Nys and Behzad stood outside the Honeymoon Suite for a moment before returning to the others. Somewhere beyond the door, Fern and Fable were passing the time with a small display of fire and illusion in the fireplace. Nys stopped Behzad before they entered and gently placed a hand against his chest.
She wanted a promise.
Whatever happened next, he was not allowed to blow up the cabin.
Behzad assured her that he had no intention of destroying the Honeymoon Suite. If things did come to blows between himself and Corellon, they would simply find somewhere more appropriate.
“Something befitting such a fight.”
Nys sighed.
She would prefer they did not fight at all.
Behzad agreed.
“But as we know, the God of Elves can be a fickle one.”
Nys opened the door.
The little display inside immediately stopped.
Nys remarked that Fern and Fable appeared to have been amusing themselves. Fern dropped the magic without even looking toward the newcomers.
Behzad greeted Fable.
Then Corellon.
Fern’s answer came immediately.
“Don’t call me that.”
Behzad asked whether it was not his name.
“No. My name is Fern.”
The quiet night lasted approximately thirty seconds.
Fern mentioned seeing the light from the lake where Nys and Behzad had buried Jophiel. Behzad asked whether Fern still considered the Angels he spoke about to be false after what they had witnessed.
Fern reminded him that Jophiel had been trying to kill them.
Behzad asked what had made Fern believe he could do anything about her.
Nothing, Fern admitted. He had only been trying to provide enough of a buffer for everyone else to escape.
Behzad believed running would have been the wiser option.
“Not trying to strike down holy things.”
Fern laughed. Whatever Jophiel may once have been, he saw nothing holy in the creature that had attacked them—perhaps except for the brief moment when Nys managed to reach her.
Behzad stared across the room.
“Well, isn’t that the same story for you?”
Nys intervened before either of them could push any further.
Jophiel was not an it.
She had a name. She had once been a person. Whatever had happened to her afterward did not erase that fact.
“She. It’s she, Fern.”
Fable was already wondering why they had apparently decided to end the night with another fight. Behzad insisted that he was not looking for one. He only wanted Fern to recognize what he had done.
Fable pointed out the obvious: Behzad was deliberately calling him Corellon despite being able to see how badly the name antagonized him.
Behzad believed it appropriate to call Fern what he was.
That was enough to make Fern leap over the back of the couch.
Whatever he might have been a thousand, a million, or countless years ago, Fern insisted that he was not that person anymore. Whatever remained of Corellon was gone.
Nys was not convinced.
As one Elf speaking to another, Nys asked Fern whether he had ever truly considered how souls worked.
Fern had repeatedly admitted that he could not commune with his previous lives the way other Elves could. He had spent much of his life isolated in the Vaelwood because of it.
But perhaps, Nys suggested, inability to remember a past life did not mean that nothing survived from it.
She compared the soul to a book. The stories written inside changed from lifetime to lifetime, but the binding remained. The cover remained. The name written along the spine remained.
She told him about the Elven concept of soulmates. If nothing whatsoever survived reincarnation, how could two souls recognize one another across different lives? Perhaps something endured beneath memory: a love of beauty, an instinct toward freedom, a certain stubbornness that appeared again and again.
Nys was not claiming Fern was simply Corellon wearing another face.
“Perhaps there is, however, some spark, something there that, like a hidden ember amongst a pile of ash, is the same thing.”
Fern finally clarified what he had been trying to say.
He did not deny that Corellon existed somewhere in the distant chain of lives that had eventually produced Fern.
What he rejected was responsibility.
“Those decisions that he made were not my fault. I didn’t make those decisions.”
Nys asked what those decisions had been.
Fern named Corellon’s abandonment of everything he had created. His Fading. The removal of his own divinity down to the bones.
Behzad immediately challenged him.
What, then, was Fern doing now by refusing to acknowledge that he was Corellon?
Fern corrected him again.
“I’m not refusing to acknowledge him. I just don’t want to be called by his name.”
Behzad did not understand the implications carried by that name.
The weight.
Nys approached the problem differently.
Corellon had believed that he knew what was best. He had made decisions for entire populations because he believed those choices were necessary, and good intentions had not prevented those choices from causing catastrophe.
Behzad asked whether Fern felt pride in the things Corellon had created. If he could claim any connection to those accomplishments, then surely he could not completely sever himself from the failures.
Fern rejected that as well.
He had not accomplished those things.
He had not done them with his own hands in this lifetime.
Nys reminded him of the library.
