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I am here, am I not?
I shiver at the ethereal timbre. “How can we stop the prophecy? Two beasts with rose-covered horns already attacked the capital—attackedme—and I dreamed of more in the countryside.”
You speak true—the blood-soaked earth, the rose-horned beasts, the endless war—they are coming. They are inevitable. And they cannot be stopped.
“There must be different futures. The prophecy said the prince’s heart will be salvationordamnation. He chose a bride—Raya Solquezil. The one described in your rhyme.”
This is not an argument. I will say it again: They are inevitable.
Licking my lips, I rise to my feet. The room still wobbles. “I don’t believe you. I think this is the easy way out.” Gods must like simple obedience as much as any other authority. “If my visions are true destiny, then I wouldn’t have been able to save Cyrus seven years ago. I changed that future.”
And you are paying the cost of it now.
“But it was possible.”
They pause, as if contemplating.Answer this first: why do you wish to save this land?
“I want—I mean—” I stumble over the starts of sentences, as none of them sounds exactly right. “It’s my home. If it’s in danger, then I’m in danger.”
Then you only care to save yourself.
I flush. How often have I heard words like that from Cyrus? “If it comes to it, but I wouldn’t—”
I am not scolding. I think it is wise. I think you do not do it enough. You are soft-hearted.
“Me? Soft-hearted?”
You could have let the beasts devour the prince, but you did not.
“He protected me.” I swallow hard, doubting my choice. “In the moment…I couldn’t.”
But he must die anyway. It will be him or you. You know this.
I can’t entirely reconcile the fact that the FateswantCyrus to die. “You Fates really aren’t what I expected.”
Gods never are.There’s a trill to their voice, as if they’re delighted. It’s such an earthly emotion, a jarring one.Very well. I will give you a choice, if a choice is what you seek. Go to the outside of your tower, down to the new growth.
Hope blooms in my chest despite myself. Half-conscious of the blood trailing in my wake, I stagger down the spiral staircase, out the claw-marked archway.
Outside, it’s bright for what I know to be night. I can’t see any guards across the bridge to the palace; usually two are posted by the gates. I don’t hear anything but the wind.
Keeping close to the wall, I descend the tower’s outside set of stairs. There are no handholds, and in shadow, the rain-slicked steps are difficult tosee.
Halfway down, thin tendrils of green begin to vein over the woody walls of the tower. Another half-circle around and the walls disappear entirely behind thick, leafy vines, viridescent as the day they sprouted.
Touch the vines. Let your blood mingle.
The skin around my wound stretches as I lift my hand, the wind biting it dry. Pain induces a moment of clarity, and I let my hand hover. “Blood destroys Fairywood growth,” Isay.
Yours will do more than that, little star.
I shiver. Not because of the voice this time, but from the implication that there’s a strangeness about myself I haven’t discovered yet. My Sight may be boundless, but in the waking world, skin and bone anchor me like everyone else. Thebody I live in is of finite volume and countable parts, cold in the winter and fragile under a knife. There should be no mysteries here.
Yet when I press my bloody palm against the wall of green, the plant underneath quivers. It begins to shrivel, as I expect it to, but something is also growing, pushing out of the decay—
I pull away just as a thorn bursts forth.
Staggering backward, my heel meets empty air. I grab hold of the thorn and it breaks off with a snap. Barely managing my balance, I pitch myself forward against the wall.
