The empress spun from the blow, went reeling, and landed hard on the floor. Orenda thought that she may have heard her head crack again when she hit.

The blood splashed to the ground with Klin inside of it, and he groped blindly for anything to wipe his eyes on. Orenda knew she had to move quickly before he regained his bearings, so she ran to him, then pulled the sword from his back.

“Xandra?” He tried to call, but when he opened his mouth a stream of blood poured from it, and he could not get the word out because he fell into a coughing fit. Orenda didn’t have time to watch as he pulled himself onto his hands and knees and coughed, trying to get it out of his lungs. She did catch the noises he made, the half-formed phrase, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” over and again.

Instead, she turned back to Xandra, holding the heavy sword in both hands.

The blow to her head and the fall seemed to have dazed her, but Orenda saw no injury there, and thought for a moment that she may not have been as strong as she thought she was.

“Klin?” Xandra called.

But Klin was still coughing up the blood she had forced into his lungs.

“My name,” Orenda said as she ran, “Is Orenda Solomaur Nochdifache-Firefist! And I have come to-”

Xandra turned just as Orenda came upon her, and stared into her eyes.

Orenda saw many things at once. She saw things she could not remember. She was traveling down a steep incline, looking up at the face of a man she had never seen unmarred. He held her to his chest, and he told her that everything was going to be alright, that he was going to protect her, that they were going to find her father.

Orenda saw a light, and it was too bright, and she wanted it extinguished, so she began to cry. It was right in her face, and she felt a rush of air that she did not know came from the sword that she now held in her hands.

She heard Klin begging Gareth to take the baby and run.

She felt the salt of the waves, though she was half asleep, and heard Gareth singing softly, a sea shanty.

“Charting no doubt where a woman had been,

Yohoho and a bottle of rum.”

But he couldn’t sing, because his face was falling apart, and he was crying.

Then someone else picked her up, and she snuggled into a soft, thick beard while Falsie explained that Gareth had to cauterize his face or he was going to die, and that he could probably come up with something to do about his hand.

Then she stared up at the eyes of a woman she did not know, who explained to her that they could not be found together, that if they were found together, they would know that Orenda was a Knight of Order, and they would hurt her. The woman told her that she just had to wait, right here, against the wall of the workhouse, and the nice men would be there to take her to her Aunty Krothy’s in the morning. She pinned a note to the blanket Orenda was wrapped in, but that meant nothing to her because she could not read. She only knew that she desperately did not want to be alone. She wanted to go back to the ship, to all the nice people there. She didn’t like traveling.

Orenda shoved the extra pair of stockings she had taken from the girl who hadn’t moved quickly enough on the assembly line under the hay pile where she slept and covered them quickly so that they would not be stolen. The girl’s sleeves had caught, and she had been drug along for some time before they could stop the equipment and get her out. She was dead by then and wouldn’t need clothes. They had all swarmed her, and Orenda had wanted to get her shoes, but she had been beaten to them.

Orenda pulled the warm tray of cookies from the oven and looked up into Susan’s smiling face. She helped Johnny and his family out of their hiding spot. She told Charles that she did not believe in Niccoli, no matter how much he wanted her to. She watched Ellie, absorbed in her studies, and thought that she was glad she had learned how to read.

Charles grabbed her by the shoulders, looked into her eyes, and said, “I am Charles OfVenris, this is Susan OfVenris. Remember our names! Remember us!”

Orenda felt the flames in the hearts of the soldiers burst in one final attempt to remain alive until they puffed away to nothing and the flames ate away at the library.

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Orenda sat at the table with Ali and Rychelle, then burned a strange symbol onto Ali’s neck from the back of a moving wagon. Ali looked worse and worse, less like the boy in the wagon, every time he scried her. Bubbider gave her a bed and friendship. Bubbider was pregnant now, and her child would never be branded.

Orenda fell into the pool and the steam poured out into the night, and every time Quiroris touched her it made her blood boil.

Tolith was a terrible dancer, but he was a good kisser, and he took care of her when the sea made her ill. She was what had happened to his face, and now he was downstairs in a dungeon, because she had not loved him even when he needed it the most, but he had always loved her, and it was not fair, but she was a monster who could not love, because how could a god love a mortal?

