Fated (27 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

T
he threads were a mess, and the basket seemed bottomless. The more she pulled, the more came up. The pile of them, taller than she was, filled the room. She’d been tugging and yanking, blowing her hair off her sweaty forehead as she worked without stopping. No one else was here to do the job, and she couldn’t help the sense that these people needed her. Every time she touched a thread, she could see their lives stretching before them. At first it had been incapacitating—she could touch only one at a time or she would get dizzy and end up on the floor. But now she could grab a handful and manage the flickering flashes of lives that needed living. She’d found she could separate and sort each image as it appeared before her eyes, but now she had to do the same with the actual threads.

She straightened up and set another bunch of tangled strands on the pile, rubbing her back and looking around at the hills of shimmering filaments around her. “This is going to take a while,” she said quietly.

It didn’t matter how long it took—she would find a way to reassemble the fabric. Because she was Fate, and she knew that now. She couldn’t believe she’d ever forgotten it.

An echo of a voice reached her, and she stopped as she leaned over the basket again, listening. It wasn’t coming from the threads—she wasn’t touching any of them at the moment. The murmured words were too quiet to understand, but the voice sounded familiar and filled her chest with unexpected longing. “Hello?” she called.

The voice went quiet, and she began to work on separating each thread from the next, laying them out along the infinite floor of her domain. If she was supposed to rebuild the tapestry, she’d have to examine each strand individually. She pulled at one, the life of a woman, now in her thirties, with years and years stretching ahead of her. But as she tried to tug the woman’s thread, she found it was knotted with another. As she ran her fingers over those tangles, planning to unknot them, she let out a surprised cry at what she saw, the woman in a man’s arms, him offering her an umbrella in a downpour, her shopping for his favorite kind of candy. Fate stopped trying to untangle them, and instead laid them out together. A strange yearning came over her, and she fought the urge to return to those knots, to watch and watch as the couple made love and fought and forgave and fell asleep together.

She pushed it out of her mind and refocused on her task, separating threads and organizing them. As she pulled a new thread from the pile, she noticed it was still knotted with several others but had gone gray and dull. That wasn’t right. Something had to be done about it.

She frowned and reached out, pulling a pair of scissors from the air.

She blinked down at her hand. She had needed this tool, and it had appeared from nowhere. Biting her lip, she raised the scissors and peered at herself reflected in the metal blade. Ice-blue eyes looked back at her. She lowered her hand and looked down at the gray thread. Though she’d been working for . . . really, she had no idea how long she’d been working, but it seemed like a while . . . this was the first gray thread she’d noticed, and it felt important. Her thumb ran over the dull strand, but she couldn’t see much, just a fog. With a trembling hand, she followed the path of the thread, right to where it tangled with several others.

She lowered the scissors, positioning them over the thread at the place that felt right. Then she snipped it away and watched it float to the floor.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

M
oros jerked as he felt the sting in his chest, making his chair rattle against the hardwood floor. He hadn’t felt that sensation in days, but he knew exactly what it was.

Cacia looked over from her spot at Aislin’s bedside. “You okay?”

Moros stood up and slowly walked over to the woman he loved, who lay still and unmoving on his bed. It had been ten days. Ten agonizing days. And Aislin hadn’t so much as twitched. But . . . now a face rose in his mind, one with a beaky nose and prematurely receding hair. Antoni Banach, thirty-four, resident of Warsaw. His time had come.

Moros let out a bemused laugh. “I’ll be right back.”

He followed his sense of the young man through the Veil and found him sitting at a long table in a crowded refugee center, eating synthesized protein from a tin. Slipping into the real world, Moros walked by, touching Antoni on the shoulder as he passed, Marking him for death.

He waited impatiently in the Veil as Antoni choked to death, then watched as his soul rose from his body in the cold gray world. Almost immediately, a portal opened, and Rosaleen Ferry stepped through. “Moros,” she said in surprise.

Moros gestured at Antoni. “Do the honors, if you please.”

Rosaleen’s fingers rose to the Charon’s Scope at her throat, maybe wondering if this was a trap. “I just want you to know—Aislin’s will made it clear that she wanted me to be the Charon if—”

“She’s not dead.”

