Feodora laughed.
“Nothing,” I said, shrugging as I sank into a worn leather armchair.
Feodora turned her attention to me, expression serene and maddeningly unreadable. Just like Death. “I have much to say, but you came here for something. Speak, dear.”
I gestured vaguely in Grim’s direction. “I don’t actually know why we’re here. Ask him.”
He stepped closer and perched on the arm of my chair, his shoulder brushing mine as he leaned in to murmur, “You asked me about Ishani. She has answers.”
Oh.
“Fate, meet the curse. Astoria, meet Fate,” he said, draping an arm behind me.
“Fate?” I asked, eyes narrowing. Fate, as in the cosmic blueprint of everything? The puppet master of my increasingly unhinged existence?
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Astoria,” Feodora said, ignoring my tone. “Cursed you may be—but a curse you are not.” She shot Grim a look that said she was tired of his brooding nonsense.“Come, sit beside me. I promise I’m far better company than Death.”
Despite myself, I moved.
Sitting beside her conjured images of stepping into sunlight after years of gray. Her face, etched with deep smile lines, was the kind of beauty only time could bless. My limbs relaxed. My chest eased…
I didn’t realize how tense I’d been until suddenly, I wasn’t anymore.
She took my hands, warm and gentle. “I didn’t think we’d meet for another century,” she admitted.
A century? The word sent my mind into a spiral. One hundred more years like this? My stomach flipped just thinking about it. “You’re really Fate?” I asked. “Like the old crones from mythology? Snip-snipping threads of destiny?” Grim had never mentioned her. Then again, Grim and I weren’t usually on the best of terms.
Fate laughed, the sound bright and unbothered, her jewelry clattering like my mother’s wind chimes in a storm. “Yes, yes. The very same. Though I can’t say I’m fond of how I’ve been depicted over the years.”
“You’re certainly not what I expected.” I watched her with open suspicion.
“No one ever is,” she replied with a glint in her eye. She rose, heading toward the desk with purpose. “But we’re not here for a meet and greet.”
She began rifling through stacks of precariously balanced books, pulling a pair of red jewel-crusted reading glasses from her pocket like a magician producing a rabbit. When her desk search came up empty, she moved on to a tall rolling ladder and started to climb.
I shot up instinctively, wanting to spot her (catch her, if needed), but Grim just shook his head, calmly motioning meback into my seat. She scaled higher with ease, grabbing thick books and hurling them down with zero concern for the priceless furniture below. Each one hit the rug with a dull, dramatic thud, coughing up little ghosts of dust.
“Found it!” she announced with a wheeze, cracking open a hefty orange tome and flipping through its final pages. “Death, be a dear and take this to Astoria while I climb down.”
She didn’t even look back. Just launched the book into the air.
Grim caught it one-handed, as though it weighed nothing, and placed it in my lap.
“Astoria,” Feodora called as she descended, “I must warn you—humans tend to ask questions they don’t want the answers to. Before you open that book, I need to know you’re prepared. Entangling yourself with another’s fate is... rarely wise.”
I ran my hand over the cracked leather cover. “I think it’s too late for me.”
She paused at the bottom of the ladder, something unreadable flickering across her face. She smiled. “Page 705, then.”
I gripped the edges of the book, hesitating. Maybe Ishould’veheeded her warning and turned back now. Knowing something in your bones was one thing—but seeing it printed in gold ink? InFate’sbook?
It felt final.
My curiosity had always gotten the best of me, though. So instead of handing the book back and pretending I didn’t want to know, I looked at the one being who never kept the truth from me.
I’d asked him once if she would die, and he’d told me many, many years ago, when I first traded a life.
"Balance comes for us all. You cannot delay the inevitable… make peace with it."
