Fates

17

“Oh God, I didn’t mean … It was just there. … I couldn’t stop it.” Corinthe gripped the knife in her hand. She couldn’t believe what she had done.

But this wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.

He couldn’t die. Not like this.

Luc struggled to the shore, collapsing onto the ground. The knife was slick with blood now. Corinthe sank to her knees in front of him. She reached for his face. She was shaking so hard she was nearly convulsing.

“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered. “This was supposed to happen. But it didn’t. I—”

Luc groaned. He inhaled a ragged breath and pushed himself to his feet. Corinthe immediately wrapped her arm around his waist to help him stay upright. She could feel his energy flickering, fading in and out. She couldn’t stitch from him. He didn’t have enough strength to spare.

“This isn’t real,” he panted. “It can’t be. So we just have to keep moving, right?”

She nodded. He leaned into her and together they plunged forward. One foot in front of the other. They made it to the road before his strength finally gave out. There was nowhere to go anyway. He sank to the ground.

Corinthe sat down beside him and slipped her fingers through his again, drawing his head into her lap. His energy was barely detectable, like a flame sputtering in heavy darkness. She was wild with panic—and fear, too: the sickening knowledge that this was what she was meant to do, what the universe had charged her to do.

Luc coughed and shook in her arms. And then, slowly, gently, the fog began to roll in. It swirled around them, stroking its long fingers over his stomach.

“Luc!” she cried. The vision began to fade, and Corinthe felt her limbs trembling. When she thought she’d stabbed him … it was as if a piece of herself had died, too.

There was no knife now. No wound.

Corinthe let out a small sob of relief.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. How could she complete her last task when even the idea of his death hurt so badly?

He sat up. “It wasn’t real,” he said. He smiled and touched her face.

It will be. The words were strangling her. Corinthe placed one hand on his chest. As earlier she had been able to draw energy from the tree, now she could feel his emotions vibrating just below his skin, pressure building, as though he might explode. She tried to stitch just a little—to work out some of the venom, some of the despair—even though it made her exhausted.

She could feel his heart hammering. She could sense his confusion, and his longing, and something else. …

How could one person affect the balance so much when the universe was so big?

Why couldn’t Luc live?

What would it hurt?

Never before had she been unable to execute a fate. His hair had fallen forward into his eyes, and she noticed for the first time that his ears were a perfect seashell shape, tinged with pink, and that there was a small scar just below his lower lip.

She kept staring, trying to figure out what it was about him that made her act so different. She’d met countless humans during her exile in Humana, had lived among them for ten years, but she had never understood one.

Somehow she did understand Luc—wordlessly, deeply.

And yet, what Luc was doing to save his sister still didn’t make sense to her. His need to rescue Jasmine was ecstatic and painful, and almost addicting, flowing through his body and out of his skin, into her touch.

“Your sister,” she said automatically, finally pulling her hand away from his chest. “You love her.” It was more of a statement than a question. The concept of love was foreign to Corinthe, but she knew it was very, very powerful.

“Of course I do.” Luc’s brow wrinkled.

A question was building inside her, something she had never thought to ask before. She took a deep breath. “What does love feel like?” she blurted out.

He looked at her then. His eyes darkened, shifted, as though shadows were moving underneath them. She suddenly regretted having asked. The question felt far too intimate.

“I mean, you love your sister,” she said hurriedly. “But what does it feel like?”

He ran a hand through his hair and frowned. She wondered if he wouldn’t answer, but after a minute’s pause, he said, “It’s like, you care about someone so much that you’d do anything to keep them safe. That it kills you to think of them getting hurt.”

“I love Pyralis,” she said, knowing that on some level it was true. It was the thing, the idea she felt closest to in the world.

He shook his head. “It’s different. You can love places, but not like you love people. Sometimes it feels totally out of control. Like you don’t have a choice. Gets under your skin like this itch you can’t scratch and it makes you insane, but in a good way, because you know you can’t live without it. Kind of like … well … kind of like your whole idea of fate, actually. Now that I think about it.”