Fern had been perfectly comfortable slipping into that identity when the experience had been strange, almost playful.
Fern’s answer was weak even to himself.
“That wasn’t even me speaking. That was something else entirely.”
What?
“Something distant.”
Behzad did not accept it.
“You have to acknowledge Corellon is there.”
Then Behzad stepped outside, leaving Nys to finish the conversation.
Nys told Fern another story.
A king once owned a beloved ship. Over the years, planks rotted and were replaced. One board after another disappeared until eventually none of the wood used to construct the original vessel remained.
The name remained.
The ship remained.
Was it still the same ship?
Fern did not believe it was.
Nys folded her arms.
If Fern was truly that divorced from Corellon, she wanted him to explain the patterns she kept seeing.
Before the Crow, Nys had told everyone to run. Fern attacked instead, nearly getting them killed.
Fern immediately accepted responsibility for that.
“It was stupid. It was irresponsible.”
But Nys’s problem was what came afterward.
Fern had independently approached the Taimavar because he thought gathering information alone would protect everyone else.
Now at the Hallowed Falls, Nys had again told him to run. Fern had again decided that he knew what needed to happen and remained behind to provide a buffer.
Three incidents.
Three unilateral choices made because Fern believed placing himself in danger would protect the others.
Fern pointed out that two of those examples involved him risking his own life for the party.
Nys’s response was devastatingly simple.
“And I’m sure Corellon said the same.”
Look what had become of the Elves.
Fern immediately recoiled.
“Don’t put any of that on me.”
Nys wasn’t.
She was pointing toward the recurring instinct: Fern’s certainty that if he cared strongly enough, he could decide what was best for everyone.
Fern heard something else.
“If you want me to stop caring, you can just say it.”
Nys shook her head.
“I never said to stop caring. But from a place of caring, you can still cause great harm.”
Then the argument returned to Jophiel.
Fern called her a creature.
Nys corrected him again.
Her name was Jophiel.
She had been the Angel of Love. Something terrible had happened to her. She had suffered for centuries.
Nys turned toward Fable.
If Fern could look at Jophiel and reduce her to a monster because of what had been done to her, how was that different from everyone who looked at Fable and saw nothing but the child of Octavian Scarletblood?
Fable had not chosen her father.
She had not chosen the scars.
Jophiel had not chosen what had happened at the Hallowed Falls.
“Have some compassion. That is what I ask of you.”
Fern could mourn what Jophiel had once been.
He could not ignore what she had become.
Nys reminded him that Jophiel had listened. Even after centuries of torment, some piece of the Angel remained capable of recognizing another person in pain.
Fern finally conceded that whatever Nys and the others had done for Jophiel had been good.
Nys immediately asked why, then, he had refused to remain for her funeral.
Fern’s answer was honest.
“If I had remained around, there’s no guarantee that Behzad would still have all of his teeth right now.”
Nys understood his anger. Behzad had attacked him.
She did not excuse that.
But sometimes people had to put aside personal grievances long enough to do what was right.
Fern again returned to the same point: if putting his own life on the line to protect everyone else was not right, he no longer understood what anyone expected from him.
Nys told him nobody had asked him to make that sacrifice.
Fern had decided for them.
Because, Fern insisted, it was what needed to happen.
He explained the fight again.
Fable had been behind the others. Jophiel had been closing in. Somebody needed to buy time.
Fern again acknowledged what happened with the Crow. That mistake had been his.
He defended what happened with the Taimavar as information gathering. He had learned something dangerous without immediately throwing the rest of the party back into danger.
Then Fern remembered the people the Taimavar had murdered.
People paralyzed and helpless while their throats were cut.
People who, in their final moments, may have been praying to him.
Nys went still.
“Do not talk to me of people dying and praying to you in their last breath. Do not, Fern. Don’t you even dare.”
She had been one of those people.
When the Mincer murdered her, Nys had cried out.
Nobody came.
Later, in the strange reflection of Corellon’s old library, she had learned that the divine figure associated with the very people who should have heard those prayers existed somewhere inside Fern.
For one terrible moment, Nys admitted, she had hated him.
She had swallowed it because what else was she supposed to do? Start a fight in the middle of a gathering of Archfey?
Fern apologized.
Again.
Nys caught something else.
Fern had said those dying people were praying to him.
Not Corellon.
Him.
Fern did not know what she wanted him to do. If he could snap his fingers and fix every horror in the world, he would. If he could erase every mistake, heal every wound, and save everyone who had ever needed him, he would do it immediately.
He wished he had that power.
He did not.
