In the ugly fluorescent light of the airplane galley, Zoe saw the crown properly for the first time. Nine spikes surrounded an iron circlet, all of it made of dribbled steel spun together, it looked elastic and pliant, but Zoe could still hear the hard noise of it rolling across the floor. The metallic echo continued in her mind, sawing at the air, the snores of slumbering potential.

Woman and god stared down at the promise of power between them. A promise of pain, yes, for Zoe recalled the heat-warped flesh of Fate’s forehead — a wound even he couldn’t remove — but the power that came was total. Absolute. The pinnacle of the pinnacle and the highest mountain.

It took Zoe a moment to realize she wasn’t breathing. The weight of the crown sucked away all air, all focus, until a hound at her side bit onto her leg. Pain flickered sharply through her mind and she looked away from the crown. Only with her attention broken did she hear the whispers coming from the web of gossamer metal. Brambles? Barbs? Spikes? The shape seemed inconsistent in the light, a puzzle that drew her eye…

She forced herself to look up at Rue as she petted the hound beside her.

“What happens now?” she asked.

“Nobody can disturb us,” Rue said. “Not the people on this sky ship, and not the Crimson Armada.”

Zoe’s surprise distracted her from the crown.

“They’re still alive?”

“They are,” Rue said with a smile. “But they are reeling. I don’t know if you understand what we have done here today. Imagine spiders without a web, an edge without a blade, or an armada without a sea — the threads of Skein are cut and drifting now in the flux of randomness. Such a thing has not happened before, and the Trinity is scrambling to preserve their powers. Worse,” he said as his grin widened. “They know not why this happened.”

“But we killed the Gambler.”

Rue shrugged, his angular shoulders poking beneath his silver robe.

“We were all facets of fate. Little gears turning in his elaborate suicide machine,” he said with a shake of his head. “I wonder now if what I tried to do to you wasn’t simply an echo of that… but no matter. For your planet was not a part of his system, which was the reason the Crimson Armada sent me here in the first place, to quench that voracious appetite for power by bringing people and planets into the systems it controlled… maybe that’s why you made it through the gauntlet to kill him? A foreign germ that penetrated the immune system?”

Zoe made a noncommittal noise. Everything that happened. The apocalypse. Her friends. Was it some part of a pre-planned game? She wasn’t sure if free will came when she rolled the dice or when she saw the numbers that landed. Surely it wasn’t free will to try and survive, and that’s all she’d done, try and survive…

“Did Fate want to die?” she asked. “Or did he want to live?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you?”

Rue smiled like a rapier flashing in the light.

“Do you mind if I change the scenery?”

“Go ahead —”

Light poured down upon them. Zoe’s feet sank into the sand. The ocean sloshed like molten bronze as it swallowed the setting sun. Hills of trees looked down upon the crescent beach. Gulls flew high above, specks in the air, spectating.

The crown sat in the sand between them, the distance the same.

“Where are we?” Zoe asked.

“Your world,” Rue said. “I don’t know the name of the place.”

Zoe nodded mutely.

“You brought the crown?”

“I couldn't not, take a walk with me.”

He started down the beach, his hands hidden in the pockets of his robe, and his skin lit by the sun like a sword pulled fresh from the forge. Zoe glanced at the crown, looked around at the beach and the hills saw nobody, and ambled after Rue. Sand crunched beneath her feet, and the ocean lapped, drawing close to her toes, but not quite reaching. After a minute of walking in silence, Zoe released her hounds. They slipped from her flesh and sprinted toward the receding tide. Barking, nipping at the foam, and frolicking in a way Zoe hadn’t seen them act before.

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Though when had she ever loosed them without a threat? No wonder they rejoiced in their freedom. Something stirred against her heart, memories of a year in a forest, interrupted by Rue offering her a dark brown glass bottle.

“What is that?” Zoe asked.

“A beer.”

“Oh,” she said as she stared at it for a moment before she took it. Rue held one in his hand, and Zoe twisted off the lif. “Thanks.”

She took a sip and the hops bit into her tongue. With a frown, she swallowed. Rue stared at her intently.

“What do you think?”

“It’s not great.”

“Oh.”

“I’m not much of a beer drinker,” Zoe said.

“That’s fine, I’m not much of a brewer.”

“You made this?”

“A long time ago,” he said as he took a sip. “Yeah, not the best. Too hoppy.”

“Some people like that, though.”

“Thanks.”

They sat in the sand, sipping at the beers, and watching the dogs play in the surf. The sky darkened behind them, a sea of indigo floating over the last golden rays scattered across the ocean.