Corinthe shifted uncomfortably. It sounded an awful lot like how she felt when Luc touched her. Maybe this squirmy uncertainty inside her—this desire to feel what Luc felt—was yet another sign she was becoming more human.

“Does it feel the same for everyone? I mean, do you love your sister the same way you love that girl on the boat?” she asked.

His eyes flashed. For a second, he looked angry. Then, to her surprise, he smiled.

“No, it’s not the same. I thought … Look, I didn’t love Karen. I knew we were too different to last. I trusted her, I let her in, and she messed with me. I was pissed. But I can live without Karen. I can’t live without my sister. She’s all I have. Literally.”

“What about your father?” she prodded.

In Pyralis, the Fates just existed with no beginning or end. There were no parents, no families. They called each other sisters, though there was no real relation.

“My father stopped caring a long time ago,” Luc said, pushing to his feet abruptly.

Corinthe watched his fingers curl into fists at his side and he clenched his jaw, making the muscles there flex and jump. “Ever since, you know. My mother.” He stopped to clear his throat. “He loved her, probably. I used to. But now … I don’t know. Love changes, I guess; people change. Nothing lasts forever.” His voice broke.

“But how can you go on, believing that?” she asked. He was right, of course—humans didn’t live forever—but also completely wrong. He was so innocent, so fragile in that moment that it made Corinthe’s chest ache. The universe was so much wilder and greater than Luc could possibly imagine, and she wished she could convey this to him somehow. That there were some things that lasted.

He shook his head. “All that matters is right here, right now. Making sure you have one more day, then one more after that.”

For the first time in her life, Corinthe truly understood what being mortal meant. And for her, now, there might not be a tomorrow. The hornets’ venom was still working inside her body. She would die if she couldn’t reach Pyralis in time.

There was a weight in her stomach, a curdling sense of guilt. Yes, guilt. Because she knew Luc trusted her.

It killed her a little inside to think that she would have to betray him.

They continued forward through the fog. It grew darker, and a wind picked up, so that the mist lashed around their ankles, cold and wet, like weeds. With the wind came whispers, strains of music and laughter, as the sounds of other worlds blew back to them. It was so dark Corinthe couldn’t see.

The wind crested to a howl; mist swirled around them like a blizzard. Had they at last reached the Crossroad?

“Luc!” she cried out, suddenly fearful that she had lost him.

Her voice sounded thin in the vast darkness. She reached for him, and he took her hand and squeezed.

“We’ll be okay,” he said, and she knew he was trying to act brave for her sake. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

A gust bigger than all the rest swept through the blackness, forcing them apart. Corinthe felt her fingers—frigid, stiff, and clumsy—slip from Luc’s grasp. Inch by inch, they slipped apart as the wind became a tornado, freezing Corinthe’s insides, turning her to ice.

“I can’t hold on!” she shouted to Luc.

“I’ve got you!” But he didn’t. He tried to grab for an arm, but it was too late: inside she felt frozen, couldn’t feel the beat of her own heart. It hurt to move, to breathe, even to think. As his fingers brushed her arm, she watched in horror while her skin began to shatter.

The last thing she heard was Luc shouting her name.

For several seconds, she did not exist. Not really. She had been blown apart, shattered into uncountable pieces. She couldn’t feel her body. She was nothingness.

And then, slowly, a pulse came through her and she was able to move. She was shaking, but she was whole. She could feel her arms and legs again. The shattering … it had been an illusion, but she’d felt it. Like the universe itself, she was losing equilibrium, becoming both Corinthe and not-Corinthe at the same time.

One way or another, this was all going to end, and soon. No one got this many chances.

She fought to keep her balance as she took in her surroundings. The ground under her feet was trembling violently, and it was hard to stand. She was on the roof of a concrete building. It appeared to be the very rooftop where she’d first arrived in Humana so many years ago—and where she and Luc had faced off—but she couldn’t tell if this was actually the same San Francisco or just another alternate world.

