To Jamie's credit, she drives decently enough to get herself and Nathan to Veronika's indicated location in one piece. She still exceeds the speed limit too much for comfort, but the Icelandic Ring Road isn't nearly as traffic-packed as the average road in Morales, which works wonders for her driving. Nathan doesn't feel like vomiting when he steps out of the car this time.

He could've done without the final bit of off-roading, though (Yeah, I know it's a four-wheel drive and this means we can walk less, Jamie, but you're still driving in a fucking meadow).

But they get there unharmed and as well-prepared as they can be, setting out on a hike that should take them an hour or so. Nathan makes sure he's in charge of the map Veronika drew, not trusting Jamie to navigate them in otherwise unmarked territory, and he miraculously manages to bring them where they need to be: that small mountain cave Veronika found in the middle of nowhere.

The hike has left them sweaty and gross, but it's cool inside the cave itself, cold and dark and musty. The space isn't difficult to pass through, doesn't require any technical hiking expertise; Nathan imagines those who built Nikulasson's little tomb wanted to make sure they could get to and from the site without too much trouble. A ten-minute, flashlight-guided walk brings him and Jamie to the bishop's final resting place—a small mausoleum hewn out of the cave's wall.

A crumbling stone coffin stands hidden in the shadows. Time must've destroyed the remains it contained long ago, but Nathan doesn't bother to look closely through the cracked lid. When he places the grimoire back inside, peace comes over him, a sensation he feels in his body, in his scar and even his very soul, as if balance has been restored to the Universe. It tells him they made the right choice, that Jamie's plan was successful and nothing dead continues to roam Veronika Lockhardt's property.

They leave the mausoleum behind wordlessly, then, and take a break once they're in the chilly outside again, sitting down on craggy rocks strewn about. With the view they have, moving on without admiring it would be a crime.

Nathan thinks he can see half of Iceland from this mountain—green fields and pine forests, a river snaking through the scenery, and rugged mountains in the background, still sporting snow. The quiet road they took to get here looks so far away. It almost surprises him Veronika didn't want to come here again, that she didn't want to see this a second time, but maybe it's a good thing he's here with Jamie alone. He doesn't actually mind that at all.

They spread an assortment of snacks out between them; Nathan takes snack duty very seriously. They have chocolate cookies, a bag of chips, and those pre-packaged sandwiches he wouldn't dream of buying were he in the comfort of his own home because they taste like cardboard. Nathan takes a sip from the bottle of an Icelandic soft drink Jamie bought (of course I don't know what's in it, Nathan, the colour just looked pretty) and approves of the taste. It's weird but kind of sweet and that's a combination he finds he enjoys.

"So I guess it's over now, isn't it?" he voices out loud; the realisation hits him out of nowhere. It is over. The book's back where it belongs and everything comes to an end. There's a finality to it that should make sense, but now, sitting here, he isn't sure how to feel.

Jamie looks up from her phone, ceasing her editing of the picture she took of the scenery; she'd been messing with lighting and saturation and a whole bunch of filters Nathan never even knew existed. "In theory, yes. In practice? No."

And Nathan, for once, understands exactly what she means. It's been less than a week since they sank a whole damn yacht even though it feels like years have passed. It's been less than a week since Nathan killed Derek, less than a week since magic ate the corpse alive. That magic left a wound on his own body, a permanent reminder of the price he had to pay for his shot at a new start. He sees Derek's corpse in nightmares, on a sundeck or a kitchen floor. His wound stings, though the ache is starting to dull, and perhaps the scar will fade in time.

And it has, of course, been less than a week since Jamie posted her apology and revealed her magic video to be a hoax. Less than a week since she got cancelled.

"How are you holding up? With the Internet, I mean," Nathan asks, remembering this. Because it may have been the only way to preserve the book's secret and Jamie may have been avoiding the subject skillfully, but how she sounded on the phone days ago, at such a real breaking point, is still imprinted in Nathan's mind.

And she's got a right to feel like shit about the whole ordeal, he thinks. It's not every day you drive a stake through the heart of an unblemished and trustworthy reputation you spent years cultivating for all the world to see. It's not every day your Wikipedia page suddenly sports a controversies subsection that was never there before. It's not every day you get crucified for a crime you never committed.

