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One of the benefits to so few people witnessing Belos’s final defeat was that it allowed for a very carefully crafted narrative.
As far as the majority of the Boiling Isles were concerned, Emperor Belos was killed by The Collector on the Day of Unity after his draining spell failed. The Collector had taken over control, but, after a few months of holding the entire isles hostage, they’d had a change of heart and departed for different stars. The Titan’s altered positioning was nothing more than a result of the god-child’s overenthusiastic decorating spree, and the children who helped free the puppets and give their puppeteer the last push to redemption were simply in the right place at the right time. The real hero of the rebellion, then, was Raine Whispers , founder of CATS and architect behind the emperor's destruction. It was them who had infiltrated the ranks of Belos’s inner circle, turned fellow coven heads Darius Deamonee and Eberwolf to their side, and then sounded the alarm on the Day of Unity and brought Belos’s whole scheme crashing down.
Raine hated the attention, of course, just as much as Eda found it hilarious, but honestly? Luz was just relieved it wasn’t them. Maybe when they first arrived at the Boiling Isles, she would’ve wished for nothing more than to be applauded as the hero who saved the lands, with statues and temples and feasts in her honor. Over time, however, the Boiling Isles became so much more to her than some fantasy wish-fulfillment device; it became a home . Right now, nothing would’ve made her feel less welcome in her home than hero worship. If she had to worry about interviews and banquets and autographs every time she stepped outside like Raine did, she might’ve just followed through on her promise to her mom and stayed in the Human Realm for good. She didn’t need to be a grand Defeater-of-Belos or divine Titan-Jesus - she just wanted to be Luz.
That’s not to say it was all smooth sailing, of course. The Boiling Isles were, to put it lightly, totalled. If the chaos of the Day of Unity and The Collector’s occupation hadn’t already wrecked the Isles, Belos taking The Titan for a joyride definitely did. It was hard to find a building that wasn’t in some way, shape, or form somehow damaged by the final battle, even in places that had hardly moved. The structures that had sustained the least damage from Belos, unfortunately enough, were often monuments dedicated to him or the Emperor's Coven, built like the authoritarian fortresses they were. While this made them ideal staging grounds for the reparation efforts, it also meant there was a great deal of cathartic statue destruction to go around.
More important than buildings and monuments, however, was the cultural rebuilding that needed to take place. Belos had been Emperor for over eighty years. He’d been a political extremist and terrorist for hundreds of years before that, desecrating sacred spaces and tormenting Wild Magic communities. Figureheads had been petrified. Books had been burned. They didn’t just want to rebuild the Isles to the state it was before the Day of Unity; they wanted to restore the Isles to its golden ages, hundreds and hundreds of years ago. So much of that history was already on its way back - in Palistrom Groves and Track-Mixing and the archived annals Amity had discovered buried in the depths of the Forbidden Stacks - but just as much of it was simply lost. Gone, even despite Lilith’s best efforts to restore it. One way or another, the Boiling Isles would never be the same again.
But maybe - just maybe - that was okay. Maybe they could build it better .
As the reconstruction of the Boiling Isles neared its completion, more and more resources were able to be diverted to less essential infrastructure. It warmed Luz’s heart, seeing how much progress they’d made over the years. Food and water previously sent to refugee camps were rerouted to markets and surpluses instead. Medicine and supplies centralized in a few critical areas were able to be redistributed across the isles, resettling communities in lands previously lost. Manpower dedicated to rebuilding old homes and towns was redirected to building new parks and schools.
Or, in this case, a Museum Wing for the Bonesborough Library.
Luz was ecstatic for the museum wing’s completion, really, she was. She’d spent many long hours working with Hooty on the plans for the Glyph Exhibit, scratching out plaques for presentations and decals for displays. She was so excited to see the upcoming student exhibits, although Bump hadn’t signed off on those yet. There were plans for a number of rotating exhibitions, too, such as ones on the Human Realm or on ‘Lost Traditions Of The Isles.’ While Luz couldn’t spend every second helping the construction in Bonesborough while also finishing out her senior year at Gravesfield High, she made every second she could count.
