Goddess Liv Savell (best autobiographies to read .TXT) 📖

way, and Alphonse entered the room, solving the question of where the rest of Delyth’s clothing had gone. She didn’t strike a pose, and she didn’t say anything astounding, instead hurrying to Etienne’s side and throwing her arms around him.

“Etienne,” she murmured, turning her face to kiss his cheek. Never before had she been so open with affection.

Etienne sat in stiff, stunned silence, unable to comprehend that she was alive, that his sister was standing before him, flesh and blood. She had not looked so healthy in years. Not since they were much younger, before the pressures of school had started to steal their sleep. Even more, though, he was not sure he deserved such kindness, not after what had happened the last time he saw her.

Etienne had abandoned her, his best friend, the closest thing he had to family. And maybe he had come back in the end, but it was too little, too late. He’d only returned in time to see her truly lost. Had she forgiven him so easily?

He reached out to her, one hand tentatively gripping her arm, hugging her. “Aryus did this? Is it really you?”

He looked at Delyth, half unbelieving, but she was smiling, her eyes warm and her shoulders relaxed for the first time he could easily remember. Still, he might not have believed it if it had not been for Tristan, standing tattooed and half-clothed in the doorway. Even addled from the fight, he doubted his mind could have imagined such a thing.

It was simply too amazing, too improbable.

For a moment, he thought he might never let go. “Allee, I’m so sorry. I am so so sorry.” A sob escaped his lips, the product of guilt welling up from his throat.

She leaned back to look into his face, using her thumbs to wipe away any moisture leaking over his cheeks, and shook her head as though to quell his apologies. As though they were past them now. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, Alphonse was frowning.

“Etienne.” That nervously admonishing tone, familiar. He had heard it hundreds of times before exams or when he hadn’t slept or eaten enough. And he knew, without a doubt, that his best friend, his sister, had truly come back. “You’ve torn up so much of what is inside you.”

“It was the magic,” he said, his voice thick with tears. “Ingolan spells and old offerings.”

“He did it to save me,” Delyth put in, but Etienne’s vision was too blurry to make out her expression. Tristan had settled into the only free chair in the room, evidently bored with the conversation.

“I— I wish I’d been braver before Thlonandras, but I did learn enough to protect Delyth.” He wiped his damp face roughly with his hands. “I didn’t stop to consider that I might be summoning too much magic for the spell I needed. Things just happened too fast.”

Delyth shifted. “Can you heal him?”

“Not this time,” Alphonse settled onto his bed, looking Etienne over with a meticulous eye. “It’s not his body that’s hurt. Magic ripped through him and around him. It’s more of… Like the leftover remnants from an infection or virus. It’s buzzing away in there. But I suspect it will fade with time. You will have to just heal the slow, natural way, Etienne. No more magic until this is set to rights.” She placed her hand on the center of his chest, indicating the inner turmoil. “Six moons or so. A lot needs mending in there.”

Etienne nodded and eased himself back into his sickbed, reaching out to squeeze Alphonse’s hand. “Allee—'' he almost choked on the word— “you look so well, like yourself again. I am so glad to have you back. What will you do now that all of Illygad is open to you?”

“Live,” Alphonse murmured, brushing his cheek one last time before standing. Because she did have the whole world, an entire life left to live.

Epilogue

1820, First Moon, First Quarter: Dailion

With the first four weeks of the semester behind her, Alphonse allowed herself one afternoon of leisure—a reward for working so diligently that moon. She took a blanket and a book on poetry, something she hardly ever read, out to one of the communal gardens in Moxous and settled beneath a large elm tree to read.

Alphonse found herself often looking up from the heady prose to watch the other students instead. They congregated in groups of three or four, laughing and eating, or quizzing one another from scrolls and journals. They were all very lively, and Alphonse enjoyed seeing them debate.

Before Enyo, before all of this, Alphonse had thought the arguments upsetting. Surely they could get along without having to prove who was smartest or cleverest? Now she saw friendly eye rolls and good-natured shoulder cuffs. This was play.

She hadn’t known that before because she was so afraid of conflict. Now, she realized that it didn’t always mean anger.

Moxous was so absolutely unchanged it was baffling. How could she have undergone such trials, been battered and sliced and warped, altered at a fundamental level, and the School of Magics be the same?

The Gods had tossed the world into chaos and dragged it back out again, and yet Moxous still bustled like a beehive. Students hurried from class to class, the masters intoned lessons from their podiums, and no one looked Alphonse’s way.

A shadow fell over Alphonse, and she looked up to see Risette, a girl one year behind her—or who had been one year behind her. Before Enyo. Now, they were in the same graduating class. They were from neighboring villages and so should have gotten along but didn’t. Risette had always seemed annoyed by Alphonse’s pious appearance and higher marks in herblore. She had never been actively cruel, but rather, avoidant of the healer.

Alphonse closed her poetry book slowly and felt her brows raising in a silent question.

Risette’s grey-blue eyes trickled over Alphonse’s veil-less hair and yellow dress. It was still demure but