And Max would still be here.
One night, I find Esmae waiting for me on the south tower. There’s a white plate balanced on one knee.
“Come here,” she says, patting the ledge beside me.
I want to tell her to go away, but she’s the one person I will never say that to, so I obey. I see that there are two generous slices of moist, freshly baked lemon cake on the plate.
Esmae holds the plate out to me, but I don’t take it. “I don’t want it,” I say, even as the scent of lemon makes me almost dizzy.
Shrugging, she takes an enormous bite out of one of the slices. “You’re punishing yourself,” she says, mouth full.
I glare at her, eating with such enthusiasm. “And so what if I am?” I ask petulantly. “I deserve it. In fact,” I go on before she can tell me it wasn’t my fault and Ness was to blame, “I’ve earned the right to sulk. I hate being human. Everything about it is rotten and wrong and ruinous. You should never have let me make such a stupid choice.”
She nods gravely, like she’s seriously considering the absurdity of my words. “You’re right,” she says, swallowing her mouthful of cake and putting the plate to one side, out of my reach. I hate that I even notice that it’s out of my reach. “Except,” Esmae goes on, “for one thing.”
There’s a click as she taps her watch and a holographic recording flickers to life in front of us.
“Max showed me this,” she says.
It’s me, on Ashma. My face flushed and aglow with excitement, my feet stumbling with fawn-like uncertainty, the sound of my giddy laughter. And off-screen, the sound of someone else’s laughter. His.
“You know what this is?” Esmae asks.
I don’t answer, because my throat is clogged with what I now know are tears and my eyes burn and we both know the answer anyway.
But she says: “This is joy, Titania. You had a dream, and it came true. This is what being human really means to you. I think you know that, but you think it would be selfish to accept it. We’ve all done things we wish we hadn’t. That doesn’t mean we don’t get to live, really live.”
All I can do is shake my head, a quick, sharp jerk. “How can I?”
“This is what he wanted for you,” Esmae says, gesturing to the glowing face and the sounds of laughter in the recording. “Let him have it.”
I watch the recording until it finishes, until it loops back to the beginning and starts to play again, until I’ve watched it so many times that the sound of Max’s laughter, and my own, is imprinted on my memory.
As Esmae clicks her watch off, I swallow the lump in my throat and say, in a shaky voice:
“I’ll take that cake now, please.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Esmae
The remaking of shattered things doesn’t happen overnight. Twins torn apart by ill luck and a long series of choices don’t mend their friendship in a single instant. Families and kingdoms riven by war don’t heal straight away. These things will take time, and heart, but fortunately I have both of those things.
We all do.
Apart from the starting the long, slow, painstaking transition into a new form of government for Kali, there’s a lot for all of us to do. Alex and Elvar have grieving families to visit, soldiers to thank, and apologies to make to our people, to the allies they used badly, and to the friends whose loyalty they repaid with none of their own.
I have to do some of the same, but mostly, I have smaller, softer things to patch up: Guinne’s grief, Amba’s trauma, Titania’s broken heart, and Kirrin’s guilt. He hardly ever leaves Alex’s side, but when he does, it’s because I make him go see Amba, so that they can find some way to heal together. Their father took one brother away from them. They don’t have to forgive or forget all that has happened, but they needn’t let Ness take away anything else.
As for King Darshan, it is his idea, in the end, to retire to the Night Temple for the rest of his days.
“Rodi will be a better king than I was,” he says. “And it feels like the right place for me to go. It’s where I went to pray for my revenge. Now it’s where I must go to pray for my redemption.”
Unlike Grandmother, he accepts visits from his children, his grandchildren, and even from me. After some time, he’s able to convince Grandmother to as well. Neither of them will admit it, but I think they’re becoming friends.
Mother does not come back to Kali. We don’t know where she is. Alex says that’s because she doesn’t want us to know. But Grandmother tells us that sometimes, when she’s out walking in the courtyards of the Night Temple, she catches a glimpse of a woman in a window, her face obscured by thick, frosted glass. The temple acolytes say the woman has a metal hand.
I suppose some people would say that all three of them deserve greater consequences for all that they’ve done, but I don’t have the heart. I’m tired of looking back.
The past belongs to them. The future is ours.
And speaking of the future, Sebastian and Titania are both given places in the Hundred and One. I’m quite sure there are more than a hundred and one of them now, but the old name sticks. They’re not a small army anymore. Max never wanted them to be. They still train, under the exacting eye of General Khay, but only because they like it. The rest of the time, they help rebuild the things that were destroyed in the battle, and they find work in the city, and they go back to school. Titania, in particular, is most excited by her apprenticeship at a bakery.
No, they’re not an army. Just brothers and sisters bound by something stronger than blood.
Alex and I spend quite a lot of time together. It’s awkward, and odd, and sometimes we still get angry and remind each other of all the terrible things we’ve done to the other, but for the most part, it’s nice. Most nights, we play Warlords in a quiet, cozy parlor, him against me, Amba against Kirrin, and there’s a lot of laughter, swearing, and, in Kirrin’s case, many, many accusations of cheating.
In the quiet moments, between the work and the new relationships and the slow process of remaking, I let myself feel how much it still hurts. How much I miss Max. When either Sybilla or I needs to cry, we find the other and we cry together, because we both loved him in our different ways and we will never be the same now that he’s gone. Sybilla and Radha have each other, for which I’m genuinely, truly glad, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t envy them. They have a long, dazzling life together ahead.
