Fates (16 page)

He stared at her as she closed the locket and tucked it back in her shirt. His gaze was unreadable.

Staring at him, trying to determine what he was thinking, she had a sudden memory of seeing a library for the first time: carved wooden shelves that held so many words, so many messages, encoded and unread, so many things humans felt they needed to say to one another. It was the first time she had ever felt the urge to cry.

The distance between them seemed to shrink. She could almost feel his breath on her cheek. Neither moved as the tension grew, vibrated between them. A tightness gripped her chest, making her lungs work extra hard to get air in and out.

“This doesn't mean I trust you,” Luc said finally. He turned abruptly and stalked out of the cave, as though to prevent himself from taking back the words.

Corinthe exhaled. So. It was agreed.

Rhys cleared his throat to alert her to his presence, a small smile carved crookedly on his face. He moved deeper into the room and arranged his tray. He tipped a small vial into a glass of water. “This won't stop the poison from doing its job,” he said as he stirred the mixture together, “but it will slow the process. Maybe give you enough time …” His voice trailed off and he handed the glass to her, his white eye unblinking.

If she didn't know better, she'd swear Rhys knew what she planned to do.

She wanted to explain but thought better of it.

“Thank you,” she said. She swallowed the bitter contents of the glass. She hesitated, then spoke quietly. “I … don't make the decisions of the universe. They aren't up to me, you know.” For a moment, she felt a wave of sadness. She would never be able to explain to Luc; she had never been able to explain to
anyone.

Loneliness:
that was the word.

Rhys reached out and squeezed her hand.

“You have a tough journey ahead. I don't envy you. But just remember—it
is
the voyage that's the test, ain't it?”

Corinthe nodded, even though she didn't exactly understand what he meant.

“Take this,” he said, placing a second tiny vial into her hands. It was the same color as the liquid he had just given her.

Corinthe's chest felt tight. “Thank you,” she said, fighting to find the words. “For everything.” Already she felt stronger. She pushed off her blankets and managed to stand up. For a second, black clouds consumed her vision, but they dissipated quickly. She smiled—and then, struck with an idea, removed the other crystal earring and pressed the pair into Rhys's palm.

“For you,” she said. There was more she wanted to say. She wanted to ask him where he had come from, and why he'd been exiled, and whether he was some kind of Guardian for this planet, like Miranda in Humana. But thinking of Miranda made her chest ache, and she couldn't get the words out.

He held up the earrings to the light. Mags hopped up and down on her perch, emitting several excited high-pitched shrieks.

“Beautiful.” His voice sounded wistful as the crystals scattered bright diamonds of colored lights over the walls.

“Can you … can you see, truly?” Corinthe asked.

Rhys smiled. “I see with my mind,” he said. “That's enough.”

“Yes,” Corinthe agreed, and squeezed his callused hand.

Rhys coughed. “You'll need these,” he said, his voice turning gruff again. He handed her a pair of worn leather boots and a thick canvas pack. “The journey over the mountains is a rough one. The nights get bitter cold, so I packed a few things you might need to get through.”

Corinthe slipped her feet into the boots and laced them up. They were a little big, but that didn't matter. Then she shouldered the pack.

“Are you ready?” Luc stood at the mouth of the cave. His mouth was set in a line. Corinthe nodded.

She was ready.

Rhys pulled a folded piece of paper from another hole in the cave wall. He handed it to Luc. “A full day's walk over the mountain, there is a river of darkness that runs in two directions. It's rumored to be a gateway, though I've never tried to use it myself. The map should lead you straight to it, as long as you stay on the path.”

“Thank you,” Luc said. Corinthe said nothing. She had already spoken her thanks—had spoken the words and felt them insufficient.

“I hope you
both
find what you're looking for,” Rhys said. “Safe journeys, my friends.”

Corinthe felt Rhys watching them, long after they had pushed out of the mouth of the cave, long after they had once again emerged into the land of blazing sun and chalky heat. She was grateful that Rhys hadn't said anything to Luc, hadn't told him who she was or what she must do.

Even though he knew—he must have known—that their journey could end only one way.

“I
thought I might find you here.” His voice was low, gravelly and familiar.

Miranda didn't turn around. She didn't move at all. She continued to stare at the arrangement of twisted metal and desiccated branches, like a gnarled hand reaching for the sky. It was, she knew, meant to represent an exploding star.

It was crudely done. Stars, when they exploded, were far more delicate, far more vast and powerful, than the statue could suggest. Still, it was a monument to her kind, and for that reason, it moved her.

Overhead, the two suns were beginning their descent toward the rust-red horizon.

She gathered a handful of brown petals and tossed them into the air. They immediately began spinning, as if lifted by powerful winds. With a flick of her wrist, Miranda directed the winds and sent the leaves off the edge of the cliff. They separated and floated away in all directions.

Just like we have.

“You take a chance being here with me,” she said at last, tilting her chin just slightly toward her shoulder to acknowledge him. Now she scooped up a handful of red dirt, reminded of an hourglass as she watched it run through her fingers.

Time is running out.

This world was nearly dead. The heat was sweltering; the sun burned everything to the same uniform red dust. It was a terrible place, and Miranda thought with sudden bitterness that she would rather destroy the whole universe than be exiled here again.

“I've never been much for following rules,” Rhys answered, lowering himself next to her. Bottles clinked in his jacket.

Miranda allowed herself to smile. A chemist. Once Rhys had been so powerful—a controller of winds and an exploder of worlds. But his residence in this world, and distance from the Tribunal, had taken its toll. It had sucked the energy, the will, from
both
of them. Their powers were diminished. This was the natural way of their kind—a slow, agonized dissipation, just like a comet smoothing down to dust as it flies through space.

