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Whatever Scarab read there, they all saw fire dance in her eyes, and she grew beatific, too

None of them understood it then, except for Eliza and Scarab Not even Nightingale But all present in the Kirin caves that night--seraph, chimaera, and human--would ever afterward say that they felt, in that instant, a dark age quietly give way, and a bright one bloo, and it was thrilling and confounding, pri, electric and delicious

It felt like falling in love

Scarab took a step forward All her life she had been haunted by ananke, the relentless tug of fate It had been oppressive, and it had been elusive It had caused her uncertainty and dread But never had she experienced the perfect, puzzle-piece fulfillment of it that she did now Completion More than that Consummation

Ananke went quiet Her release from it was like the silence when a baby’s cries have become unendurable and then abruptly cease

She stood before this woman--this seraph come from nowhere, of the lost line of Chavisaery whom all Meliz had revered as prophets--and all of Scarab’s uncertainty and dread… evanesced

"How?" she asked Hoas it possible? Where had Eliza co coaze flickered to Karou and Akiva, and to Zuzana and Mik, and to Virko, who, she understood, had carried her on his back, away froents and who knohat else The five of them had rescued her from infamy and madness, and from a life with no future Because of them, she was here where she was supposed to be, and oh, she had a future now They all did, and what a future it was She took in the rest of the company too, and felt the saht This was meant, and it was at once impossible and inevitable, like all miracles

"I think it’s tihed of fate, and even if the coravity of the ues

Well Except for Zuzana She and Mik clung together, drinking everything in with their eyes and ears, andsense of it, too--the words, at least--because Zuzana had snuck wishes into her pocket earlier, wish police be damned, and they had no sooner coers than she vanished two lucknows, one for herself and one for Mik, gifting theels

It proved little help in interpreting the h, and so Zuzana ventured to ask, "Uh theiven voice to the question they all wanted answered Indeed Time for what?

"Tiodstars"

"They’re a myth," spoke Scarab, uncertain and ready to be persuaded Like the rest of the in her mind, and didn’t knohat to make of it She only knew that she wanted to believe it

"They are," agreed Eliza, se, that she should become the nucleus of this moment--this tremendous moment in the story of all their worlds

"My people understood that time is an ocean, not a river," she said to theone It sih it in one direction, but that’s no reflection of its true nature--only of our limitations Past and future are our own constructs

"And as forbut fantasy But some myths are true Some have already been lived And in the drift of ti up the words that would make theht warriors heard of the nithilam and traveled froodstars, who brought light to the universe

Soed the space between the the cave reel around theotten or evaded Their fear was gone, but not their sorrow Whatever happened here tonight, a parting was still before them Loramendi waited, all those souls quiet under ash Karou was still the chimaera’s last hope, and Akiva hat he was, unquantifiable and dangerous But they had seen so, and the new future it laid open was as

It was also, so had spliced itself into all of their life threads and beco back froht Liraz’s hand when the first dark sending gripped them, and he held it still It was the first time either of them had ever held another’s hand, and for theht was overshadowed by the perfect wonderh this hat hands had always been for, and not for holding weapons at all

Their wonder was also undercut by sorrow, as the understanding grew in the weapons

Not even close