Rosaleen bowed her head. “Of course not. But she wanted me to take the role if she . . . couldn’t.”

“I know,” Moros said quietly, staring at Antoni, who waited passively to meet his final fate. “And she’s busy anyway.” He wasn’t sure if he wanted to shout with rage or laugh out loud. Maybe both. Aislin had figured it out. She’d cut her first thread.

Rosaleen guided the young man to Heaven, but when she looked into the portal she’d opened with her Scope, waiting for her coin to emerge, she jumped back in surprise. Moros leaned over to see the Keeper of Heaven herself standing in the opening. Her diamond gaze was triumphant. “She did it,” the Keeper said happily. “Now we’re in business again.”

She tossed a coin out of her realm, and it hit Moros in the chest and landed on the ground between him and Rosaleen, who closed her Scope quickly and snapped it to the chain around her neck. “Was that—?”

“The Keeper of Heaven herself. Yes.”

Rosaleen gave him a cautious look as she scooped the coin from the ground. “So it’s true, what you’ve told us about Aislin.”

Moros was already impatient to get back to her. He waved dismissively as Rosaleen offered him the coin to split with his teeth. “My dear woman, did you really think I had made up that outrageous story just to entertain myself?”

The woman’s chin lifted in defiance. “I’m not sure what to think about you yet.”

Moros grinned, giving her a nice view of his fangs. “Likewise. And keep the change.” He willed himself back to his penthouse.

Cacia was still there, but she’d gathered her things and was preparing to leave. “Aislin looked better today, I think. I swear she thought my story about nearly losing my Scope in the canal was funny. Her lip kind of twitched.”

Moros ran his hands over his face, wishing Cacia weren’t so sunny and optimistic all the time. She’d been here every single day for hours, talking to Aislin nonstop.
She can’t hear you,
he wanted to shout. But he’d managed not to, for Aislin’s sake. She loved Cacia. She wouldn’t want her to despair. “How encouraging,” he murmured as he saw her to the door. “I suppose I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Cacia stopped and turned to him. “You don’t believe she’s going to wake up, do you?”

He sighed. “You have to understand the magnitude of the task she’s been given.” And she was doing it. She’d figured out how to cut the threads, and that meant she must be hard at work. Somewhere in the realm of her mind, Aislin was puzzling out her new responsibilities.

It made him miss her more than ever.

Cacia’s eyes met his. “Do you remember the things you saw when you touched me?”

Guilt pulsed inside him. “Yes.”

“I do, too.” Her voice was level, but the note of sadness was impossible to miss. “I was destined to be with Eli all along. We were going to have kids. It was going to be messy and awesome and heartbreaking and beautiful.”

He looked away. “That’s true.”

“We’ll never have those kids now. We’ll never have that life, because his was interrupted.” Cacia poked Moros’s arm to draw his gaze back to hers. “But we’re still together. And it’s messy and awesome and heartbreaking and beautiful. I’m still me, and he’s still him, just dealing with different stuff. But even when his thread was cut, or however that works, it didn’t keep us apart.”

Moros shivered as he felt Aislin cut another thread. He pushed the sensation out into the Veil, assigning one of his Kere to do the honors. “I’m glad the two of you are finding your way.”

She put her hands on her hips. “I’m not telling you this so you can be condescending.”

“Then please tell me what you do want, Cacia, and I’ll do my best to provide it.”

She rolled her eyes. “I guess the condescension is just a built-in perk.” She adjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder. “I’m telling you this because, after you touched me, you told Eli that I belonged to him, and you were right. And as traumatic as that whole experience was, knowing that I was meant to be with him helped me stick it out, even when things got really bad. I wouldn’t give up. I won’t
ever
give up.” She leaned forward. “You shouldn’t either.”

“But Aislin and I aren’t—”

“She belongs to you,” Cacia said quietly. “Right?” She scuffed her foot along his floor. “It makes sense, to me at least. I can’t really picture her with anyone else.”

“Does it matter? She’s
gone
. She was never meant to play the role of Fate, and it’s too much for her.”

