Chapter 18

CHAPTEREIGHTEEN

Immortality’s bounce-back time could be jarring, how quickly one was restored to normal strength. Even after a traumatic possession experience that could have landed him in the clutches of an Underworld fire that burned his essence back to a mote in the collective unconscious.

It felt like there should be a pause, a gathering of one’s composure, something that marked how potentially disastrous the experience had been.

But no. The sun was shining on another day. The vast majority of the world had resumed without any awareness of what had happened, waking up from darkness as if they’d merely taken a power nap. Yet as Silas had predicted, a terrible number of beings had been found simply expired, no real explanation. They’d recovered many, but almost a third of the souls who’d dropped into The Pit had been consumed. Lost to the Loom forever.

They’d cut a bloody swath in the demon world, administering a grim lesson. The Reapers and Guardians had made a formidable purpose-driven army. Still, the loss of that one-third made it an empty victory.

When someone died, those left behind often felt that spirit near them for a certain amount of time. Even when the soul had passed through The Gate, the emotional impressions they left on a loved one formed an echo that lingered, a song whose music still vibrated around and through them.

A woman chanting seemingly nonsensical rhymes, her image dancing in his peripheral vision, hair shimmering around her like a cloak as she turned. Like the wind itself.

His Wake was at the rendezvous point, Gettysburg. He’d been at that Reaping, the terrible battle that had happened well over a century ago. All the confused souls, emerging from mostly young bodies. It was an appropriate spot, since the Reapers there today were trying to make sense of what had happened, deal with their own losses.

Honora.He held the name in his head, let it pass through all of them, a silence surrounding it to pay tribute to her. He would miss her for a long time.

His Reapers looked across the field at him. The blade of his scythe gleamed a clean blue-gold as always, but his robe bore the symbols of a Wake commander.

Honora had often seemed so impassive, but being a Reaper required a concentrated and balanced amount of compassion, empathy, anticipation, wisdom and justice. An appropriate dismissal of self. A Reaper leader required even more of that.

Emotion expressed too overtly is an expression of ego.A declaration of “look at me, notice me.” Is there anything more useless? Self-absorption is an oversaturated sponge, taking away awareness of the world unfolding around you. That awareness transforms one into a vessel capable of handling anything, keeping perspective, and ensuring your unconditional love for all souls is always within reach.

He honored her, grieved her. But he wasn’t reviewing her early lessons because of that. He was sorting through them as a meditative exercise, hoping to find what he needed.

She’d told him he too often let his emotions rule him.

The normal Reaping schedule had resumed. The Fates were back in their place. There were many to thank for that. No war was won with only one person, but by reattaching the threads to the Loom, using her Chaos magic to do the impossible, Ramona had restarted the Loom, and her sisters had helped get the Pattern back on track. Countless lives had been pulled away from The Pit.

She’d paid for it with her life.

Honora’s loss had staggered him. The souls lost to The Pit, those they couldn’t recover, skewered him like a hundred spears, and they’d haunt him for a thousand sleepless nights. As would the many hours they spent in that hellish place, searching every corner, fighting Soul Collectors and whatever else that world could throw at them.

The worst and most hopeless emotions had congregated in that realm, the beings that inhabited it soaked in despair, hatred, malevolence, greed and rage. The choking smoke and stinking sulfur smell would forever be curdled in his gut. Plus the memory of that ceaseless white noise roar which seemed to come from nowhere, but was capable of stealing a stone’s sanity. All of it, never ending.

Just like loss, loneliness and grief itself could seem.

They’d stayed until they were certain they hadn’t missed a single surviving soul. They’d lost six Reapers, but this time it was in the cause of fighting to rescue souls. And a message had been sent.

A Collector normally had no desire to fight with or capture a Reaper. It had always been more of a competition, since a Collector couldn’t get at the soul until it was rising. Not without magical help, like Bryan had provided.

It would be a long time before that realm tried to fuck with souls or Reapers again. If anything from the demon world came after souls in the future, they’d have no retreat point. The Reapers wouldn’t be stopped by any threshold in the effort to retrieve them.

This Wake had a new kind of leader. From what he’d picked up from the Cast leadership, the other commanders felt the same.

When he returned from the demon realm, he’d made a direct request to the top ranks. Though, in his mind, it hadn’t been a request.

He’d never Reaped the soul of a Reaper, because Reapers handled their own endings. But not in this case. Upon arriving at that desolate bunker, Silas wasn’t sure if his intent was to help with that end. But when he found Bryan’s soul, still curled up inside his rotting body, staring at a blank wall, Silas had thought of Ramona.

He’d thought about her holding the wax heart, telling the customer that melting it would soften her own heart, a vital step in doing the same for the spell’s target.

