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But it’s too late. Lukas’s blood drips onto the vault and it starts to close. Lukas tries to dive inside the gap in the open earth, but before he can, Jemel slices his own palm and presses it, bloody, to the gash across Lukas’s chest.

Lukas gasps. Then screams. His skin is turning black around Jemel’s splayed palm. He tries to tear Jemel off him, but Jemel puts all his strength into keeping his hand against Lukas’s chest. It burns. He can feel the burning, intense pain ripping up his arm. But he does not move his hand. If this kills them both, he will not move his hand.

Lukas’s eyes flash black. “No, you foul heretic,” he says in a deep growl. “Take your hands off me and kneel. I am your God.”

“You were my God,” Jemel snarls back. “I believed in you even when my faith was destroyed. I kept my faith in you. But I am the son of the Immurite. I was sired in the greatest sin ever committed against you. I am sin and I chose sin over you. I chose love over you. I love Xan of Pluma—” Jemel’s words are lost in a scream as Lukas manages to tear Jemel’s hand away with a crunching noise. Jemel sinks to his knees in pain, his wrist limp and broken. Lukas falls too, gasping on the ground.

Beside him, Jemel can see the vault closing with a soft sucking sound.

The zhilvar goes quiet. He looks back at his mother’s body, lying dead on the earth. In Ambolk the word solwen is both the word for people and for the earth.

The silence is broken by Elric’s long, keening cry as he rushes to Lukas. Jemel looks up. “He’s alive,” Elric says weakly. “He breathes.”

“And Ur-Durik is gone,” Perl says, standing up shakily behind Jemel. “The Immurite’s blood destroyed the demon.”

Xan crouches down beside Jemel. “You are hurt,” he says.

“I am.”

“And you love me.”

Jemel looks at Xan. “I love you,” he says, this time, in Plumian.

The sun rises over the zhilvar, slow, lazy gold. Orange rays glitter on the silent sacrifice stone as Xan moves closer and kisses Jemel, first on the forehead and then on the mouth.

54

DAMON

Damon stands on the steps of the Rose Palace. The great building is quite damaged from fires and plundering, much of the tapestries and statues are gone.

But the city is calm now.

The people had cheered as Damon rode through the streets. The official story is that Atticul fell to madness, trying to take the Amber Forest in defiance of Sarelik Darek’s directive and died in his foolhardiness, but stories of the demon in the forest were already being passed around in taverns and markets, brought by soldiers from the battle who had arrived in Attar before the party of Damon Darekul.

And other stories too, gossip moving like the wind.

When Damon addresses the gathered crowd, announcing a new age for Azuria, he speaks as a soldier, not their Emperor. Umbert is the Emperor Ascendant. His mother Princess Ferra will serve as Regent.

Some had called out, “Long live Emperor Damon.” But if they want him as Emperor, they will not have it. If they want one of Rafus’s bastard sons as Emperor the line would pass to Lukas, and, strangely, no one seems to be clamouring for that in what remains of the Rose Council.

Least of all Lukas himself.

Although there would be a certain poetry in it. Death to Emperor Lukas.

Ferra is beside Damon on the steps as Damon pronounces Umbert the Emperor Ascendent. She is clearly far healthier than he has seen her in years. Inez claims Vindar was giving her some mild poison to keep her from interfering in his scheming. Damon does not know if that is true. He also does not know if any of Vindar’s plotting was influenced by Ur-Durik. Some things will never be known.

But that is all in the past now. Damon announces pardons for all who took part in the rioting and plundering and reparations for any who suffered damages.

That will go some way to beginning anew, but the city is in a terrible state. It will take years to rebuild the Rose Palace alone. But it will be done. It is almost as if the demon destroyed Attar as they feared. But not Azuria.

And not the world.

Damon speaks on. The words he agreed with his brothers, his sister, Inez and the Rose Council. He declares an end to the cruel empire. “Fanost will become its own land. My brother Kerik Darekul will take up the mantle of his forefathers. But not as duke, as ruler. He will ascend as King Kerik. Vashti, likewise, I will take as Warden, but only to steer it while the preparations will be made for it to become its own land once more under the rule of its people. Jur-Mattan and Pluma Ferris, lands I took for the empire myself will be also devolved. The Ferric wall will be dismantled. And the island of Pluma united. The Azurian Empire will be no more. In its place we will form a council of rulers, promoting co-operation between all these lands and extend the invitation to others who wish to join us. Luxoria, Voluptue, Ismagaar, Ik-Sundal and more. Irgo Harok, King of the Amber Forest has already announced he will send a representative to sit on this council. There is still darkness in our world. The fae, the Warlocks of Ismagaar, raiders on the seas…”

There is still so much to do.

Damon signs many papers late into the night with an army of scribes and scholars, overseen by Jemel.