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I slide down to the steps, trembling. The thorn is nearly as long as my forearm and weighs too much for its thinness. The tip is a tempting apple red.Poison,I think suddenly at that color. On the broken end, the sap has crusted over into a hard amber, almost like a pommel.
Like a dagger.
My bloodmadethis. “How?”
The Sight is but the surface of a Seer’s magic. There is more to discover yet.
“You’re being cryptic again.” I have so many more questions: Who knows this is possible? What else can my blood do? Between the scarcity of Seers and our loyalties to different kingdoms, we hardly get a chance to share knowledge. I brush a thumb toward the thorn’s sharp end. How easily it might sink into my flesh.
I ask the most important question: “What do I do with this?”
Stab it through the prince’s heart.
“That’smurder,” I say. And then I remember why I’mhere and what the voice said they’d give me: a choice. My limbs turn to ice. “I’m not going tomurderCyrus.”
You would mourn the boy?A laugh.As the Fates have said, he must die before summer’s end or you will burn. Use the thorn and you will get away with it. When it strikes his heart, it will destroy his body.
I frown, parsing the words again, a new chill spreading to the core of me.As the Fates have said…“You aren’t a Fate?”
I am and I am not.
Half-god, half-mortal? Born of both? But the Fates don’t walk this earth…. “Speak plainly.” My hand throbs anew, a reminder of my earlier desperation. A warning to not let myself get carried away twice. I am bargaining with a stranger. “How are you in my head if you’re not a Fate?”
Even a shade of my former power is vast. But I mistakenly placed my faith in mortals long ago, and now I am as much like the Fates as I am like you. That is why I wish to help you.The voice sounds nearly tender, even parental, like how the king sounds when he uses my first name instead of my title.I see in you what I was: someone who clings to people who are destined to abandon you. They will never love you as you wish them to. Never see what you See.
My throat is dry. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Do not deny it. This place does not deserve you. Neither does your prince. Kill him before his betrayals mount, if you have any sense left. Fulfill the Fates’ wishes and you will be free to whatever life you seek.
A hateful part of me wants to believe everything they’ve said, because I certainly believe some of it. Cyrus would—has—cast me aside. And he doesn’t deserve me.
But the better part of me knows this voice is guiding me down the bloody path on purpose. Whoever they are, they’re intimately familiar with the prophecy and of what possibilities lie in the future. Familiar enough, maybe, to be behind the recent events themselves. They entered my dreams first, readied with information that would get Cyrus to trust me, so that I would trustthem.
“If Cyrus dies, what happens to the beasts?” I ask carefully. Let them think I’m more tempted than I am. Let them tell me more. “The bloodshed and the war to come? How will they be stopped?”
It is not your concern.
“I’ve dreamed wars. I’ve seen how devastating they canbe.”
War will happen without you. This world is washed with blood and ash. Built by war.
Dimly, I think of King Emilius wanting to grow an empire; somewhere along his plans, he will surely use force to achieve his ends. History has proven we’re cold and cruel enough without the aid of gods. The voice is right about this much: prophecy or not, blood and war will come.
You doubt me. I feel it.
I bare my teeth. “If you know me so well, you shouldn’t be surprised this is a lot to consider. I still don’t know who you really are. And I wouldn’t like to snip off my ties to a king only to get tangled in new ones.”
The threads will play out, little star, no matter your wishes. When you discover the depths of your powers, then you will truly See.
I can taste the poison in their words. I can feel the strings wrapping around my wrists. But their words are seductive, their promises new. Standing at the slippery edge of my tower, I’ve never felt more unmoored; a breeze could lure me to the earth below, so distant that I might have time to regret it. Kings and curses, girls and gods—these are the makings of tales. All I did was bleed and ask.
Could I bear killing Cyrus? I’ve always hated how people speak of destiny as if they had no part in it. How they stow their guilt in the stars instead of their hearts, blaming the Fates for their decisions. If I drove this into Cyrus’s heart, I wouldn’t blame it on anyone but myself.
Do not tarry. The threads must be woven.
I look at the star-filled sky, freshly desperate, searching for a source of the madness. “I want to know more.”
Such greed. Ah, then, I will reveal to you one more treachery: the woman you know as Raya brought the beasts to you.
