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"You think he's dead, don't you?" he said softly.

"Yes," answered Roland. "I feel it in my heart."

"But you have to find out what happened to him."

"I will know no peace until I do."

"But you may die as well. If you follow his path, you could end up just as he did. Aren't you afraid of dying?"

* * * *

Corinna Grant was not a person who had trouble with facing facts. Leave that to people who let despair overcome them. Leave that to people who forgot how it was that hopes were realized and dreams came true: you made them true yourself. The world had never once changed just by sitting on the sidelines and hoping. The hands that moved mountains weren’t clasped and gentle -- they were caked in dirt, fingernails cracked, callused, balled into fists.

Leave hope and sweetness and light to people who believed the universe so fundamentally owed them something that all they had to do was stand around and wait for fate to deliver on its implicit promises -- not Corinna Grant. She had learned a bit more of a lesson than that from her old life.

The universe didn’t owe her anything, didn’t owe her a single goddamned thing. It never had. For all the lives she had taken and the dreams she’d devoured, in that former life, the universe had not reshaped itself for her no matter how she’d tried to force it to. All she’d managed was what she had done with her own two hands.

And it had been ugly. There was no denying that, no excusing it, and she didn’t want to: Nehelenia knew full well what sort of a monster she had been. But the point was, the lesson had been learned: no one was responsible for her actions except Nehelenia herself. Not fate, not Chaos -- she was responsible for her failures. She was responsible for her successes. She was responsible for her actions; she was responsible for her inactions.

She wasn’t a good person, she knew -- people thought that. She could be a pretty terrible person. But if she expected people to think well of her -- if she expected Helios to truly forgive her in some small measure -- if she expected to be able to hold her head up high as a human being even just a little, even the very smallest fraction -- then she had to be something better than horrible. Nehelenia had to move a mountain. A person who failed to act, who let horrible circumstances continue, may not have done anything wrong -- but they wouldn’t have done anything right, either. She had to do something right.

And she was capable of facing facts, after all. It had been three months: Alexandros was not going to wake up.

For weeks now, she had haunted the hallways of Destiny City Memorial Hospital, stalling for time, hoping the Pyrite Crystal’s curse would end -- stopping at one cold and quiet bedside after another, in between her visits to her family, her friends, to -- to Alex. She had tried every bed of every sleeping stranger she could get to, passing her hand systematically over each ribcage in the faint hope that she could at least complete her mission, regaining the Marcasite Crystal. It had been a good enough reason to wait. A good enough excuse to hold on to hope that everything she loved wasn’t on the verge of crumbling in her hands.

Eventually, she’d been successful with that task. She hadn’t expected to, not when she was standing over the whisper-sad sleeping face of Raymond Gordon, high school Advanced Placement English teacher. But there it was, all of a sudden, the labradorite-glitter of the Marcasite Crystal appearing in her open hands, the warmth of it fanning back into her chest where the wind had blown cold all these long months. Mr. Gordon had had it. It didn’t quite seem right or real to her, Mr. Gordon had just been... -- Dylan had always hated Mr. Gordon, and vice versa, she suspected, but she hadn’t really minded --

The point was, the Marcasite Crystal was back just as it belonged, which was what seemed most unreal about it. It had simply appeared -- just like that. It was so straightforward and simple. It felt so easy, so agonizingly goddamned easy. It felt too easy for -- for how very, painfully much it was costing --

But no. She was reasonable. She was practical. She was fine. She might lose Alex, Hector, Ares, Aphrodite, all for the sake of the Marcasite Crystal, but no, she was fine. No amount of wishing made it acceptable to let things go on forever as they were. No amount of fear -- of despair -- of love -- made it acceptable to stand idly by and hope for a miracle while so many innocent lives slept on, caged in their dreamworld, unable to escape. With the Marcasite Crystal finally safe once more, there was no excuse to keep stalling for time. Cora knew when it was time to let go. She wasn’t too weak to accept it.

She was strong. Always strong. She could do it, she could lift the Pyrite curse -- she just had to believe in herself. She was strong. She could move a mountain. She could do what she had to do -- for the people who believed in her, the friends who had made room in their hearts to love her -- for the people who didn’t believe in her, the people who had no reason to like her at all -- and for the people she didn’t know at all. There were so very many people waiting for an end.

Be the change you want to see in the world, the saying went.

And so she would be. But there were loose ends to see to, first.