He looked older than she remembered. More tired. Radicals could combine with other forces of chaos and grow stronger, burn fiery and bright. That was the Tribunal. Like a black hole in space, they formed a dense energy, ever increasing in its power.

But Rhys had forsaken all that to save her life. He had reversed time to save her, but at a great price.

It ate away at Miranda every time she saw him, which was why she avoided the Land with the Two Suns. The taste of guilt was bitter, like the taste of dust itself. Sometimes it felt as though she could actually see her betrayal, as if it had a physical form that floated between them. Nothing was the same after she had chosen to align her loyalties with Ford, to work with him.

Rhys had warned against it. He'd said Ford was too volatile, too dangerous—and that his strength would burn them both in the end. But Ford was the most brilliant and powerful Radical either of them had ever known.

And now she knew she'd changed too much to ever go back to Rhys. He didn't approve of what she'd become. She hated to think of what he thought of her now.

“You should have let me die,” she said. “Look at you, at where you've ended up. Is this what you wanted?”

“You're alive,” Rhys said. He took her hand in his rough, callused one. “
That's
all I wanted.”

Miranda remembered the first time he had ever touched her, how a whole galaxy had broken apart. The memory was bittersweet.

“There's still time to change your course.” Rhys turned to look at her, his white eye wide and unblinking.

Once, Rhys's eyes had been the deepest shade of blue, like the sky before a powerful storm. She could lose herself inside of them. She had lost herself, for so long.

That was before this
place
had taken his sight; taken, too, apparently, his will to fight. Now he was reduced to tending to a never-ending sea of shadows, with an overgrown pigeon as his eyes and sole companion.

In her heart, she was doing this as much for Rhys as for herself. Someone needed to pay for all the pain they'd suffered, for the loss of freedom … of love.

“It's too late,” she said.

Old feelings, emotions long suppressed, swirled inside Miranda—fierce and hot. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. She wanted to burst apart into a million pieces and scream until the sky fell.

“All my charge has to do is kill a boy,” Miranda said. “Once she has done it, once she has made her choice and refused the orders of the Unseen Ones, it will alter the very balance of the universe. It will topple their strength and order. It must.”

Miranda had spent years guiding Corinthe, and the girl trusted her. There was no reason for Corinthe to believe the marble didn't show truth. Or to suspect that it showed a more complex truth than she could immediately decipher.

She would do as Miranda had tasked her. She was a Fate—fallen, perhaps, humiliated and exiled. But still a Fate. Obeying was what she did.

Rhys sat quietly for a long time. “Have you forgotten about the greatest force in the universe?” he asked slowly.

“Choice?” Miranda shook her head. “You don't understand. This
will
be her choice.”

Rhys ran his fingers over her arm. “Not choice, Mira. Love.”

Mira. A name she had not heard in over a decade. It made her heart ache with an all-too-familiar longing.

Mira and Rhys. Created from the same star. Out of death, a new purpose—born of the same energies, the same fierce will.

But not anymore.

Weariness weighed on her. This dry, dead place sucked the life out of everything. It was sucking the life out of her. Was she even capable of love anymore? Or had that, too, been sucked out of her after years in exile?

She had once believed, like Rhys, that love was the most powerful force. But she knew now that the desire to live, to thrive, was even more powerful. Corinthe would choose to kill Luc because it meant that she would live.

“Your selfishness will destroy everything.” Rhys's voice grew huskier. “You're no better than
they
are, Mira. You're playing with fate now.”

“Don't say that.” Miranda stood up. She had had enough of this world—enough of Rhys, too. “Corinthe and the boy can still make their own choices.”

“And yet the boy's sister becomes a Blood Nymph, and he travels the Crossroad as a human.” Rhys stood as well. “Are you telling me you had no role in that?”

Miranda turned her back on him, furious that he still knew her so well. She
had
brought Jasmine to the Forest of Blood Nymphs; it was the only way to ensure the sister would be trapped and unable to interfere. And yet Miranda had made a mistake, not realizing she'd opened up the gateway and allowed the boy to enter the Crossroad. It was the only mistake she'd made, but it would certainly be her last. Everything else would fall into place.

Her sole thought now was on escape, on getting as far away from this awful world as possible. But immediately, she felt Rhys's hand on her shoulder: heavy, warm, and more familiar than any other hand in the universe. A familiar melody played. The same one she'd hummed to herself every day they'd been apart.

“I still have mine,” he said. He had made two music boxes—one for each of them—a ballerina and an archer. Both spun on an axis and pointed to what their hearts truly desired. Before, eons ago, they had pointed the way to one another.

That longing, that need, came surging back. She wanted to swing around and throw herself into his arms, beg him to come with her.

But she didn't. She was tired of begging. She was not a dog.

She was not a
human.

“I lost mine a long time ago,” she lied. Turning to face him, she brushed his hand away. It seemed to leave a hole in her chest.

“Maybe you'll find it again and remember.” His music box was the same walnut shape as her own, nestled in the palm of his callused hand. Miranda watched purposefully as the archer spun slowly, his arrow strung and bow pulled taut. Tinny music filled the space around them.

“I hope you understand that I will have to do what I can to influence the outcome as well,” Rhys said gently. He closed the music box as the archer was in midspin. “There is balance for a reason, Mira. Some rules must be broken; others must remain.”

“Do what you will,” Miranda said coldly, suddenly angry that the archer hadn't immediately pointed to her. She felt sick with anger and regret. Born from the same star and firmly on opposite sides, like the two faces of the moon. “And so will I.”