Epilogue

Epilogue 3.26

---Comma---

     We're too late.

     After a long and arduous climb, we reach the summit of Mount Aieb. Even though it's a flat top, the surface is uneven enough that one false step would mean slipping and plummeting to our deaths.

     The snow that blankets the jagged peak is stained with red. I'm light-headed from the climb and the lack of oxygen, so at first the figures on the mountaintop appear a blur.

     Rex joins me, catching me when I lose my balance. Taryn, Aiden, and the monk, Brydeck, stick close by. Normally I'd tell them to fan out and surround our enemies. But in this case, there's safety in numbers.

     Selina is the first to come into focus. She wipes her bloodstained hands on her white tunic, her golden locks whipping in the wind. Her pupils are slitted, like a cat's. She curls her fingers into claws.

     "Hello there, Sheila," says Grayson, his boots crunching over the snow as he makes his way towards us. Aiden snarls—I can't imagine werewolves and were-tigers get along very well.

     "Did you come all this way just to see little old me?" Selina asks, grinning psychotically. The discarded body of a slain monk lies at her feet, his blood still oozing into the snow. When Brydeck notices this, he flips.

     "Kai-lek!" He lunges at her with his spear, but Grayson intercepts, darting forward to snatch the spear right out of his hands and snap it in two over his knee.

     Behind Selina, a shaggy-haired male dressed in all black sustains a triangular prism–shaped forcefield. The translucent energy comprising it shimmers purple, deflecting the sunlight. Squinting, I can just barely make out a goat-headed entity caged within the forcefield. Her aura reeks of divinity; she's this world's terrestrial, no doubt.

     "We need to free her," I mouth to Taryn, hoping she can read my lips. Right now, the odds are stacked against us. But with a goddess on our side, we might stand a chance.

     Selina rests her hands on her hips. "Are you ignoring me?"

     I grin. "I'm thinking about how satisfying it's going to be to rip your heart out and stomp on it until it busts like a balloon."

     "Oh? Sounds like fun. But I've got other plans." She snaps her fingers, and we all—even Rex—drop to our knees, weighed down by a crushing, invisible force. I tug down on my toque to shield my ears from the metallic screech accompanying the pressure. Gritting my teeth, I struggle to push back against the force, but I'm pinned to the ground. Selina chuckles. "The multiverse is kind of my bitch. So what does that make you?"

     I manage to look up at her, and the muscles in my neck protest in agony. We lock eyes. And for a moment, the pain and the guilt—all the baggage that I carry with me wherever I go—slip away. Something sparks within me as I stare into those twinkling blue eyes of pure evil. Killing her will be my redemption.

     It's not that I know the cosmos is willing to forgive me. I doubt that. But I'm done carrying this burden. I've decided that, once I destroy Selina, I'm going to move on. And as soon as I've thought it, all I want is to see Em. I want to tell him everything. I want him to know who I am—who I really am. The good and the bad. It's stupid, and it's frivolous, but it's what I want.

     And she isn't going to get in the way of that.

     I push myself off the ground, breaking free of Selina's magic. She gawks, for a split-second. That's all I need—a single moment's hesitation. "Now!" I shout.