* * * *

Cora didn’t have the first idea about how to catch a stray cat. She’d tried a few times, with outstretched hands (she was too slow), or with baby-talk cajoling (she was too unfriendly), but she’d had a resounding lack of success thus far.

Her latest attempt had been a ratty, mangy-looking thing with tiger-speckles all around its face and a growl to it that said that it meant business. She respected that -- she even empathized with it being such a tiny creature -- but all the same, she had managed to chase it up a tree, and now she was faced with the daunting prosect of luring it back down, which seemed like it might not happen.

"Sssspsss, ssspsssss, spsssss," she murmured hopefully. "Come on down here, don’t you want this sandwich? Yummy sandwich."

Cora was holding out her lunch, a pastrami-on-rye sandwich partly wrapped in a napkin, and begging the cat to take mercy on her, when suddenly something very heavy knocked into her from behind and sent her sprawling out on the concrete. She picked herself partway up on her hands (one of which had crushed the sandwich) with an immediate glare, and twisted to see what had happened.

"Excuse me," she immediately started in.

Cora was tired. That was all, she was tired. The stress was getting to her. She'd been prepared to unleash her typical levels of aggressive annoyance on the stranger who'd knocked her down, all raring to go with a good string of barked admonishments -- but then the culprit had just turned out to be a big dog, and it had been attached to a very polite young woman -- and the politeness itself had been so utterly simple and unexpected that, instead, Cora found herself sighing with heretofore untapped stores of quiet relief.

Someone was being nice. Why was that so wonderful and remarkable? People were nice all the time, even when Cora didn't deserve it. When had she gotten this urge to cling to the first stranger who offered her a kind word?

It made her feel awkward. Well, everything made her feel awkward, it sometimes seemed. She went ahead as usual. "No, no," she said, "that's alright. It's just a sandwich from home. Don't worry about it."

Cora's mother was still laid up in Destiny City Memorial Hospital, haloed by vital statistics monitors and serenaded by the high, thudding beep of her EKG feed. There were no lunches now like she used to pack for Cora, sandwiches cut into triangles and stars, crusts cut off and baked into sticks of garlic bread. There were no surprise 'I love you! Have a great day!' notes written on her napkin for her to discover at the lunch table while she and Ronnie traded for each other's drinks. There was no Mom, and there was no Ronnie. Just Cora and a few slices of pastrami and some rye bread, and mixing Folgers Crystals for Dad's coffee thermos before he drifted back off to work in the morning, to haunt the real estate office for a few hours instead of the hospital, or home.

It was just a sandwich. She let the other girl help her to her feet, without even pointing out (as she usually would've) that she didn't need any help and could manage it on her own. (Imagine, she thought to herself. This late in life, and I'm finally making progress on being friendlier to people. Someone, somewhere, would probably be impressed if they knew.)

"I'm Cora Grant," she said, with tired eyes and a smile that was a little dead around the edges. "I go to Meadowview. Are you in school?" She had the feeling that some, if not all, of what she was saying was being drowned out by the barking dog.

Cora could use a bit more than a pick-me-up, but it wasn't going to happen any time soon. What she was going to have to settle for was Zia Connolly, who went to Sovereign Heights and had a dog and wanted to buy her lunch. Simple human decency. It was nice. Too nice to resist.

"Thanks, actually -- actually that would be great," she said. "I think there's a Japanese place down the block that has outdoor seating. You know, since you've got your dog." Cora watched as Zia picked up the fragmented remains of her cell phone, daintily, piece by crunched piece. She appreciated the care that the older girl was taking to make sure nothing was left behind for barefoot children or animals to run afoul of. This Zia Connolly, in Cora's opinion, was a quality sort. Maybe she was just biased because she was offering her lunch, but Cora liked her.

Wait -- the first fronds of a newly budded idea started to unfurl in her mind. Zia could be a good candidate . . . No. No, that would be a hasty decision. They'd just met.

But Cora was so tired of chasing cats and sitting at hospital beds. And Zia was so nice.

"So, you go to Sovereign Heights -- do you like it?" Cora asked, trying to keep up the idle conversation. She found herself continuing, "My boyfriend was going to go there. I didn't know if I was going to go to DCU or not -- I still had a lot of time to think about it." Then, after a pause, "It doesn't really matter now."

Well, that was laying it on thick, Cora. What am I thinking? I hardly know her. If she has any sense, she'll change her mind about lunch right now and excuse herself. When had Cora become one of those weird people on the street who randomly overshared with strangers? (And chased stray cats. And was therefore probably a few springs short of a watch.)