It was just- well, Luz had one small criticism of the construction. In order to make room for the connections from the library to the museum, a number of the Bonesborough Library’s stacks had to be relocated, and multiple of the walls and rooms had to be rearranged. This affected area included the previously established Romance Section… as well as Amity Blight’s secret study.
“Really, Luz, it's fine ,” her super-awesome girlfriend promised as she pulled the secret switch and slid open the passageway to her hidden lair. “I barely spend any time back here these days, anyways.”
“It's not fine!” Luz exclaimed, struggling to flail her hands about appropriately while still balancing a number of empty boxes in her arms. “This is, like, your office! They’re evicting you!”
Amity laughed, pulling Luz through the door before spinning to place her own boxes on the central desk against the far wall. “It’s more of a clubhouse than an office,” she mused, fiddling with a hair tie on her wrist as she gave a brief glance around the room. “The airship is better suited for my work area nowadays.”
“I still think it's so cool you built your own airship,” Luz gushed, taking the time to place her boxes on the floor and conduct her own survey around the room. The secret room looked much like she remembered it from the long hours she’d spent here with Amity throughout the past four years. Tall stacks of books and loose papers scattered the shelves and floor, and well defined indents were seared into place on their respective bean bag chairs in the corner. Where there would’ve once been dreamy romance novels and cheesy fantasy stories, however, were the dusty memoirs of wild witches and thick records of cities now ruins. Luz admired her girlfriend’s nerdy dedication to rekindling her apprenticeship with Lilith and helping the older witch restore the history and culture of the isles, but she wasn’t sure how her love could stand to sit through pages and pages of the dry historical texts. “But that’s not the point!” she continued, snapping her thoughts back to the current injustice of Amity’s outright expulsion from her first real home. “This place was yours for so long! Your safe haven away from your family! You can’t say it doesn’t hurt a little to have it taken away from you.”
Amity only shook her head, already setting to work on tidying up her desk and packing away her cute little office supplies into one of the smaller boxes. “I can always badger Lilith into giving me a new office,” she offered, but Luz was pretty sure she was just doing it to mollify Luz more than any actual sense of victimization. “Can you start with getting the stars on the ceiling down? We can work through the books together after that.”
“Of course!” Luz said, although a teasing smirk quickly rose to her face. “I’m not sure how you got them up there in the first place, to be honest. Can you even reach the ceiling?”
Amity shot Luz a mock glare, sticking her tongue out at her girlfriend. She hadn’t worn her heeled booties today, and Luz’s two inch height difference was showing. “I used an abomination, obviously,” she grumbled. “Beanpole.”
Luz ahhed, snickering at the thought of Top Student Amity Blight bossing a gooey golem into interior decorating as they plucked the stringed lights down from the ceiling one-by-one. “That makes sense. My guess was you stood on the chair, but I forgot you were a magical supergenius. Shorty.”
Amity blushed, fumbling with a candlestick holder as she crammed the last of the things on the desk away. “Oh, no, I wasn’t tall enough back then to reach the ceiling, even with the chair. And you’re not that much taller than me!”
Luz blinked, pausing at the last string of lights. “Wait, how old were you when you got this room? I assumed Malphas gave it to you after you started reading to kids, but that wasn’t that long before I met you, was it?”
“It was given to me not that long after I had to end my friendship with Willow, actually,” Amity corrected, ducking under the desk to scoop up a pair of slippers on the ground. “Mother would drop me off at the library to study and then monitor me through her necklace, so I didn’t have many options for getting away. Malphas noticed and approached her and Bump about having me proctor part-time for extra credit, then gave me the room as a place to get away from her and the twins. I didn’t start working as a Children’s Librarian until later.”
“Aw, that was nice of him!” Pulling the last string down, Luz set to work laying them all out in the same box as Amity’s office supplies. The little stars and planets reminded her of the glow-in-the-dark stickers Amity had added to Luz’s bunk bed in the human realm, and Luz took a moment to touch the moon necklace around her neck to make sure it was still there. “I’ve only met Malphas a couple of times, really, but he always seemed like someone who cared a lot about you. Even when I was trying to get your job back after he fired you, he mostly just talked about how hurt he felt. And I mean, he talked a lot .”
