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Zeph told me plenty about the debate about what season took responsibility for the Nereids. That lack of belonging is what drove Nimh to Himureal. Something about it answering to Winter has not set right to me, though.
The Equinox laughs. "None of them, of course." I balk at her words, and she waves her hand. "And all of them. There is water in all of them. The showers of Spring, the tides of Summer, the storms of Autumn, and the frost of Winter. Water is not meant to be contained. It changes and travels, but it is never owned by one."
I stretch back in my chair, looking into the aged face that my mother would have worn if she had survived Ytopie. "The magic is running out," she says quietly. "I do not have much time left here with you. Remember, Viola, growth is not linear. The mistakes you made in the past are left there. When you wake from this vision as the Eternal Equinox, you will have many choices to make. Listen to your magic, to your high priests, and to yourself." She stands slowly, her body hunched and hobbled with rapid aging. I mirror her, rising to my feet.
"Wait, high priests? As in plural?"
She laughs, moving towards me and wrapping me in a warm embrace. My eyes drift closed at the touch, and when I open them again, I see the ceiling of my home in Rainworth.
Chapter 50
Mace
"Idon't think you realize how much the battle damaged the southern housing sector, numen. We've been working to get it put back together, but it's slow going without you."
Viola's eyes are closed, her face relaxed with the blissful sleep that she only falls into when she is overloaded or over-drained by the magic within her. Her skin still has a healthy glow, but her cheeks are hollowing a little. I know she doesn't need to eat in this state, but sometimes I worry that she is wasting away.
Even though I know her magic would never let that happen.
It's been a month since she came out of the shadow vision covered in blood and declared that she had killed Himureal.
For the first two days, everyone was relatively calm about her stasis because this is something we've encountered before. But a week of no reaction from her bled into two, and suddenly, I was being asked to make decisions on what should happen next.
There was a power vacuum left in Ytopie. The day after the Frostweaver fell, messages came flying in from Tempests in the city. They not only announced the death of Himureal but also that at some point, Viola had turned on the mesh used to broadcast the Race, and everyone's connections lit up with his last moments.She's being hailed a hero. Whatever she did or said during those final moments let the city know she was never alongside him, despite what he said.
For now, we have reinstated what Patricians were left to keep Ytopie running smoothly until Viola wakes, and we can develop a more robust plan for what Krillium will look like after the second fall of the Gods.
"I think it would be wise for us to encourage all the fae to leave Ytopie. They're so disconnected from the rest of Krillium, and I think to truly unite everyone, we need to have us all living together," I tell her supine form. "Don't you think?
She, of course, never answers me, but I have to hope she can hear me wherever it is that she goes when she is like this.
Shadow, her shadow seps familiar creature, that creepy fuck, slithers up her body, coiling on her chest and resting there. "Shadow has been a mess without you, Viola," I say, staring the snake down. "He's been moping around, tripping us all up as he tries to climb us." The snake lifts his head and flicks his tongue at me and I swear his eyes narrow.
Once, when I was reading, he managed to drop from the ceiling onto my shoulders. I am not ashamed to say I screamed like a child and tried to fling him off of me.
"Without you around he expects the rest of us to entertain him," I continue. "But I think we'd all be a little bit better off if you just woke up."
I lean back in my chair, rubbing my sternum absently. The door behind me slams open, and I startle, the front legs of thechair crashing onto the stone floor. "Mace!" Tulip shouts from the doorway.
Standing, I turn to face the young woman. Today, her hair is restrained in a sleek knot on the top of her head, and she's wearing a rich blue jumpsuit that must have come from Cirrha. Her feet are bare and I just know the bottoms of them are black with dirt.
It never seems to bother her.
"Any movement?" she asks, strutting into my home like it is her own. If you were to ask Viola, she'd say it was. "I have a feeling it's going to be today."
She's said this every day, of course. Obviously, it hasn't been. But that hasn't hurt her optimism at all. Like me, Tulip has never doubted that Viola will wake up soon and will have a story to tell. "You may be right," I concede, as I always do. What's the harm in hoping?
Morrow appears panting in the doorway, his cheeks red with exertion. He's shirtless, with linen trousers in a creamy shade slung on his hips under his slightly round stomach. Over the past month, he's gotten a lot better at adapting to missing his hand and forearm.
"Fuck, woman, why did you have to take off running like that?" he pants, glaring at Tulip. When I chuckle he swings his gaze to me. "We were outside the walls, and she just stood up and bolted. You'd be winded too."
"You're not wrong about that," I concede. I'm not out of shape, but I'm also not built like Zeph was.
Tulipwas not wrong when she said that you grow around your grief. It's only been a month, and I haven't grown much, but it is getting easier every day. When we cleaned out Zeph's home, we found a small journal that none of us recognized stored with those of the original high priests.
It turns out, Zeph had been keeping his own high priest journal in secret.
It wasn't like the others, though. It was a how-to guide. Interspersed with stories from the moment he found Viola in a cell below the Palace are instructions for how he gathered and recognized devotion and fed it to Viola when she needed it.
