“What Nazirah means to say,” Keric cut in, “is that if you do this, you will shatter the pathways of fate and destiny for good. There will be no more prophecies. No more visions of the future. Your new Prophets will have all the power that we have now—that is to say, the powers of the Grace of Sight. The power to create the Sacred Word. But not the power to see the shape of fate. You will be blind to the future.”

“Good,” Anton said firmly. “We’ll find our own way. We’ll make our own choices. If that is the price of saving the world and the boy I love, I will gladly pay it.”

“We spent two thousand years denying our humanity,” Tarseis said brusquely. “And you refuse to follow in our footsteps. At the end of the world you come to us and you ask for what? Love?”

Anton didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

Endarra considered him carefully. “You have never asked for it before.”

“I didn’t know how.”

“But it is what you want?”

“Yes,” Anton said again.

“That was what Ananke wanted, too,” Behezda said quietly. There was grief on her round face. “I have always regretted that we took it from her.”

“Perhaps…” Nazirah said thoughtfully. “We’ve been wrong all along. Perhaps keeping ourselves apart from the world was a mistake, if it has led the world here. Perhaps you have the right of it.” She turned to the others. “I say we do as the young Prophet asks.”

Anton’s heart lifted.

He stared at Tarseis. The Prophet of Justice seemed by far the most reticent.

“We gave you this power,” Tarseis said at last. “I suppose that means it’s up to you to decide how to wield it.”

Relief swelled inside Anton. “What do we do?”

“The first Graced people were not born, but made,” Keric said. “We bestowed it on them with the Relics.”

“The Sacrificed Queen,” Behezda said. “The Keeper of the Word.”

“The first King of Herat,” Nazirah said.

“But of course, our powers didn’t originate with the Relics,” Tarseis said. “We got them from the god. It chose us. And so we can choose others.”

“You mean you can give your own Graces to someone else?” Anton asked. “But … you’re all already dead. At least, in my time you are.”

Nazirah gave him a rueful smile. She spread her arms. “This place, like the Circle of Stones in Kerameikos, is a particular conduit of esha. We built these monoliths such that when we died, our esha would remain locked here. Preserved, so it could be accessed by another Prophet. By you.”

“That’s why I felt it,” Anton realized. “When the Wanderer and I scried for you in the Circle of Stones. It led me here. To your esha.”

“So it worked,” Nazirah said with satisfaction. “I assume you have the Relic of Sight?”