Amity giggled, nodding in understanding. “Yeah, he’s definitely a talker.” She sighed, laying the slippers out on top of the now closed box. “He had a pretty good reason to be upset, though. Most of the books in here now came from the Forbidden Stacks, and we would’ve gotten in serious trouble with the Emperor's Coven if they had known we still had any of this stuff. Plus, there’s some pretty serious monsters lurking in the lower levels. Echo Mice and Paper Dragons would’ve been the least of our worries.”
Luz shrugged. “Guess you could say it was just another near-death adventure for the books , eh?”
Amity groaned. “Come on, we can start clearing out the books here now. Just keep the fiction and non-fiction separated, and I’ll go through the rest with Lilith later.”
“You got it, boo!” Luz cheered, setting to work shifting through the thick tomes. It was harder than she expected, picking apart what was fantasy story and what was fantasy history when all the books revolved around witchcraft and magic, but she’d gotten enough of a sense of Amity’s tastes over the years that she was able to tell the cheesier romance novels apart from the historical eulogies. “But hey, that means you’ve had this room for over ten years!” they belatedly registered, running the numbers in their head. “You’re really not angry about being kicked out of the room you’ve owned for over half your life ?”
“Not really, no,” Amity frowned. “The ventilation in here isn’t great, so it always gets really stuffy during the dry season. It gets dusty really fast, too, and the custodial staff don’t come in here so I have to clean it all myself. It’s kind of out-of-the-way and isolated, so I can’t get a hold of Lilith very quickly when I’m working, or you when I want to hang out. It's not even really that private , plenty of people have found the door completely by accident, not even counting the twins!” She shrugged, adding, “it's good for when I want to be alone, but my airship is better these days anyways. Nothing can compare to the complete, utter freedom it offers. Like I said, I don’t really spend a ton of time here these days anyways.”
“Hmm. Yeah, okay.”
Amity must’ve caught her melancholy, though, because she gave them a strange look. “Are… you upset about me being kicked out?”
“Maybe a little,” Luz admitted. “ I know it's yours and not mine, but this room was still kind of important to me. I mean, so much of our actual friendship-friendship was forged here, it kind of feels like the birthplace of our relationship in a way. But it’s not just that…” Luz blew out sharply through her nose, thinking about how best to word it. “I’m more worried that you’re not upset by this. I mean, this place was your sanctuary - I know from experience how much it sucks to lose a safe place like this. I also know you can struggle to process your emotions sometimes, so I guess I just want to make sure you’re not-upset about this for the right reasons, and not just because you feel like you have to be okay with it.”
Amity hummed in understanding, giving Luz a grateful smile as she thought it over herself. “I don’t know,” she huffed at last. It sounded more sad than Luz had expected it to, and it briefly took them aback. “I mean, you’re not wrong. This room was my sanctuary for a really long time, but I was also… kind of miserable for most of it. I was safe here, but I wasn’t really happy . Just… hiding.” She shrugged. “I didn’t form any good memories in this room until after I shared it with you, and at that point I had you and Willow and Gus. I guess I stopped needing it so much.”
“Oh, yeah,” Luz realized, feeling a little ashamed at her own insensitivity. “I’m sorry. I guess I’ve had so much fun here, I forgot this hasn’t always been a great place for you.”
Amity bit her lip, her cute oversized fang poking out in the way that always made Luz want to kiss it. “I am going to miss our secret Azura Book Clubs meetings,” she compromised, “and our… other secret meetings. But that time was important to me because of who I spent it with, not where I spent it. I’m still going to have that person with me for… well, hopefully a long time. We can always find a new secret hideout.”
“Aww, sweet potato!” Amity was blushing bright red, so Luz gave in to her temptations and pulled her in for a quick kiss. “I’d love to find a new secret hideout with you! It’ll be hard to beat your airship, of course, but that’s the fun part! Do you think we could build a treehouse in the Grom Tree? Maybe Hooty would let us repurpose the old Tunnel of Love!”
“Well, we only have to wait a few months, and then we’ll have a whole dorm room to ourselves,” Amity pointed out, but she hesitated, bouncing on her feet a little bit. “If it really bothers you, I can always talk to Lilith about alternate configurations for the Museum Wing,” she offered. “I mean, this room is that special to you too. I don’t want to take it away from you either.”