As Fern snapped his fingers for emphasis, a tiny spark of light appeared between them.
Fern’s answer remained the same.
He was sorry.
But he did not know whether Nys hated Fern or simply hated Corellon and had finally found somewhere to put it.
Then Fern opened the rear window and Fey Stepped out of the cabin.
Nys watched him disappear.
“As always. Just running away from the problem.”
Behzad was outside beneath a tree, idly playing his harp.
Fern emerged from the window directly into his mediocre performance.
Behzad asked whether he had finally come outside to accept what he had done and make amends.
Fern’s hair began glowing.
For one long moment, it appeared that Nys’s request regarding the cabin had simply relocated the inevitable fight outdoors.
Then Fern inhaled.
And walked away.
Behzad watched him leave.
“Very well, Corellon.”
Back inside, someone else appeared.
A ten-foot-tall body rose from the shadows where Fern had been sitting.
Sindatari.
The Angel of Death had returned to Hallowed Falls.
He told Nys that Jophiel had finally been put to rest and, in an almost historic display of sincerity, thanked her.
Nys stared.
Sindatari was smiling.
He would not say that he owed her one.
Better to say they were even.
His attempt at a dignified exit was immediately ruined when he stood up too quickly and his head passed through the cabin ceiling.
“Well, that ruined my exit.”
Before disappearing, Sindatari pointed toward Fable.
He had placed his bet on her.
Fable had no idea what he was talking about.
The mutation, obviously.
Apparently somewhere in the cosmos, people were gambling on whether Fable or Octavian would eventually inherit whatever transformation waited at the end of their bloodline.
Sindatari had money on Fable.
Fable assured him that if he expected her to accept the power after killing her father, he would be disappointed.
Sindatari grinned.
That was precisely what he was betting on.
He would also be delighted if she finally killed Octavian. The bastard had avoided Death for far too long, and Pandemonium already had a spot reserved for him.
Then Sindatari vanished, leaving Fable looking like she was desperately trying not to collapse under the weight of another increasingly insane evening.
Nys asked whether she was alright.
“Not really.”
Fable admitted that the dream beneath Hallowed Falls was not even what bothered her most.
The entire group felt as though it were splitting apart.
Every day brought another argument.
She did not know what she was supposed to do when everyone around her seemed moments away from breaking.
Nys understood.
Perhaps Fable now understood a little of how Nys had felt.
Fable’s answer revealed more than she probably intended.
“My entire life has been being powerless.”
Nys agreed that Fern had only wanted to help and protect.
But protection could never come at the cost of another person’s agency.
They were supposed to be a team.
Behzad had gone mad and stopped listening.
Fern made decisions for everybody.
And Nys admitted that she was angry with Fable too.
Fable sat beside her.
At least Nys was willing to tell her why.
Nys had watched Fable fight ever since they met.
Not merely fight.
Throw herself into danger.
Every encounter became an excuse for Fable to place her own body between danger and everyone else.
It looked less like bravery and more like a death wish.
Fable defended herself. Her wounds healed. Every threat they encountered was worse than the last, and someone had to stand in front.
Especially because certain foolhardy people around them could barely take a hit.
Outside the window, Behzad continued playing his harp like a man repeatedly opening and closing a switchblade while waiting for someone to come fight him.
Nys ignored him.
Fable would never have a chance to discover who she was if she died first.
Someone had to stand at the front, Fable insisted.
Someone had to take the blows.
Nys agreed.
But Fable did not have to take all of them.
“That’s what friends are for. That’s what family is for.”
If Fable’s family had never taught her that, Nys was sorry.
“Let us be your family and teach you this.”
For once, Fable moved.
She would try.
That was all she could promise.
If she saw one of them about to die, however, she would still take the blow if she could.
Nys wasn’t asking her to stop being Fable.
She only wanted Fable to acknowledge that the people she loved might feel the same way about her.
Nys began to cry.
There had already been too much death.
She was tired of it.
Fable understood more than Nys realized.
If Styigan had reached Nys in the library and killed her, there would have been no resurrection.
Nys’s bargain with the Raven Queen did not permit another return.
Fable called the deal unfair.
Nys had been forced to choose between oblivion and a second life. Who would willingly choose oblivion?
Nys admitted that she had been offered the cycle of souls again.
Instead, she had chosen what remained of her current life so she could seek justice and prevent what happened to her from happening to anyone else.
Her family.
Her children.
Her brother.
Strangers she would never meet.
But Nys had made mistakes too.
She had fled the Charmed Cove.