Not until she saw Luc’s Giants cap lying in the corner where he’d dropped it.

This was San Francisco.

“Luc?” She turned around, searching for him. A low rumble started again, and the entire building shook. Corinthe heard screams and sirens from somewhere down on the street.

Where was Luc?

The roof was starting to splinter and crack. She had to get down to the street before the building collapsed. The red roof-access door was jammed, and it took all of Corinthe’s waning strength to pull it open on its bent frame.

Another, harder aftershock rocked the building, and Corinthe slammed into the interior wall so hard it knocked her down several steps. She felt a sharp pain in her ankle as her foot twisted beneath her. Plaster rained down from the ceiling, and smoke started to fill the small space.

Earthquake. Had to be. She’d experienced several of them in San Francisco, but none this severe.

She stood and held on to the iron railing that ran the length of the steps, then put a little weight on her ankle to test it. It held. If she was careful, she could walk on it.

She gritted her teeth and took the steps one by one, hobbling the best she could. Her ankle didn’t feel broken, but it hurt worse than the smoke burning her lungs and eyes. Limping and coughing, she pushed herself down the last few steps and shoved the heavy double doors open. She felt as if she’d stepped into one of the nightmares she’d heard humans describe, an awful vision of chaos.

Out on the street, people stumbled out of doors, pushing past her. A child with huge eyes glanced back at her, a tiny trickle of blood running down her temple. The mother jerked her around a corner before Corinthe could react. No one stopped to ask Corinthe if she needed help; most didn’t even look at her.

She glanced around. Whole buildings had toppled, leaving piles of concrete and iron in the street. Power wires were down, sparking in puddles of liquid. Plumes of smoke billowed toward the sky, filling the air with a dusklike darkness.

This was her fault. She had disturbed the balance of the universe. All fate was intertwined; the universe was too tightly woven. By pulling on one strand, she had begun to unravel all of the others.

A radio crackled from a car that sat deserted on the street.

Confirmed 7.9.

Extensive devastation.

Multiple casualties.

Bruised people stumbled by, looking dazed. A child bawled in her mother’s arms. A man was shouting into a cell phone, and a teenage girl was crying, sitting on the stoop of a house whose roof had collapsed.

The streets were congested, full of abandoned cars and rubble. Fire trucks and police cars wove around the debris, sirens wailing. Down the block, she could see forked tongues of fire licking from the windows of an apartment building.

Blindly, Corinthe began to hobble through the mess. Halfway across the next block, she tripped over something. A leg. It was protruding from underneath a large pile of bricks. There was no shoe on the foot, but Corinthe knew the body was a woman’s; she could even make out the pink nail polish underneath the opaque stocking, the dainty toes.

Corinthe’s stomach flipped. She thought she was going to be sick. Death had never affected her this way before, another indication that she was becoming more like them. It was wrong. The chaos was all wrong.

She had always been warned that trying to alter fate would have dire consequences.

Was this all her fault—because she hadn’t yet finished her task? Because Luc, a human, had been traveling the Crossroad with her?

Her tongue felt thick, and it took enormous effort to swallow. Miranda. She had to get back to the rotunda—she had to find Miranda.

She looked around to try to orient herself. The dust, the howling of the sirens, the smoke—it made everything look foreign. Most of the familiar landmarks were gone—destroyed, buried under rubble. She limped to the next intersection.

Divisadero and Pine: the same place where she had directed the principal to her death. The pharmacy on the corner was missing its sign; half a wall had caved in.

It seemed so long ago that she had performed that task. Now she was back and she felt a spasm of pain, of doubt. Had she done the right thing that day? Had she ever done the right thing?

Who decided?

Corinthe forced the thoughts out of her mind. It was too late to change the past. She could only think of the future now.

