“I have to buy better wards for this house. People keep coming and going without my say-so.”

“You left it open, I think.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Probably.” And: “It’s good to see you.”

“And you.”

“I didn’t think they’d let you out of the hospital yet.”

“I’m done with people who want to keep me in a box.”

“I hear that,” Kai said, and walked up to the porch and sat beside her on the swing. The chain creaked under her weight. They rocked, together. Kai kept her feet on the floor. Mara kicked hers out and let them sway with each rock, forward and back. “I’m sorry,” Kai said at last. “I stumbled into your plan and fucked it up.” She said nothing. “If not for me, you would have given Ms. Kevarian what she needed, Jace wouldn’t have found out, and neither of us would have been stuck inside those things. If it wasn’t for me, Claude wouldn’t have told Jace about the poet, and you wouldn’t have been forced to kill him. Everything I tried to do hurt someone. Even in the end, I almost killed us all.”

“If not for you, I wouldn’t have learned what Jace was doing. He convinced me the first time around. Made me forget myself. Talked me into a corner. I wouldn’t have changed my mind if you hadn’t jumped, if I hadn’t seen what jumping cost. If I didn’t ask myself why I wasn’t as brave as you. You pushed me. You always have.”

“I wasn’t brave. I didn’t know what was going on. Sometimes I almost wish I hadn’t tried to save her.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I’m sorry, is all.”

“That you said already. And you didn’t need to say it in the first place.” There was a kind of music to her voice, Kai realized, that she’d never heard before, from gods or anyone.

“I was thinking about what happens now,” Kai said.

Mara didn’t respond.

“I look around and I see nothing but problems. That goddess’s growing inside the pool. What happens when she learns to speak, not just to the kids dockside, but to everyone? And the Penitents.”

“What about them?”

“I don’t know anymore,” Kai said. “This is a strange world, and we’re alone in it.”

“It is strange.” Mara smiled, and took her hand. “Worse than strange. But we’re not alone.”

*   *   *

Izza met Kai at sunset, on a barren stretch of eastern shore. The island ended here in a sharp twenty-meter cliff, and a lava arch leapt smooth as a diver’s arc from that cliff into the crashing sea.