More than a year later, people still suffered there.
Nys blamed herself.
She had once been like Fable, throwing herself into everything, believing that if she worked hard enough and fought hard enough she could shield everyone with her own body.
Eventually, it killed her.
She did not want that future for Fable.
Fable had barely begun to live.
Fable admitted that she did not even know whether her life could begin while Octavian remained unresolved. She did not know what he intended to do with the runes carved into her body. She could not imagine a future when she did not know whether she would survive long enough to see it.
Nys promised they would face that future together.
Fable refused to accept one thing in return.
Nys spoke as though there was no future for herself.
Fable did not believe that.
There was too much in the world none of them understood.
There might still be some way out of the Raven Queen’s bargain.
Nys doubted that breaking deals with gods ever ended well.
But until her time ran out, she could at least care for all of them.
Fable promised to look anyway.
Nys deserved a life just as much as anyone else.
The two sat together for a long moment.
Then Nys admitted something else.
Perhaps her anger toward Corellon was unfair.
Perhaps Fern was suffering for something he did not personally do.
That was exactly why she had kept that anger buried for as long as she could.
The conversation eventually returned to Behzad.
Fable could not understand why he had become so angry when she refused the power offered beneath Hallowed Falls.
Nys tried to explain.
Behzad was fundamentally different from her.
He believed power could change things.
Power could protect people.
Power could make a difference.
Fable remembered what the Crow had once said about mortals accepting power whenever they were offered it.
Now they were seeing it within their own group.
If Behzad could look at something capable of changing Fable at her core and still ask why she refused it, how could she trust him?
Nys answered with another lesson.
When they first arrived at Hallowed Falls, they had pressured Vali for discounts even though the man was already barely surviving.
They saw what they needed from him.
Not him.
That was becoming a pattern.
A poor shopkeeper became an obstacle.
Jophiel became a monster.
People became things standing between the party and whatever objective they had decided mattered most.
Nys had grown tired of it.
Power came with responsibility precisely because those who possessed it had the ability to stop treating everyone weaker than themselves like scenery.
Behzad’s forbidden knowledge may genuinely have been harming him.
Jophiel had been harmed by what happened to her too.
They could be angry with Behzad.
They could be justified in that anger.
But they could not forget that he was still a person.
Fable apologized.
Nys had spent the entire evening trying to hold everyone together while believing nobody listened to her.
For once, Fable had.
Far from the cabin, Fern reached the edge of Hallowed Falls and found Vali staring toward the now-silent waterfall.
For the first time in years, the screaming had stopped.
Vali could hardly believe it.
Fern assured him that when his group accepted a task, they finished it.
Vali smiled.
His son said the same thing.
Fern asked about him.
Vali explained that his boy had left the family business to become an adventurer. He had not understood it at first, but after seeing what Fern and his companions had accomplished, perhaps he finally did.
Maybe the boy and his adventuring group could even come home now.
Fern promised that when they returned to civilization, they would spread word that Hallowed Falls was safe again.
Vali asked whether they were independent adventurers or members of Prophet’s Guildhall.
Fern hesitated.
Independent, he supposed.
Vali casually mentioned the difficulty of getting into Prophet’s Guild.
Fern stopped.
Fern knew that the Guildhall had been burned down and most of its inhabitent slaughtered by the Taimavar.
Fern asked Vali for his son’s name.
“Deerstomp.”
He was apparently quite important in Rosenhall City. Vali still received letters from him about the adventures he and his companions were having.
Fern looked away for a moment.
Then smiled.
“I’ll be sure to look for him if we ever head up that way.”
Vali explained how he had adopted the young Kenku from the forest and eventually invited Fern inside to help bottle the medicines he had promised them.
Fern followed him inside.
He never told Vali what had happened to Prophet’s Guildhall.
Behzad remained alone.
The miracle had worked.
His God had proven Himself real.
A dying city had been healed by divine light.
Yet Behzad had perhaps never felt more alone.
He waited outside the cabin for someone to come speak with him.
Nobody did.
He briefly started walking in the direction Fern had gone.
Then stopped.
Instead, Behzad returned to the cabin.
Nys and Fable were still sitting together, both teary-eyed from their conversation.
Behzad asked whether they were alright.
Nys immediately stood and crossed the room.
Behzad prepared himself for almost anything.
She hugged him.
Then apologized.
Nys had spent too much time angry because she believed nobody listened to her.
Alyviel ignored plans.
Fern ignored warnings.
Behzad had ignored her in the temple.
