Poppy said nothing. She was thinking, her mouth twisted to one side. They were in the high square room in Castle Whitespire where the kings and queens met every day at five o’clock. The flaming ruins of a five-alarm sunset smoldered in the window behind her, which was currently pointing west.

“It can’t really all be going to end,” she said finally.

“And yet.” That was Janet.

“I feel like I just got here. I did just get here! Do we have any other evidence that it’s ending? I mean besides Ember’s say-so?”

“Sweetie, He is the god of us,” Josh said. “He probably knows.”

“He’s not infallible.”

“How do you know?”

“Because if He were infallible,” Janet put in, “He wouldn’t be such a twat all the time.”

Janet never shrank from taking both sides of an argument at once.

“You know,” Josh said, “I bet it’s because of sacrilege like that that the world is ending. Your earthy, irreverent sense of humor has doomed us all.”

“Poppy does have a point,” Eliot said. “Don’t forget that the first time we met Ember He was a prisoner. Martin Chatwin had Him locked away in Ember’s Tomb.”

“So He’s not omnipotent,” Josh said, clinging to his point. “He might still be infallible.”

“Either way, He never tells us everything He knows.” Eliot adjusted his crown, which had gotten crooked. “Not till it’s too late. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what’s going on now. All Ember is saying so far is that if it continues on its present course, the world is going to end. That doesn’t mean Fillory can’t be saved. Necessarily.”

He waited for somebody to jump in. Nobody did.

“What I’m suggesting is that maybe we, its kings and queens, could save it.”

“Sure,” Janet said. “We could put on a show! We could use the old barn!”

“I’m making a serious point.”

“Yes, and I am mocking your serious point to show how ludicrous it is.”

“Look, Ember is a god,” Eliot said, “but He’s a god only of Fillory. He’s limited. He doesn’t know everything there is to know about the wider universe. I think we should poke around some ourselves, see if He’s missed something. See how far our royal power can stretch. See if we can get an advance look at this so-called apocalypse. Maybe we can head it off at the pass.”

This was met with more silence, while everybody tried to think of a reason why what Eliot was proposing might be plausible or achievable.

“Yeah, no, of course,” Josh said. “I mean, we’re gonna go down fighting, right?”

“Right!” Loyal Poppy gave a swift nod of her sharp chin.

“So—what?” Janet said. “We just head back out into the wilderness? Looking for adventure? In whatever comes our way?”