Meanwhile, three wolves insist on crowding me out of my own bed.
Then, on a blustery autumn day, months after the battle, a visitor summons me to the top of Max’s tower, above the room no one has touched since he died.
“We’re still here,” I say to Ash, the destroyer. “Why haven’t you used the astra?”
“You could have won,” he says. “You knew that, and yet you gave your brother the one thing he wanted.”
“I didn’t want the crown. He did.”
“That’s not what he wanted and not what you gave him,” says Ash. “What he wanted was a reason to live.”
I blink in sudden understanding. “It wasn’t Kirrin who kept showing us those visions of us as our younger selves, was it?” I say. “It was you.”
“I only gave you a nudge. You did the rest. You offered your brother the crown and gave him something far more important than that. And you did not do it because you thought it would change my mind about the astra, or because you thought you could trick him into letting down his guard, but because you chose to be kind instead of cruel. You chose peace over your pride. And that,” he adds, “was all I wanted.”
I smile a little. “So this world gets another chance, then?”
“Yes. And I will say this, too: you have lived well, these past few months. After the battle, it would have been easy to retreat into fury once more, to choose the dark instead of the light, but you did not do that. You have been kind and brave, in spite of your pain. It has been well done.”
Gods should not be able to make me blush after everythin
g I’ve seen and done, but it would seem it’s still possible. “Is that why you called me up here? To tell me that?”
“You really must learn to be more exact in your questions,” he says. “I called you up here because I deeply dislike the confines of human homes.”
“You don’t like being indoors?” For some reason, this makes me laugh.
He chooses to ignore this stunning lack of respect, and says, “As for why I wanted to speak with you, which is the question I presume you were actually asking, it is because I wanted to offer you my apologies.”
That takes me aback. “Why?”
“I did not intend to make you wait as long as this, but I needed time.” Something curious happens to his face. His cheekbones redden, like he’s feeling awkward.
Ash, the oldest and most powerful god in the universe.
Feeling awkward.
“Time for what?” I ask, struggling not to laugh again.
“To say goodbye,” he says. “I let Ness go.”
“Oh,” I say softly.
A small smile lifts one corner of his mouth. “There is power in the true death of a god. Long ago, a king of Kali lived because Valin died. You are alive here, today, because that king survived to have children, who had their own children, and so on. When I let Ness go, I was able to harness the power of his death. I have brought you a gift.”
He waves a hand. Beside him, stardust materializes out of nothing, sparkling and glowing, coalescing into a shape that becomes more and more solid.
Until it becomes human.
Until it becomes him.
I can’t breathe. I mustn’t. Breathing might fracture this moment, might break this spell, might take away this beautiful, impossible thing.
Max smiles crookedly. “I hear you’ve been busy.”
Abandoning all grace, I burst into a display of the loudest, snottiest tears known to humankind. Then his arms are around me and one of his hands is in my hair and his heart is beating, beating, beating under my wet, snotty face.
“Rama says he’s proud of you,” he says in my ear.
There will always be pain, and there will always be more to remake. There will always be something else that needs to be done, some crisis, some storm, but there will always be a new day after. Rage and sorrow will always be a part of my life, but so will joy. There will always be new ways to grow, and new ways for a heart to break, and new ways for it to mend again.
That’s what it means to live. To have a future. And there are no shadows over mine anymore. There are no more curses and no more prophecies. No more devoured stars.
Just bright ones, twinkling forever in the sky.
THE END
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I started writing this trilogy in October of 2014, so I’ve now lived with these characters and their stories for almost seven years (seventeen if you count the decade that was 2020!). And while I’m ready to say goodbye to Esmae, Max, and the others, with the certainty of knowing that I’ve told their stories completely and as well as I’m able, it’s still such a weird thing to pack away something that’s been a part of my life for so long.
And, as something that has been a part of my life for so long, it stands to reason that an awful lot of other people have been involved, too. I wish I could name every single one of you, but that might make this section longer than the actual story, so I’ll try to limit myself to just a few people without whom I wouldn’t have been able to write this third and final book in the series.
To Mum and Dad, for a childhood filled with the luxury of unlimited books and stories.
To Steve, the most patient, loving, and supportive husband, who makes sure I remember to eat even when I’m in a drafting frenzy.
To Jem, Henry, and Juno, for all the joy and inspiration you give me every single day.
To Penny Moore, for steering me the right way every time.
To Eric Smith and Alison Weiss, for your friendship, your support, and for being the very first people in publishing to believe in Esmae’s story.
To Nicole Frail, for your patience, enthusiasm, and keen editorial eye over the course of three often messy books.
To Kate Gartner, Joshua Barnaby, and the rest of the team at Sky Pony Press, for years of incredible covers, beautiful page interiors, publicity plans, and all the other pieces that make up the vast jigsaw puzzle that is publishing a book.
To the booksellers, librarians, reviewers, and bloggers who work so hard to make sure these books find homes.
To my author peers, inside and outside of the YA community, who are all so funny, talented, passionate, and endlessly supportive.
To the seventy-seven-year-old reviewer who wrote, back in 2019, that you loved A Spark of White Fire and weren’t sure you’d live to see the rest of the series. I so, so hope you’re still around. I hope A War of Swallowed Stars was everything you wanted it to be.
And last of all, to you. For giving this book a chance, for sticking with Esmae to the very end, and for coming on this adventure with me. Thank you.
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