She had become so consumed by her own anger that she failed to recognize something important.
Behzad had needed grace too.
She remembered how everyone had screamed at him after the Fountain, when he appeared to be losing his mind.
Their anger only made his worse.
Nys did not believe Behzad was some evil madman.
And tonight he had proven something.
“I’m proud of you.”
He had done something Nys had never believed possible.
He had put Jophiel to rest.
He had used the power he possessed to help people.
Whatever else they might think about the road Behzad walked, Nys would not deny that.
Behzad looked toward the floor.
And still his God remained silent.
Nys knew exactly what it felt like to call out to the divine and receive nothing in return.
Behzad then turned toward Fable.
He had a question.
What he had done tonight demonstrated the good even a small amount of additional power could accomplish.
So why had Fable refused what was offered to her beneath Hallowed Falls?
Fable stood immediately and crossed the room.
For a moment, it looked as though she might hit him.
Instead, she drove one finger into his chest.
“You do not get to make those decisions for me. Do you understand that?”
Behzad stared at her.
“Just answer why.”
Fable had already seen what accepting dangerous power could do.
Behzad admitted he had made mistakes along his path.
Fable wanted to know what happened when one of those mistakes killed someone else.
Behzad expected that if anyone died following his path, it would be himself.
That was not what Fable had asked.
Behzad reminded her that they controlled resurrection diamonds.
They had an entire city and The Holy Pontiff behind them.
Risks could be survived.
Fable stared at him.
That was precisely the problem.
Behzad was already explaining away casualties that had not even happened yet.
Fable had refused the power because she did not know what taking it might someday make her responsible for.
Behzad countered that refusing something because harm might happen also meant refusing all the good it might accomplish.
Fable disagreed.
“The amount of good you do is also weighed by the amount of pain you cause.”
How much pain was Behzad willing to cause if he believed the final outcome justified it?
Behzad did not know.
He only knew that he would do what was necessary to set right the Lattice of Heaven.
Nys immediately asked what the Lattice of Heaven was.
Behzad smiled bitterly.
“If only you could peer beyond the Font as well.”
Not everyone was so lucky.
Fable had heard enough.
She pushed past Behzad and left the cabin.
Behzad watched her go.
“I will never understand her.”
Nys remained.
Some people feared power because they were afraid of who they might become after receiving it.
There was no weakness in admitting that.
Not everyone was made to bear every kind of power.
Behzad believed that thinking about oneself missed the point.
They served something greater.
Death came for everyone eventually.
He would rather allow his life to serve something meaningful.
Nys asked how he thought she would feel if something happened to him.
Behzad dismissed the question.
Death came for them all.
Then Nys asked what Behzad was actually trying to accomplish.
He had hinted for months.
He spoke of truths nobody else understood.
But he told them nothing.
Behzad finally gave her something.
J_On had become distant.
Perhaps, if Behzad succeeded, that would change.
The Dawn War itself needed to be restructured.
Once the war ended, perhaps J_On’s gaze would finally turn back toward Creation.
Nys asked him to explain the Dawn War.
For now, Behzad would only say that the Gods needed to find somewhere else.
Nys froze.
Puzzle pieces clicked into place.
“Is that why you sought the Requiem at the library?”
Behzad sighed.
The Requiem was an event that would bring about a fall of the divine.
The Gods would be brought down.
When the War finally ended and the Gods understood what had been lost, perhaps J_On would look upon His children again.
Nys slowly processed what Behzad was describing.
“So what you’re intending is the version of a divine spanking?”
In a way.
J_On had once tried to correct Creation.
Tharizdun had also tried.
Many others had attempted the same thing for their own reasons.
Behzad wanted to reset the board.
Nys warned that something on that scale could not occur without cataclysmic consequences.
Behzad agreed.
Every action had consequences.
But they had seen what happened when even a fraction of J_On’s light returned tonight.
Behzad believed a world touched by that light was worth the risk.
Nys asked whether he truly believed the Gods would simply allow him to do this without retaliating.
Behzad laughed.
The Gods had already been among them the entire time.
Why did Nys think Corellon had opposed every step he had taken?
The cabin door opened.
Fern stood there holding a crate of freshly bottled potions.
Behzad chuckled.
“Another act of divine intervention.”
Fern set the potions on the table.
Then he turned toward Behzad.
If Behzad wanted to say it, he should simply say it.
He did not trust Fern.
Perhaps he hated him.
Behzad denied that.
He did not hate Fern.
But why would he trust the God of Elves?
