see you on that throne,” he says, his voice quiet and serious. “Not in spirit, not from the After or whatever lies beyond this life—I intend to see it with my own eyes, and I pity the god who tries to take me before I do.”

I kiss him until the sun has fully risen in the sky, until we are bathed in sunlight, until the others start to stir belowdecks. I kiss him until it is time to start preparing for our last battle.

* * *

—

When the sun sets, the W?s approaches the Astrean shore. This close to the harbor, with this many Kalovaxian boats docked nearby, no one pays much mind to one as small as ours. They likely think it’s manned by a fisherman, bringing in his daily catch to sell at market in the morning.

Still, when we disappear into the shadows of the rocks, hidden from view and close enough to the cave that we can wade there, I let out a breath of relief.

“Depending on the tides, you may have trouble getting out,” S?ren tells Erik, the only one of us staying on the boat.

Apparently it was always a joke between the two of them that Erik could sail a boat half-blind, but after a few test runs earlier in the day, it seems there was some truth to it.

“The tides won’t be a problem,” Artemisia says, passing me a bundle of wrapped Spiritgems. Even through the thick burlap, I can feel the thrum of the gems working through my blood—Fire and Water and Air Gems from the mines, all jumbled together, along with the Earth Gems we pried from the armor and weapons of the Kalovaxians we’ve fought thus far. I should be used to the feeling after more than a month of wearing Ampelio’s Fire Gem close to my heart, but holding so many feels wrong still.

At least I won’t be holding them for long.

S?ren steps off the boat onto the small raft, holding on to the rail to keep from floating away. Heron hops down next, and he helps Artemisia and me down. She doesn’t flinch when the water hits her legs anymore, just as she no longer flinches when she walks. She says she’s healed, and there’s no reason for me to disbelieve her, but it’s hard not to worry, and it’s easier to worry about her than everything else.

S?ren tries to help Maile down as well, but she only glowers at him before jumping down on her own.

“Stay here for as long as you can,” Heron shouts up to Erik, pushing our raft away from the railing and toward the yawning mouth of the cave.

Erik nods. “Try to make it quick,” he replies, his voice wry. “I’m looking forward to a meal of something other than hardtack, served in the banquet hall, with a jeweled goblet full of wine.”

Flippant as it might be, it brings a smile to my lips, and for that, I’m grateful.

“When we pull this off,” I promise, “there will be a ten-course feast to celebrate.”