"Fine." Jamie puts her phone away. "The amount of people telling me to kill myself is slowly but surely dropping back to pre-apology levels."

"Nobody should be telling you that in the first place."

"It is the way it is." Jamie shrugs, smiling slightly. "It'll all blow over eventually. There are worse things to be cancelled over. Grooming allegations, offensive tweets, whatever Logan Paul is up to. But this... There's coming back from it. It'll take time, but I think it's going to be okay."

Optimism, tentative optimism, but spoken with that subtle conviction underlying everything Jamie says. Nathan's never been a particularly optimistic person, but if she says her career's going to be fine, he's inclined to believe it. She's resilient enough to move past this, rebuild everything she wrecked from the ground up if she has to. Nathan respects that.

"What are you going to do?" Jamie asks him, and Nathan gets the idea she's eager to change the subject again. "When we get home. You're not going to find a new supplier, I hope."

Nathan shakes his head. No, no new supplier. He's had enough of the drugs, the crime, the danger and all the pain. He's had enough of it for a lifetime.

"I'm not going back to being a criminal," he answers honestly, surprised at his own ability to get that one word past his lips. "Not sure what I'll do instead. I'll need an income, but I don't have any diplomas or relevant work experience, so there won't be any fancy jobs for me. Think I'll have to flip burgers or deliver pizzas."

Jamie nods, nibbling on one of their chocolate cookies. "That's a good start."

"Yeah. I'll have to figure it out from there. I don't know. I just don't know yet."

There's a silence while Nathan ponders the future and Jamie thinks about... whichever train of thought's the dominant one right now. Then, she asks: "Do you know anything about video editing?"

Nathan thinks she knows precisely what he's going to answer.

"Uh... No."

"I could teach you." She says it casually, grinning. "Video editing's a fast-growing industry, so it's a really marketable skill. And cancelled or not, my name looks great on resumes and reference letters."

Nathan chuckles, awkwardly, because that's... What the hell, that's an amazing offer, something useful for him to learn, something that, if he likes it, may actually get him somewhere. Accept it, he tells himself. It should be simple, but he can't get the words out. It's a lot of kindness. He isn't certain he deserves that.

"Are you sure? I wouldn't want to waste your time."

"You wouldn't be wasting anything. I have to edit videos, anyway. Doesn't matter if I do it with you or alone."

"I don't have a lot of smarts or talents. I'm a slow student. Like, really slow."

"I have all the time in the world."

"Still, you'd have to put up with–"

"Nathan," Jamie interrupts him. "I'm not offering this because I feel obliged to or because it's polite. I'm offering because I've thought it over and because I want to. If you have other plans or any objections, say no by all means, but it sounds like you just don't feel like you're allowed to say yes."

Nathan wonders if he's transparent, if Jamie's sharp, or if it's perhaps a little bit of both.

"But it is allowed," Jamie continues, "and actually, I wouldn't even be asking unless I wanted you to say yes. So just say it, and stay in my life a little longer, okay?"

And when it's stated as clearly as that, Nathan can't find any reason not to accept.

"Okay," he replies, allowing a smile of his own to slip out. "Yeah, okay. I'd love that."

"Awesome," Jamie says, delighted, and then she turns to her phone as if she didn't say something world-shattering yet again. She pulls up Google Maps and she talks about Iceland, about how there's a lot to see and they might as well stay a while, about driving the Ring Road and stopping wherever they want, going on an adventure of the non-life-threatening kind. And Nathan listens and thinks it's a great idea, because he isn't in a hurry; Iceland is here and now, a timeless space in which everything's alright and nothing can hurt him, a moment of reprieve before the future really starts.

He never did like change. It's messy, it's terrifying, it's so much tougher than the easy way out he's always taken. He isn't going to pretend it doesn't scare him shitless. But he likes being free from his old life, he likes Jamie and being in Iceland with her, and he feels like everything's going to make sense to him someday.

It'll always be terrifying, that feeling of change. But here, today, it's the best feeling in the world.