Draco and Impy were in love. Bella and Gareth were in love. Sarya and Barbra Allen were in love. Bella was not the monster she thought she was, though she was a wolf, and that is something like a monster.

Orenda pulled the Sacred Staff from the Sacred Flame in the dead city that had once been alive until Xandra had sent her monster to kill it, and Gareth had never, and probably would never, forgive them for it.

He had earned his madness.

Anilla avoided madness with an ease that Orenda envied.

Draco, Imply, Adam, and Mr Bilge had survived when Xandra sent her monster to collect the water stone, and they had not forgotten either.

Orenda saw a demon in a mirror, and then again as she threw them both into the sacred flame.

The Brigaddons thought that she was their sister, and Orenda had began to believe it too. Lapus Brigaddon was out in the world somewhere, being pursued by his mother, and Xaxac Brigaddon couldn’t stay alive long enough to tell her anything about her past, so she had had to leave. She couldn’t wait on Gareth to heal, because Gareth could not be here for this.

Orenda watched the creatures who had once been elves but were now all melted flesh and burned muscle attempt to call for help, attempt to escape, before she slaughtered them like animals. Orenda was a monster who had come in from the storm to bring death and destruction unto the castle.

Klin was a monster, and he knew it.

Xandra was a monster, and she knew it, as she stared into Orenda’s maddness and did not seem to comprehend what she was seeing. Orenda knew so, so much about the Knights of Order, but more than that, she knew the reality of the world she lived in. Orenda did not tell herself lies, and she did not fear the probling mind of a broken woman who had stretched herself too thin. She did not even try to fight. She opened herself to everything, and let Xandra see the person she had built with the world she had made.

This was not a murder.

This was cause and effect.

Xandra watched Orenda touch the stone as the Emerald Knight tried to kill her, watched her become one with a god, this woman who had already proven herself capable of looking eternity in the eye without blinking.

And she was afraid.

“Goddamn right,” Orenda said as she plunged the blade into the place the stone sat beneath Xandra’s flesh and pushed down with all her might, “You should be scared of me.”

“Help!” Xandra shrieked as her armor gushed from the stone and tried to form, but it could not find her body. The water hung there, in the air around her, growing larger and larger, but unable to become armor as Orenda pushed down as hard as she could until she heard a crack.

A smooth, blue river rock about the size of her fist broke free, and Orenda had pushed so hard it went flying into the air.

The water that had appeared fell, splashing the room and diluting the blood.

Klin wiped his eyes on his sleeve, which was no less saturated than his face, cursed, and nearly fell into the little rivers that still surrounded the platform the thrones sat upon. He plunged first his hands, then his face into it and scrubbed.

Orenda realized that Xandra was still, somehow, not dead, but she would be in a few seconds. The empress stared at the hole in her chest, gasping for air and watching the blood flow from it as if she didn’t believe it. She opened and closed her mouth as if she was trying to speak, then reached out her hand, grasping for the stone that was not there.

Orenda realized that she probably really needed to find it.

She stood, looked down at the woman who had, this morning, believed herself to be the most powerful person in the world. She watched the magic that flowed around Xandra grow weaker and weaker, but she did not get to see it stop flowing completely.

Because Klin turned around, finally saw the world for what it was, and screamed.

There were no words there. It was the sort of primal, animal scream that reminded Orenda too much of the emotion she had felt in the bathhouse. She realized, as the ground began to shake, that something terrible was going to happen, so she decided she would find the stone later, and instead ran as fast as her legs could carry her towards the kitchen.

As she moved, the world around her became unsteady with the force of the earthquake.

Klin was screaming, and clutching his head with one hand and the place his heart had once been with the other, and Orenda could not begin to understand what he was feeling. She had to keep moving, though the floor moved like it was an ocean, then like nothing she had ever felt before. She fell to her hands and knees and crawled as she watched the walls crack- then splinter.

She pulled herself between the Brigaddons, threw up her hands, and cast a fire shield with everything she was worth. The bubble of energy crackled and popped around her- and the sky began to fall.