“I always thought I’d get good at making beer,” Rue said. “Thought it could be something I did instead of killing, instead of being a blade, but… sometimes dreams are just dreams.”

“You could still get good at it,” Zoe said, as though she sat beside a friend and not an apocalyptic alien god.

“I suppose, but I don’t think so.”

“You still want to die?”

He set his empty bottle down in the sand.

“If I knew then what I know now, perhaps the ache in my heart would have never got so deep, but I don’t want to go on.”

“Lorrilla is still alive.”

Rue shook his head.

“She’s not my Lorrilla.”

And that was the truth of things. That was the trick played and the hollow prize — the future burned away such that everything gained vanished. Whatever was given now, held no meaning, no flavor, and just as Zoe lost her friends, so too did Rue lose his.

“You could go and speak with her,” Zoe said. “You could rebuild what you had, what you will have, I mean.”

“Do you think that could be done?” Rue asked.

Zoe covered her hesitation by draining down the bitter beer. Was she speaking about herself? The look in Bella’s eyes, that familiar expression, that distance between strangers… and Anton’s cold calculation, bereft of the Faith that let him climb the Mountain by her side… Skidmark somewhere in Scotland, untraceable… and Ben, her rage to him cold, her fingers still tingling with the force that ripped through his flesh. Could it be done?

“There’s still another you in this reality, isn’t there?”

Rue nodded.

“You called me, not the Rue of the past. He’s up there now, drifting toward this planet, brooding.”

“Him?”

“Yeah, not me. Him.”

“I replaced myself…”

“It was your wish.”

“This is confusing.”

“It’s not,” Rue said with a shake of his head. “It’s all so simple. There’s a crown, and it needs a head.”

Zoe looked down at her feet, where the crown sat in the sand. It would follow her wherever she went, waiting, whispering, drawing her —

She looked away as the last sliver of the burning sun sank beneath the horizon and a chill swept in from the east. It was every cold night of her life come to settle upon her like a cloak. She shivered, her arms closed around her, and though her skin was hot, it did nothing for the coldness flowing through her limbs.

The crown would do something, though, it would do everything. It was everything, an axis around which the universe turned like some gaudy, nightmarish carousel. Could she bring her friends? The question rested on the tip of her tongue, but the Epiphany felt timid, and she wasn’t sure if she could reach across the gulf of realities. If only she had more power…

“One of us needs to take the crown,” she said.

“That’s how this ends.”

Her hounds came out of the water and watched. Silhouette in the dark, huffing, dripping, eyes reflecting pale moonlight.

“Why don’t you take the crown?” Zoe floated the question so softly it was barely a whisper, barely louder than the wingbeats of a moth.

“Because I don’t want more power,” Rue said.

“You think I do?”

His silence was answer enough, and the indigo sky seeped into black as the waves rolled in and the hounds wandered off. The crown remained, heavy, glinting, ready and waiting, full of need.

“We could break the crown,” Zoe said.

“Maybe…” Rue said as he cracked another beer. He offered her one, but she declined. “Tell me you want to break the crown and I will bend all my power towards doing so.”

He waited and sipped until he set his empty bottle down in the sand beside the first.

“There is no rush, Zoe Chambers of Earth, my champion, you can think on this as long as you desire. No system will come for you while I shield our presence.”

Zoe glanced at him.

“Not in a rush to die?”

“Time has lost its meaning, and I quite enjoy this place, but…”

She wondered what he wanted to say. Wondered what conflict tore at his heart. Was it sheer pessimistic stubbornness that insisted on his death? She couldn’t understand, but she didn’t question, her mind was too full of the crown. At last, she stood.

“I’ve made up my mind.”

“And?”

In answer, Zoe bent down. She took the crown, and it flinched beneath her touch like a living thing, before settling in her grip as she raised it from the sand. Heavier than it looked. Warmer too, as though blood coursed beneath the surface. Living metal, she thought, hard, strong, durable.

“You really think you could break this?” she asked.

“Without a wearer, it is a powerful artifact, but not immutable. I could break it. Is that what you want?”

She expected pent-up rage and frustration, an urge to scream, to cry, to throw up her hands and wade into the waters, but there was none of that. Only a silence in her mind. No fear for survival, simply a choice, here and now, in the gathering dark.

“Who will kill you if we break the crown?”

Rue smiled and cracked another beer.

“I suppose that’s another choice I leave to you.”

“Alright, then.”

Rue looked up at her, a question on his lips. Zoe ignored him. Her hounds bounded along the sand, free for the moment, and amongst the stars overhead, a plane blinked by. She set the crown above her head.