Page 109 of Unraveling Fate

She sniffed and slumped onto the bench next to mirrors. “It’s stupid.”

“You’re allowed to be stupid when you try on wedding dresses.” Reyna sat next to her. “It’s one of those things that brings out the stupid in people.”

Cadenza laugh-cried and dove for another tissue from her purse. “It’s just, downtown Sonora is not where I thought I’d end up buying my wedding dress. Of all the things to be crying over right now.” She shook her head at herself. They were so close to freeing Taran from the curse. Meanwhile, Vasilios and his crazy cultists wanted to kill her, Canon was gone, and Ruairi and Cyrus insisted that the lack of a Crown was killing the planet.

“Where were you thinking you’d get it?” Reyna asked.

Cadenza lifted one shoulder. “Maybe Milano?”

Reyna put an arm around her, her signature shimmery song playing over Cadenza’s shoulders. “Was getting married ever really in your plans?”

“Honestly? No.” She dabbed at her eyes. “Let alone having the wedding within twenty-four hours of getting engaged, or me being the one to propose.”

Reyna took the bandage from the clerk, wrapped up Cadenza’s finger and led her back in front of the mirror. “Yeah, that’s a different way to do it alright.”

Cadenza looked up at her reflection, Reyna filling the space next to her.

“Thanks.”

Reyna pointed at the Band-Aid and echoed Cadenza’s earlier words. “Come on, what kind of maid of honor would I be if I let you bleed all over this pricey thing?”

“No.” Cadenza shook her head. “I mean thank you for being here. However I envisioned—or didn’t envision—my wedding, I knew my mother wouldn’t be in the picture. But I’m glad to have you as my friend.”

“Well, you know.” Reyna smiled and toggled a finger between them. “Us freaky-somehow-connected-to-the-Fates-girls gotta stick together, right?”

“Right.” Cadenza shuffled into the dressing room to switch gowns. “Anyways, who cares where I get the dress? We’ll break this curse, and then Taran and I can take off on our own, wherever we want. Go see all the places we want to see. No curse holding us back, and no Fates pushing us around.”

“Oh, I see how it is,” Reyna called from her own dressing room. “One minute you’re glad I’m here and the next you’re taking off?”

Cadenza scoffed. “You really want to come?” She bustled out to check the second dress in the mirror.

“Are you crazy? With you two all over each other? No, thank you.” She helped Cadenza zip up the dress then turned around. “Here, do mine. Besides, someone has to work on finding a new Crown, if Thomas won’t.”

Cadenza did up the bow in the back of Reyna’s dress. “Why do we have to find a new Crown at all?”

“Were you not listening to Ruairi and Cyrus? The earth is running out of music because there’s no Crown to connect it to the sun. It runs all the way out and it dies. It’s already sick.”

Cadenza shook her head, stubborn. “I’m not going to be part of forcing people into a destiny they didn’t choose. That’s messed up.”

“Ok. I get that, but listen”—Reyna took her by the shoulders, notes jangling through Cadenza—“that production line analogy that Drostan uses? Think about it. It all happens in steps, right? So, what if the earth can be green and growing and thriving because it’s connected to the sun, but no one later takes that green, growing, thriving energy and Spins it into Thread?”

“I guess so,” Cadenza said. She’d never thought to break the process down like that.

“We need that green, growing part, because I for one would like to live on a functioning planet. We need a new Crown. Which means either Thomas needs to pull his head out?—”

“Even if he did, I don’t think the Norroways would work with him,” Cadenza pointed out.

“—Or,” Reyna kept going, “we need to find the Crown ourselves. Somehow. We can’t open the cave ourselves to let a candidate in, but Cyrus says there are these Messengers that maybe could ask the Fates to kick Thomas out and let us run the cave. Apparently, these Messengers are how the Fate workers communicate with the Fates. They just about never see them face to face.”

“Seriously?” Cadenza wrinkled her nose. “The Fates think they can boss everyone around, but not have totalkto them?” She gathered her skirts and turned to the mirror.

Silk chiffon flowed around her. Sheer sleeves allowed the curve of her neck to take center stage. Her heart skipped a beat as she pictured herself a bride. Married. Tied. Forever.

Nerves frizzed in her belly. What if it didn’t work? What if the curse stayed and she was compelled for the rest of her life to return to the same town where her mother had abandoned their family? The same town where her father died. Where her stepmother ignored her until she left home.

If the curse stayed, would Taran give up again? All along he’d insisted she move on when the time came. Before Cadenza sang him awake, he’d been ready to blip out of existence to get his father to move on. It was too easy to imagine him doing the same thing for her.

“Cadenza,” Reyna asked quietly. “Do you really want to do this?”