She started moving again. She noticed a man advancing toward her. Every few feet, he stopped strangers in the street, gesturing frantically, eyes wild. At first, Corinthe thought he must be asking for money. But as he got closer, she saw that he was holding up a picture. She began to make out what he was saying.

“Please. I’m looking for my children. Have you seen them?”

“Please. Help me find my children.”

When he reached Corinthe, he turned to her with the same imploring eyes. “I’m looking for my children. Have you seen them?”

There was a fine line of blood trickling from his forehead, and he was covered in a white dust. Corinthe almost pushed past him, but the panic in his voice made her hesitate and flick her eyes to the small picture: a dark-haired girl and a smiling boy.

“I—I’m sorry,” she stuttered.

The man grabbed her arm. “Please. Help me.”

Her mouth tasted like metal. My fault.

“You’re hurt.” Her voice cracked. “You’re in shock. You need to be treated.”

She took his arm and guided him forward; he followed her mutely. A fire truck and two ambulances blocked off the street to her left, and Corinthe led the man toward one of the EMTs, a middle-aged woman with gray hair. The woman was examining a body.

“He’s bleeding,” Corinthe told her, and the woman looked up. Corinthe felt another squeeze of pain. For a second, she had mistaken the woman for Sylvia, the dead principal.

The principal Corinthe had killed. My fault, my fault.

“Thank you,” the woman said briskly. “We’ll take it from here.”

Corinthe nodded. There was nothing else she could do but keep moving.

The route to the rotunda should have only taken a few minutes, but she was hurt, and at the intersection of Richardson and Chestnut the street had collapsed, leaving a gaping hole and a broken gas line, which the police were trying to cordon off. She backtracked to Lombard and cut across to Lyon. She passed beautiful town houses that had been reduced to splinters of wood and concrete, cars crushed under the weight of trees and lampposts.

Was this the end of Humana?

When she crossed over Bay Street, she had to stop and climb carefully over a toppled tree that lay across the road. The Palace of Fine Arts was barely recognizable. The columns that had once majestically lined the walkway had collapsed and lay in piles across the lawns, one of them half immersed in the lagoon. The roof of the rotunda still perched precariously on broken supports.

Corinthe fought back the surge of terror and broke into a run.

Halfway across the rotunda, the earth trembled and bits of stucco rained down on her head. The supports shifted and the roof sank a few inches closer to her head. A chunk of concrete had smashed into the column with the concealed panel that revealed the secret tunnel. The doorway was standing open, half blocked by fallen rubble; Corinthe could barely squeeze through it.

Miraculously, the power had not gone out yet, and the dim bulbs over her head allowed her to make her way down the narrow staircase. Bricks had fallen loose from the walls, but the steps were intact.

The rooms had not fared so well.

The kitchen was in shambles. Broken dishes littered the ground, and the table lay on its side. Water overflowed the tub and gushed onto the floor. Steam filled the air and made it thick and hazy.

Corinthe sloshed her way through the debris to her room. It didn’t even look the same. The trunk that held her clothes was smashed open, and bits of colorful cloth—her clothes, all her belongings—were visible. The entire wall on the far side had collapsed. The mural she had worked on for weeks was ruined; it lay in tatters on the floor. Corinthe felt a sense of loss so strong it almost carried her off her feet.

Then she heard a low moan from the corner.

“Miranda!” she cried.

Miranda lay pinned under a slab of concrete, her midsection crushed. There was a trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth. Her breathing was labored and short.

Corinthe attempted to heave the rock, but it wouldn’t move. Miranda’s eyelids fluttered and she opened her eyes. Her lips turned up into a smile.

“You came. I knew you’d find me.” She coughed. Air wheezed from between her lips, and a speck of blood dotted her chin.

Corinthe was filled with fear unlike anything she had ever known. It was as though a Crossroad had opened inside of her, filling her with whipping panic. Corinthe reached out and gently wiped Miranda’s blood away with her sleeve. “What happened?”

