His gaze went distant, his expression soft in a way Ephyra had never seen before. “When the Daughters of Mercy took me and Beru into the desert and left us to die, I knew, then, that we had it wrong. You and me and her. She was trying to make it right, to give back what you’d taken from me.” He ran a hand over his face. “But as we were standing in the middle of the desert, waiting for this storm to hit us, I had this realization. We can’t go back. We can only move forward. But just because we can’t change what we’ve done doesn’t mean we can’t choose different the next time. Doesn’t mean we can’t heal. Ourselves. Each other.”

Ephyra remembered Hector standing in her cell in Pallas Athos the morning that everything started to fall apart. Fate has decided my purpose for me, he’d said.

Looking at Hector then, as she was backed in a corner in her cell, his heart howling with loss and a grief too huge to endure, part of her had believed it. Had believed it was his destiny to put an end to the Pale Hand and avenge the deaths of the innocent lives she had taken. Part of her had believed it up until she’d taken his life.

And then he’d saved hers.

He’d made a different a choice, in Behezda. He’d chosen to be more than the loss he’d endured. More than his broken oaths.

“After I resurrected her, after what I did to your family, it was just the two of us,” Ephyra said, her voice shaking. “I told myself that the life we’d carved out together was enough. I had to believe it. But—the past month, with Jude and Khepri and Anton and Hassan. Even Illya. I saw how different things could have been.”

He was watching her carefully.

“You gave her that, too, you know,” she said haltingly.

“What?” he asked warily.

“I’m saying she loves you,” Ephyra replied. “Anyone can see that.”

“Right,” he replied gruffly. He cleared his throat.

But he never got the chance to awkwardly navigate a reply because at that moment there was a flash of bright light illuminating the darkness of the cave and a crack that seemed to split the air.

When the light dimmed, Beru was standing right in front of them.

Neither Hector nor Ephyra moved.

Lazaros hovered beside Beru, but Ephyra didn’t dare take her eyes off her sister.

“Is that … really you?” Ephyra lunged toward her, but Hector held her back.

She knew, on some level, that he was protecting her. It was most likely the god in control and not Beru. But there was a large part of her that didn’t care. Her sister had appeared in front of her like she’d heard Ephyra calling for her.

“Ephyra?” Beru said.