“Then help her.”

“I can’t reach her,” he said from between clenched teeth.

“Find a way! I want her back, and I’m doing my part. I come here every day and make sure she hears my voice. I make sure she knows what she’s missing.” Her voice had gone tight, and her eyes were shining. “I tell her how much I want to talk to her again, and how I’m so sorry I was such a bitch to her. I promise her that the next gala we go to, I’ll wear an
appropriate
dress.” She angrily swiped at a tear. “But I don’t think she’ll come back until you do the same.”

“I’m not partial to wearing dresses.”

“Goddammit, you know what I mean!”

“She has enough to do!” he said, his voice rising along with his frustration. He was by Aislin’s side night and day, the shadow in the corner as her family visited, the ghost watching over her all night, pacing the floor and listening to her heart beat. He would protect her and take care of her until the end, but that was as far as it went. “I refuse to add to her burden.”

“But she needs to come back!” Cacia’s cheeks were suffused with pink, and her hands were balled in fists. “And she needs
you
to remind her why she should.” She took a step toward the door, tightening her ponytail and letting out a deep breath. “See you tomorrow.” She turned on her heel and headed for the elevator.

Moros watched her disappear inside, his heart pounding. None of them understood. They’d never seen the weaving room, or how hard his sisters worked. And the Keepers had made Aislin like him, carrying all that responsibility inside her mind and body.

She hadn’t been made to handle it.

He closed his front door and walked back to his bedroom, pausing in the doorway. Aislin was as beautiful as ever, her skin smooth and luminous, her face peaceful.

His want of her was slowly crumbling his heart, and suddenly it was too much.

He kicked off his shoes and crawled onto the bed, pressing his face to her hair and wrapping his arm over her body. He had been trying to keep his distance, not wanting to distract her from her duties, not wanting to drive her further into the realm of her mind where she’d been banished, but now he was certain his chest was going to cave in if he didn’t hold her.

His throat was impossibly tight as he kissed her temple. “Your sister is a fierce little creature,” he said quietly. “I think she almost punched me just now.” He laid his head on the pillow, inhaling Aislin’s clean violet scent. “She believes I should be telling you all the wonderful things you’re missing.” His thumb stroked her cheek. There was no momentary blindness when he touched her anymore. Now it was simply skin on skin, him and her.

“I can’t do that,” he continued. “Because very truthfully, the world is a mess, and slightly messier than it should be right now. You’re not the Charon anymore, and Psychopomps will suffer for it. I certainly won’t stand in Rosaleen’s way, but she’s not you. She can’t read a room like you can. She can’t tell within an instant what each person wants, and she’s not as clever about making people feel like they’re getting exactly what they crave when all the while you’re pushing them into place, getting them to follow your agenda.” He chuckled quietly. “What you did with the Lucinae . . . brilliant. I was so determined to save you, but you saved me instead. You saved us all.”

He propped himself on an elbow and skimmed his fingertips across her brow, over her cheekbones, each touch an act of worship. And as he gazed at her, he thought about everything he’d just said, and everything he knew about the woman he adored. “Actually, I’m not sure why I didn’t believe you could manage this. You’re in there, setting things right, aren’t you? You’re organizing and innovating, and you’re going to make it better than it ever was.” He caressed her pale cheek, a desperate hope sinking its fingers into his marrow. “Once you’ve turned that mess of thread into a tapestry, once you’ve figured it out—come back.”

His eyes burned, and he swallowed hard as he gave in to the pull of all his wishes, as he surrendered his pride and his distance, as he stripped away the armor that had held him together ever since he’d returned from the Keepers’ throne room. “Please come back, Aislin. I’m here, and I need you. I can’t be happy until you’re by my side. I was alone for thousands of years, but that loneliness was nothing . . .” His voice had faded to a rasp, and he cleared his throat. “That was
nothing
compared to having you with me but not really having you here. So do what you must do, but then come back. Come back to me.”

He nestled in close to her, her hand in his, and lay awake all night, whispering his plea into her ear, even as he felt the sting and prick of Aislin, deaf to his words and hard at work, snipping away the threads of lives and loves that had come to an end.