Cora led them around a corner, listening to Zia describe her education and her future plans. It sounded nice, and like the older girl had everything neatly planned; Cora found herself a little envious. How long had it been since she'd sounded so confident in her own future? How long since the biggest worry on her mind had been getting into her first-choice college?

She'd never been meant to, she supposed. She wasn't really Corinna Grant, high school student, and she wasn't meant to go to college and have a career and marry the boy she was in love with. She was meant for her life and responsibilities back in the Black Moon Kingdom. All this, this current life she led, was just a farce in order to carry out a mission. Why had she ever let herself dream about colleges and photography careers? Foolish. But it would end soon. It didn't really matter.

"I think it's great that you've got everything planned," she told Zia as they were getting seated at one of the restaurant's outdoor tables. "I hope it all works out for you."

She sensed that she couldn't avoid the heavier question, the one that had been hanging in the air as they walked. The question of why Dylan, and Cora, and Dylan-and-Cora, were past-tense. After a few seconds, eyes downcast as though she were still pretending to look at the menu, she explained, "My boyfriend had a drug problem. He got pulled out of public school and sent to Hillworth -- " It occured to Cora that, being homeschooled and having moved some time recently, Zia might not know the region. "Hillworth Prep, it's a reform program -- a real juvie of a school, practically -- but that just made him miserable, so the drugs only got worse."

She folded her menu over to the next page, which she equally wasn't looking at. "He was bottoming out, and I told him he had to get clean." Cora paused, a little defensively. A little guiltily. "I just... didn't want to see him throw his life away, you know? I wasn't trying to be mean. And he managed for a little while, but then -- he fell off the wagon, I guess. Maybe on purpose -- but we broke up, and by the next day, he was in a coma. The coma everyone's in. So he's not going to Sovereign Heights or anywhere else."

"It's alright," Cora answered her, which was a classic lie -- it was a thing you said. The truth was, people were often sorry about things that weren't their fault in the first place, sorry not because they were responsible but merely to say, 'I wish circumstances weren't so crappy.' "I'm sorry" was a thing you said -- it was a kind thing you said. And Zia was certainly that. So "it's alright," was also a thing you said -- when it wouldn't be kind at all to say, "well, there's nothing you can do."

There was nothing -- almost nothing -- mostly nothing -- that Zia could do. And she was so kind, right now, that Cora wasn't sure she could bring herself to demand the one thing that she could. Zia could be a host. There was just one more soul that Nehelenia intended to bring over. One last.

She looked down at her menu, thumbing through the pages -- and belatedly realized that maybe she shouldn't have chosen a Japanese restaurant. A knot formed in her throat.

Cora had first met Fallon Novette-Naim at a sushi-making class that she herself had taken mostly on a lark. Fallon had become a friend, first, and then a trusted companion, someone she could rely on. She was tidy, fastidious, and full of admirable amounts of conviction -- all in all, she had been a perfect choice for Selene's Sailor Ares.

And then, also -- she had a firm, un-self-conscious laugh. Fallon had laughed when Cora had rolled tekka maki inside-out, winding up with a roll of rice and seaweed plus a few squashed strips of tuna. She had a ready smile. Fallon had smiled at her when Cora had hopefully presented her with an experimental piece of sashimi that consisted of peanut butter, mayonnaise, and salmon. She was brave and generous. With a firm nod, she had fearlessly knocked back the peanut-butter-mayo-salmon concoction, even though it had been verifiably disgusting, and she'd probably known that before even picking it up. (Cora had not been particularly fantastic at inventing sushi recipes.) Fallon had been beautiful. Fallon had been a friend. Cora had taken advantage of her, crammed a second soul down her throat and tasked her to fight a war. And now Fallon was not here.

Why now was Cora shying away from considering someone -- someone who seemed to have at least a few admirable qualities -- just because they were too nice, too undeserving of having to take to the battlefield? She felt guilty and ashamed of her hesitation. She had forced it on her two best friends in the world, and on a complete stranger, without question. She couldn't very well change now. Ronnie deserved better. Fallon deserved better. Madison deserved better. For the sakes of her fine, noble, courageous, perfect soldiers, Nehelenia could not turn back now.

Well, then. Zia was a candidate, like it or not.

Cora ordered her lunch, a bento box combo, and waited for the waiter to see to Zia and depart again. When he had gone, she looked up at her new companion with new scrutiny and renewed interest. "So, let's not have a depressing conversation over lunch, that probably causes indigestion. Tell me -- what kinds of things do you do for fun?"