Corellon had never done him any good.
Fern quietly admitted that apparently he had not done many people much good.
Behzad pointed out that Fern seemed to have accepted what he was at last.
Fern clarified.
What he accepted was that he had repeatedly tried to help Behzad.
He had seen something wrong with Behzad even before the Fountain and tried to pull him away from it.
Behzad refused.
Fern had allowed him to continue.
When Behzad nearly died, Fern tried to save him.
Twice.
Yet only days after learning that Corellon had once been part of his past, Behzad now spoke to him with hatred as though Fern himself had personally tried to murder him.
Fern did not know what more Behzad expected.
As Fern.
As Corellon.
As whoever.
He was sorry.
Behzad told him that Fern remained blind.
Fern insisted that if something threatened the party, he would strike it down.
Divine or otherwise.
Behzad demanded some reverence for the divine.
Fern had nothing more to say.
Then Behzad drew a line.
“If you ever strike or go against my God again, I will stand against you.”
Fern stared at him.
“You do realize who started the Dawn War against your God, right?”
Behzad laughed.
He understood more about the Dawn War than Fern ever had.
He knew the true nature of the conflict.
And unlike Corellon, Behzad intended to end it.
Fern stopped touching the bottles.
Something had finally become clear to him.
No matter how hard Fern tried, Behzad would never trust him again.
Fine.
Behzad had also taught Fern something.
Fern could not trust Behzad either.
Behzad accepted that.
At least they understood one another now.
Fern could only throw his life in front of danger for someone so many times before eventually accepting that the same person might turn against him without hesitation.
Behzad could never trust someone willing to strike down the very divine beings responsible for Creation.
Nys stepped between them.
Again.
She understood why Behzad had seen something different in Jophiel.
She had felt Jophiel’s pain.
Jophiel had been murdered for what she was.
She deserved better.
But Fern kept calling her it.
That made things easier.
People were much easier to kill once empathy had been removed from the equation.
Nys asked one thing of him.
Say her name.
Jophiel.
Angel of Love.
She mattered.
Fern could remember who she had been.
He could remember the dead Elves she showed him.
He could even wish he had been there to save them.
But Fern had learned that sometimes monsters wore the faces of people you once loved.
Nys asked a dangerous question.
“Are monsters born, or are they made?”
Nys looked between Fern and Behzad.
At the rate they were going, perhaps they would be the ones to make monsters of everyone.
Even each other.
Fern looked toward Behzad.
“Well, I think we already got one monster.”
Behzad went very still.
Then he compared Fern to the Taimavar.
The way Fern looked at him was no different from the way they did.
Fern struck him.
His open palm hit Behzad across the face with enough force to burn.
Blood began running from Behzad’s nose.
“How dare you compare me to those monsters.”
Behzad did not back away.
The Taimavar came from Corellon, did they not?
Fern insisted he was not responsible for their creation.
Behzad corrected him.
He had never said Fern was responsible for what the Taimavar had done.
If Fern truly was Corellon, their actions belonged to the, he could not deny history.
Fern’s voice broke.
Behzad would never understand the sorrow of watching what Fern considered his greatest failure happen all over again.
Behzad stared back.
He did understand loss.
He had been given chance after chance to reclaim pieces of what had been taken from him, and repeatedly what the party needed came first.
He was tired of adjusting himself for everyone else, and yes, he had failed along the way.
But, at least Behzad
“Took responsibility for my mistakes.”
Fern insisted that he did too.
Then something in Fern finally snapped.
Fine.
He was done caring.
He would no longer hold Behzad back.
When Behzad finally reached the nothingness Sindatari had shown him, when the God he had pledged himself to destroyed him and Behzad cried out for someone to save him, Fern would not be there.
Fern would continue traveling with the group.
He would help Nys.
He would help Fable.
But he was no longer there for Behzad.
Behzad nodded.
Fern should expect the same.
Fable had already retreated to her room.
She collapsed onto the bed and heard something crunch beneath her.
For one alarming moment, she prepared herself for whatever fresh nightmare Hallowed Falls had decided to produce.
Instead, she pulled back the blankets.
A bright blue party hat sat on the pillow.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY.
Fable stared at it.
It was apparently magical.
A very rare item, in fact.
Fable put the hat on.
From the other side of the cabin, Behzad and Fern were still screaming at one another.
Fable rubbed her eyes.
The last person she wanted to interact with was Behzad.
Outside her room, Fern finally declared that he was done.
Blood trickled from Behzad’s nose as he watched Corellon walk away.