Eris held the spark that had once been Toland like she often held the shard of Ahamkara bone: carefully, aware that each wish had its price.
“Is this the shape you wanted when you left us?” she asked softly. “Have you been exalted?”
“You are dying,” Toland said, not unkindly.
“As I have been for long years. Still, I negotiate between the Queen and the Hidden and the night sky full of swords. I ask again. Is this what you wanted?”
She could not feel the spark against her palms. Once she had held him when he was human, warm skin and beating heart. All Light-made, all stitched together in gold, of course, but more human perhaps than either of them were now. Or had she become moreso as he became a ghost?
“I have learned the song. I have learned that the singers were mere servants. But now …” Toland’s echoing voice trailed away.
“You fear you have become a servant yourself,” Eris said.
“Oh, to glory in the possibility! To serve the ancient queen … but. Yes. As usual, you are right about the action. The true trouble is, merely … I fear.”
As usual, Eris thought, our truths emerge splintered. She could not soothe mad fears, did not want to.
“I will not ask you to sing to other worlds with me again,” Toland said.
“It has been long, strange years. Sometimes I feel I have become the song,” she said, and bowed her head.
“Lucky squanderer,” Toland said. Static prickled against her mouth. She shook her head and let him sit close, and the warmth was almost human, the embrace almost tangible. All truths, splintered and mild and second-hand.
When she left she felt energized, not as if anything had been squandered at all, and she carried that energy to her secret work, and she carried Savathun’s death in her pocket.