“No, no! It's okay!” Luz reassured her, waving off her concerns as she set herself back to the books. “I’m just projecting, that’s all. Mom and I are starting to pack up my bedroom for the move to the University this summer, and I guess I’m starting to feel a little nostalgic.”
“I get it,” Amity said, bumping shoulders with Luz as she switched from one box to another. “I’m excited, but I’m also really anxious. I’m looking forward to things being new and different, but I wouldn’t mind staying where it's slow and comfortable a little while longer.”
“Yeah.” Luz agreed, fumbling to close the lid to a now full box of books. “It's weird, cause it's not really equivalent, but it feels like it did after we beat Belos, when the glyphs stopped working and everyone went home. Everything’s changing all over again. The Boiling Isles are finally getting back on their feet. Everyone’s graduating school. We’re enrolled in Eda’s new University, Willow’s going pro with Flyer Derby, Hunter’s apprenticeship with Mr. Clawthorne is almost over, Gus is teaching . It's all good change, yeah, but it’s still-”
“-scary,” Amity finished, nodding. “I’m so looking forward to getting out of Blight Manor for good, but I’m also terrified of being on my own. I don’t know if I’m ready to be an adult.”
“Not on your own,” Luz corrected, “we’ll have each other. No matter what.”
Amity smiled, ears fluttering. “I’m looking forward to spending more time with you. Which is silly, cause we already spend so much time together, but like, living together.”
“That’s not silly!” Luz argued, “I’m looking forward to that too.” Sealing up their current box, Luz realized that they were starting to dig into more and more of Amity’s personal reading versus her work related research. One particular item grabbed her attention. “Ooo, were you reading about human traditions?” they cooed, snatching up a book tucked away on a low-lying shelf and quickly flipping through it. It was a newer book, one not borrowed from Gus’s collection like Luz had initially assumed, and a very heavily annotated section immediately caught her eye. “Wait, why were you researching Quinceaneras?”
“No reason!” Amity blurted, snatching the book back from Luz in a heartbeat. “Just for… for King! I mean, his fifteenth birthday is coming sooner than later, right?”
Luz gasped. “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh! I mean, he’s only twelve, so that's still years away, but that’s genius , Amity! Do you think he would want to wear a dress? I know he’s always been a lot more fluid with his gender, but I wouldn’t want to impose anything! Would Eda want to stand in for the Father-Daughter dance? Would The Collector attend?”
Amity reached over to squeeze her hand, smiling sweetly. “I think they’d all love to,” she answered, this time taking initiative and leaning up to kiss Luz. “Especially if they knew how important it was to you.”
It was almost a daily occurrence at this point, but Luz was hit by a wave of love and affection for her awesome, awesome girlfriend. It blew their mind how sweet and affectionate their girlfriend was. She’d come so far from the cagey, scared child she’d been when they’d first met, molded into an identity she didn’t want by her parents. She was still sassy and brilliant, yes, but also so kind and so compassionate. Luz had fallen head over heels long ago, starting from the very first time she’d seen Amity’s true, buried self, and those feelings hadn’t ebbed in the slightest. More than anything, they couldn’t wrap their head around the fact that Amity liked them back . Amity really loved them, really felt at home in their family. She took Luz’s mami out for lunch once a week and ran potions orders for Eda when her headmaster workload got too heavy and started plans for King’s 15th birthday three years in advance-
Yeah, Luz was whipped.
Shaking her head out of her ruminations, Luz forced herself back to work before Amity noticed her stagnation. The two worked in a contented silence for the next few shelves, but Luz struck gold a few minutes later. The covers were curled and fraying, and a number of pages featured small nicks and tears, but they were as beautiful as the day Luz had first laid eyes on them. “Behold!” she declared dramatically, accidentally making Amity jump on the other side of the room, “the sacred texts!”
Amity glanced over and, upon seeing what Luz was gesturing to, gasped with an appropriate amount of reverence. “The Good Witch Azura: Books One Through Four?!”
“In the flesh!” Luz confirmed, before she and Amity both burst into giggles. The books had been well-loved over the years, and many memories bubbled up at Luz’s fingertips. “I’m surprised you never bought yourself the other books while in the Human Realm,” Luz admitted after the laughter had died down.