“I came because I couldn’t find you. I was worried. I knew your last task was still incomplete. Then the wall—” Miranda coughed again. A spasm of pain passed across her face. “The wall …”

“Shhh. Don’t try to speak.” Another low tremor reverberated through the ground. “I have to get you out of here.” Again, she strained to lift the rock, pulled until her lungs felt like they’d burst in her chest. But it was too heavy, and she was far too weak.

Miranda closed her eyes and opened them again. Her breathing was growing fainter.

“It’s too late for me, Corinthe,” she said.

“Don’t say that.” Corinthe felt a pressure in her throat. Her fault, all her fault.

Miranda lifted her hand and laid it on top of Corinthe’s. It was cold. Miranda had stayed with her in Humana all these years to guide and protect her, to make sure she never stopped believing she’d one day go home again, only to die here, in this splintered, terrible world.

“Have you completed your task yet? Is the boy dead?”

“I’m sorry.” Corinthe could barely speak past the knot in her throat. This was what it was to feel, and to lose, too: for a moment, she was gripped by a sense of remorse for all the lives she had taken, all the pain she had helped bring to the world.

“There is still time, Corinthe. You can still fulfill the fate and go home.” Miranda squeezed Corinthe’s hand and a smile played across her lips. Corinthe thought Miranda had never looked more beautiful.

“I don’t know how to find him,” Corinthe choked out. “It’s too late.”

“It’s never too late. This is your fate, too. Remember that.” Miranda coughed and blood specked her lips. Her grip tightened painfully around Corinthe’s fingers. Miranda cried out, her body jerking as though an electric current had run through her.

Then her fingers relaxed.

“Miranda,” Corinthe said. Miranda didn’t respond. Corinthe felt the pressure in her throat building to a scream. “Miranda!”

Corinthe turned away from the body, fighting the urge to gag. She wanted to cry, as she had seen humans do—to sob, to scream—but nothing would come.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Forgive me. I’m sorry.”

Her Guardian was gone forever. Lucas was lost in another world where the chances of finding him were next to impossible.

It had all been for nothing.

The years of exile, her job as an Executor, the chance to go back to Pyralis.

The walls began to shake again as a low rumble worked its way up to the ceiling. Corinthe stood unsteadily. The ground swayed and she stumbled forward, bracing herself in the doorway. Behind her, another section of the wall collapsed, burying Miranda under a pile of stones.

It was a struggle to remain upright. The stairs seemed so far away. The shelf where Miranda kept her potions rattled fiercely, and bottles slid off one by one, crashing to the ground. The lights overhead flickered and then went out, burying Corinthe in darkness.

Then, for several seconds, everything went still and perfectly silent, except for the gushing of the tub, which was still spitting water.

A thunderous crack sounded, rolling across the ground, up the walls, and into the ceiling. The earth bucked, and an entire section of roof collapsed in a deafening roar, missing her by only feet. Dust blasted her face, and she turned away, coughing.

When she opened her eyes, hazy light filled the room. So much dust sifted down from above it was as though it had begun to snow. Debris was everywhere, and Corinthe saw that a huge hole had opened to the sky above her.

Not since the first day of her exile had Corinthe felt so alone, so lost. She ached all over. Weakness made it hard to stand. She could feel the venom and its sluggish movement through her veins. How long had it been since she had been stung?

Surely she was almost out of time.

She was so tired.

Maybe she would curl up here. Sleep for a bit. She had no fight in her left. But as she sank to her knees, a touch of blue caught her eye. Half buried in the rubble was the painting she loved so dearly—miraculously intact. She grabbed the frame and gingerly stood it on edge, shaking it a few times to dislodge the dirt.

She couldn’t believe it had remained undamaged. It was a sign. It had to be.

The children in the painting were still there, holding each other’s hands, looking away from the garden.

The sight broke Corinthe’s heart.

The simplicity of it. The sense of possibility.

The love.

She knew, suddenly, what she had to do.