Yes, said the instinct, the voice that had spoken to her ancestors in an unbroken line across centuries. Keep it safe. Take a bit of Discord out of the world.
She raised her hand, and Hera set the apple into it. It felt massive, heavy as lead. Evie’s hand dropped to her side.
Hera started to walk away.
“Wait,” Evie said. “What now? What world is this? What happens next?”
Pausing to turn to her, to take Alex in with her glance as well, she shrugged. “You’ll have to figure that out for yourselves. A few survivors of the old world are scattered here and there. Seedlings, if you will. You could find them, start a village together, learn to herd goats or some such. I expect that’s what Arthur and Merlin are off doing.”
“Where are they?” Evie asked, hopeful. They had to be here, if she could find them . . . nothing would change.
Hera frowned. “Staying well out of my way. But you—if you say a prayer to me now and then, I may listen.”
Hera, poised and untroubled, walked away, over the hill, and was gone.
“Unbelievable,” Alex muttered, following with a curt laugh. “That beats everything.”
Evie went to him. He still knelt, his face creased with what seemed like anguish, or ecstasy.
“Are you all right?” she said.
He looked at her and laughed. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. But I think I am.”
She sat in front of him. His sword was within reach. “You can die now.”
“I know. But I don’t want to. The moment she appeared, I didn’t want to. When she said she knew what I wanted, she knew better than I did—because I was thinking of you.”
They didn’t have much. A sword, a box of hope, a leather sack. A broken chain. Each other. A happy ending, of sorts. Discord’s apple sitting in her hand, golden and warm. She tucked it inside the sack, where it lay inert and harmless.
She picked up the chain, which seemed frail and innocuous now.
“I’d like to bury that somewhere,” Alex said.
She shook her head. “No, you shouldn’t do that.” Above, clouds raced and tumbled, leaving behind a clean scent of rain. She breathed deeply. “It should go in the new Storeroom.”
Sing to me, Muse, of the Lady and Lord who thus came to a desert
After the storms razed and ravaged their home, after fleeing the goddess
Hera of Wrath, bent on vengeance most grave. On the Plains of the great stones
Peace gave them rest, the storms broke, the skies calmed; thus was born a new world.
Lady of Guardians took as her husband the Long-Lived Achaean.
Discord's Apple Page 27