“I never saw a reason to. I enjoyed sharing a copy with you.” Amity took one of the books from Luz, running a hand down its cover. “We mostly read them together, and any time I wanted to go through one of the later editions, I could just borrow it from you. Plus, yours were all signed, so…”
“Well, of course!” Luz beamed, glancing back at the beanbag chairs where the Azura Book Club had originally met. “It's hard to believe we first bonded over these so long ago. Like, pre- us us. I can barely remember a time when we weren’t a thing.”
“I can,” Amity groaned. “I had such a massive crush on you. Reading through book six together just about killed me.”
Luz laughed, resting her head against Amity’s for a moment. “We haven’t had a chance to do anything like that in a while,” they mourned. “We’ve both been so busy with school and adulting, even when we get a chance to rest, we’re not taking the time to read.”
“Well, we’ll have plenty of time this summer,” Amity pointed out. “We could set aside a day every week for just the two of us? Bring back the Book Club?”
“That would be awesome!” Luz agreed excitedly, carefully laying the Azura books to rest in their own dedicated box. “We should try and find some new books, though. I mean, I love Azura, but I can’t believe we never read through more books from the Boiling Isles! We went through the Azura books about a thousand times, and all of the Azura fanfiction we could find, and branched off into a couple of other human series, but we only touched on a handful of novels from the Demon Realm at all!”
Amity gave a small, helpless shrug. “There weren’t a lot of fantasy authors around during Belos’s reign,” she said sadly, moving on to her last box. “Human authors get to feature a lot of creativity in their literature about the rules of magic and how it can be used, but that kind of writing here would’ve fallen under Wild Magic and gotten you imprisoned. Most of the options we would’ve had to read were stories glorifying the coven system, and that’s…”
“Yesh,” Luz summarized, pouting. “I guess fascist regimes aren’t great for the arts, huh.”
“Nah,” Amity laughed. “I think there’s some older fantasy books from the Formerly-Savage Ages on the last shelf, though. I was going through them the other night, and I thought those could be a good candidate for our next read.”
“Really?!” Luz sprung over in a heartbeat, crouching down to take a look. She found the book series almost immediately, pulling the one with a jewel-embellished ‘one’ off the display and cracking it open. It had a leather cover featuring two female witches locked in an intense duel, and thumbing through the pages revealed long, flowery prose and multiple hand-drawn illustrations. “This looks good- oh!”
A slip of paper fell out of the book, fluttering to the ground. Luz bent down to pick it up, noticing it didn’t match the rest of the pages of the book. Written across it was a list of signatures, scrawled out in multiple rows from top to bottom across the entire page. At first, Luz thought it was some kind of petition, but she quickly realized, flushing brightly, that all the names were a combination of hers and Amity’s. Luz Blight had been written and then promptly, furiously scribbled out. A few variations of Amity Blight-Noceda and Amity Noceda-Blight dotted the page, but neither seemed particularly well liked. The vast majority of the signatures, instead, were stylized versions of Amity Noceda . At least one of them had an ‘i’ dotted with a heart, and multiple were done in very beautiful calligraphy.
‘ Woah ,’ Luz thought dumbly, flipping the paper over to check the other side. Which turned out to be a massive mistake, because the other side had an extraordinarily detailed drawing of her in a stark white suit and Amity in a wedding dress .
“Luz?” Amity’s voice called from the other side of the room. “Is something wrong?”
“ Nope! ” Luz squeaked, frantically shoving the paper into a pocket before Amity could see. Oh Titan, she had to take a picture of this. She had to get this framed . She had to get this scanned onto her computer and then tattooed somewhere on her body. She had to have a very long talk with her mama and Eda and maybe Amity’s older siblings, and then she had to buy a ring-
-she had to buy a ring.
Luz had thought about marriage before, of course she had. It was impossible to date a girl like Amity and not be constantly thinking about spending the rest of their lives together. Their thoughts had never been anything more than high school fantasies, though. Doodles during class, daydreams on long drives, late night imaginings while running their hands through her girlfriend’s hair - never something they’d given any serious consideration.
Now, though… Luz wondered.
