“I’m fine,” Anton said, his voice scraped raw. He held up a hand before Jude could touch him and climbed to his feet. He looked back up at the sky, where the strange light was now fading.

He glanced back at Jude and found that the swordsman had not yet risen. He remained kneeling at Anton’s feet, staring up at him with a soft, awed expression.

“I saw the sky,” Jude said, a tremor in his voice. “The way it looked the day you were born. It was just like this.”

Anton’s chest lurched. He hadn’t seen that expression on Jude’s face since that day he had found Anton in the cistern of Nazirah. Since he’d realized who—what Anton was. Hector’s warning came back to him, and as much as it pained Anton to admit it, he knew Hector had been right. Jude’s destiny had always been Anton. The Prophet. It wasn’t the reason he loved Anton, but it was bound up in everything they’d gone through together. It was there in the way Jude followed him. It was there in the way he kissed him, the way he touched him. Faith, devotion, love, desire—there was no untangling it.

“I knew then,” Jude said reverently, chest hitching. “I knew what I was meant for.”

The certainty in his voice made Anton want to hide. To run.

“Anton,” the Wanderer’s voice sounded from behind them. “It worked. You can feel them, can’t you?”

There was a note of trepidation in her voice, and it took Anton a moment to understand why. Beneath the buzzing power of their combined scrying, Anton felt the tug of esha, like two magnets gently pulling at him. One to the south—that must be Pallas. And the other, somewhere northwest. The other Prophets.

They were all in the same place, he realized. A place that the Wanderer knew well. A place at the edge of the world, where she had once hidden with the one she loved. He could see the question in her eyes, the same one he wanted to ask.

What were the Prophets doing there?

“We need to get back to the ship,” the Wanderer said. “Pallas will know exactly where we are now, and we need to put as much distance between us as we can.”

Anton nodded and let Jude pull him to his feet. He kept hold of his hand as they descended the same stone stairs. By the time they reached the fort again, it was fully dark. Soft lanterns lit the walkways, where what seemed like a hundred Paladin knelt, staring at him with expressions of awe not unlike the one Jude had worn. Some of them, Anton saw, were crying.

“Prophet,” one of the Paladin murmured. “It really is you.”

There was no denying it now. No hiding. No running.