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My heartbeat fills my ears. No reason I wouldn’t be alone. Slipping out of bed, I grab the closest blunt object I can find in the dark—a long-handled brush by the tub. I hold my breath and pad downstairs, careful to not make the stairs creak.
In the pitch-black, I circle the room, feeling along the ridges of the walls, but the only sound is the scrape of my own feet against the floor.
There’s no one here. But I ask the dark anyway, just to settle my skin: “Who’s there?”
I hear a hiss like a tongue meeting hot steel. Swinging the brush in a wide arc, I strike something solid that clatters and skids across the floor.
A wooden tray and bowl. I exhale.
Laughter bubbles forth.Hah-hah-hah.
Vi-o-let.
I swing around again, stumbling. The echo of my name sticks to the back of my skull, here and nowhere all at once.
What a fitting
name
you have,
Vi-o-let.
Words layer upon each other—many voices, merging into one. My heart hammers; this is no earthly sound.
Vile.
Vi-o-let.
Violet of the Moon.
I’ve never heard these voices before, yet they’re familiar as instinct, innate as a layer of my soul. “Who are you?” I ask, even though I know the answer.
Two dim lights flicker in the distant dark. My breath catches in my throat. Nothing makes that kind of glow in this room.
We grant you your power, wretch.
Brush held in front of me, I approach the lights with stuttered steps, toeing around the tray I knocked over. I recognize what I’m walking toward: the offering fountain, where my patrons toss in gifts and coins. And carved at the top of it is the faceless statuette they sometimes pray to.
Formerlyfaceless.
The blue-copper statuette has been worn smooth for as long as I’ve seen it, barely recognizable as a figure at all, let alone one of a Fate. It’s only remarkable for an antique, said to be nearly as old as the first Seer.
But as I near, the grooves of the statuette form a woman, coldly serene, draped in a cloth that flows from her like a waterfall. Her eyes blaze blue fire. From her mouth spills a chorus:
Seven years gained,
one life owed.
You saved the crowned boy
who was ours to claim.
Diverted his death
so you could live in your tower.
It is time to pay it back.