There were still a million reasons why Luz knew the answer should ‘wait’ - her and Amity still being only eighteen at the top of them. Neither she nor Amity had graduated high school yet, let alone college. While Amity had spent so many nights at the Noceda household that she’d developed her own drawer in Luz’s dresser and a dedicated plate in the kitchen, the two of them had yet to share their own permanent living space. Neither of them had any strong plans for their futures beyond attending the University of Wild Magic - Luz hadn’t even picked a major yet - and neither of them knew what would come after college. The logical thing to do would be to wait until this period of changes passed before taking their next big step together.
Luz found, however, that she couldn’t bring herself to care. There wasn’t a single thing in either realm that would shake the utter love and devotion she felt for Amity. She couldn’t think of a single reason why she would change her mind or regret her decision. How many times in the past hour had she done nothing but gush over how much she was looking forward to having Amity in her life? How many times had Amity gushed over the exact same thing? No matter what the future held, Luz knew she wanted Amity in it.
So… why wait?
Forcing down a giddy giggle, Luz shoved those thoughts firmly into the back of her mind. Later. She could unpack her firm, unwavering conviction to marry Amity Blight later . Oh Titan, she was going to marry- no, later. Unpack it later. Quickly shoving the last few books into an overstuffed box, Luz forced the lid shut and took a step back from the empty shelves. “Is that everything?” they asked, hoping their voice didn’t betray the insane, earth-shattering revelation they’d just had.
“I think so,” Amity said, taking her own step back and giving the room one last sweep. “We can carry the beanbags to the Children’s Corner, and I can have an abomination roll up the rug, but…” she sighed, sitting up on the desk and adopting a rather sad look.
Luz didn’t waste any time in joining her, hopping up onto the desk and wrapping an arm around her girlfriend’s shoulders. Amity leaned into the touch, and the two of them just sat there in silence for a moment, listening to the sounds of the preliminary construction outside. The space looked surprisingly lifeless without the little knick-knacks and details that had given it its lived-in look. Luz knew it was just four walls and a ceiling, but she couldn’t help but feel like it looked wrong . Rooms weren’t meant to be empty.
“I think I am going to miss this room,” Amity admitted at last, “or what it represented, at least. Maybe I wasn’t happy here, but it was still safe. It was stable. I could deal with school, and my parents, and hating myself, and then come back here and everything would be a little more okay. I could read my stories and pretend I was somewhere else. Someone else. It was a constant.
“But now, I feel like I’m losing that stability. So much is changing again, and I don’t know what will still be here when it stops. I don’t know if college will work out, or what we’ll do next, or who will still be around when everything gets busy. I don’t…” her voice broke for a moment, but she swallowed and finished, “I don’t know what’s going to happen next.”
“I’ll still be here,” Luz vowed without hesitation. “I’ll be your constant.”
“Can you really promise that?” Amity whispered quietly. “Our relationship is going to change when we move in together. Maybe it won’t be a bad change, but it’ll still be change. What if we argue a lot more? What if we need more time apart? How can you really know it’ll work out?”
“Because I know us,” Luz answered easily, rolling her newfound conviction over in her head, “and I know that no matter what happens next, or no matter what we face, or what goes wrong, we can fix it together.”
“...we can fix it together,” Amity repeated, big smile returning. “Thank you, Luz. I love you.”
“I love you too, sweet potato.” The words never felt any less important, or rolled off her tongue with any less affection, but somehow they meant more this time.
“Come on,” Amity said, pulling Luz up to her feet. “I’m not done using you for free manual labor yet. We’ve still got to get these books out to my airship and then the furniture back into the commons, and we can’t use Abominations on any of it besides the rug or they’ll get goop all over the pages.”
“Is that all I am to you? Free labor?” Luz groaned, throwing her body weight onto Amity and attempting to drag her to the floor. Her stupidly strong girlfriend easily supported her, however, and smacked her on the forehead with a kiss before dropping her. “Weh!”
“Come on , Luz,” Amity laughed, hefting a couple of boxes into her arms and pushing open the door. “Or I’m telling Matt we’re waiting on you to start construction.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming!” Luz sprung up, grabbing a box of her own and making for the door. She stopped on the threshold, sparing one last glance at the hideout that had served for so much of the foundation for her future. ‘ Goodbye, ultimate secret hideaway, ’ Luz thought. Then she turned and followed Amity out into whatever came next.