Bryan had been driven mad by the loss of his soulmate. Silas had never realized the depth of his desire to find his own, until he’d believed Ramona was it, and then found out she wasn’t. He supposed the Fates were kind in that way, because if that longing for one made itself known too early, took over the heart the way she had his, a Reaper might lose his or her purpose, seeking it.

But Bryan had found and lost it. And Silas was looking at the results. No. The result for one soul. One soul driven by its own pattern on the Loom. Silas pulled that thought to him, Honora’s wisdom. But it wasn’t until he thought again of Ramona, the things she’d said to him, that he was able to look into the true depths of Bryan’s battered life energy.

The magic of Chaos rested in letting go of everything, every scrap of control, even the deceptive and fleeting control of vengeance. He would do no harm to this pale, sickly being.

"When everything of value we have, all that matters, is taken from us, why must we take anything more from one another?" Silas said quietly.

The sorcerer stared at him, and Silas could almost see the erratic pounding of the broken heart, the rundown state of it since the day Bryan had learned of his past, lost all that made his present and future worthwhile. His heart had been bleeding poison instead of grief, the grief hoarded inside.

“Good-bye, brother.” Silas took up the scythe and cleaved the soul open. The Reaper’s energy spilled out, a wavering, drifting mist that filled the narrow, dank room. Silas moved into the sorcerer’s study, sat down on the battered desk chair, watched until his very last essence vanished. Perhaps it would find and cleave to other Reaper energies, like Honora’s. Find healing, a way to redemption.

It was said that hatred and revenge brought nothing but more hatred and revenge, and forgiveness brought peace. He knew the first part was right, but he sure as hell didn’t feel peace. Silas still had that one task left. He’d willingly accept any torment to put it off.

It didn’t have to be his job. Even now, alongside the edge of the Gettysburg battlefield, Brenner drew him out of his contemplation. The Scotsman was his new right hand, as Silas had been to Honora. Brenner didn’t speak his offer as he’d done the couple times before. But he showed it in his proximity. Silas only had to give him a single gesture, and he would take the burden.

His witch would never forgive him for that. He’d kept her waiting for three days, known where she was at all times. She had no fear as some souls did. She’d made good use of her time—spending part of a day with Buford and her animals, drifting to favorite places she’d known in her lifetime. Gone to the river where her mother had left her and where she’d washed the ash of her pixie family off her. But time was getting short. No Reaper would let it go beyond three days unless the soul was a wanderer, approved to be a ghost for a time.

She wasn’t.

He hadn’t put it off because he didn’t want to see her. He wanted to see her more than anything he’d ever wanted in his centuries of life. It was knowing that when he saw her, the clock would start ticking toward the end. Same as for all ephemeral life.

He looked at Brenner, shook his head. “Resume your duties. Life and death go on as they must.”

Honora had told him that countless times. They were a front row witness to it every day. It always went on. It didn’t care how much things hurt.

His tone sounded flat to him, an emotionless response. Love at its deepest core, when taken away, was the same kind of darkness as any other, leaving no energy to give to anything other than the pain. It made him wonder if Honora had suffered more losses in her lifespan than any of them knew. But unlike Bryan, she had turned that into a life of service, of love. He would honor and serve her memory, honor and serve Ramona, the way both women deserved. No matter what it cost him.

* * *

“So we saved the world. Not something most people ever get to say.”

It was the first thing she said to him.

He found her at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, watching the sentinel slowly pace the twenty-one steps. It was a woman this time. Tall and straight, about five-ten in height. One billion, six hundred thirty-eight million, four hundred twenty-two thousand and eighty-six heartbeats. Eighty-five, eighty-four… She’d drown in her eighties, rescuing a man who’d fallen into a river. She’d be hiking, almost as tall and strong as she looked now.

Ramona sat under the tree where they’d had their picnic. She looked much as she always did, telling him just how comfortable and confident, how closely she had bonded to her identity, in her most recent life. Just as he’d anticipated. it was her truest self, the Chaos witch who’d drawn him into that life, accepted him there. A purple skirt with green sequined embroidery fluttered around her ankles, her arms loosely linked around her knees.

Her hair was that beautiful fire-hued red, like it had been the memorable night in her attic. The wind rippled it over her back like fall leaves as she rested her temple on her knees, gazed at him with her large lavender eyes. All she needed were wings to look like the Fae who’d raised her.

He sat down next to her. She slipped her hands around his upper arm, put her cheek to his shoulder. The contact, the wonder of it, made him shudder deep inside. He closed his hand over hers, unable to speak. She continued, covering the pregnant silence.

“Of course, people save someone’s world every day. They just don’t know they’ve done it. Like that commercial where the person grabs someone’s arm to keep them from stepping out when the light changes, because they see a car is still coming.” Her fingers tightened on him. “Or listens to someone when they really need to be heard, before everything inside them blows up. Or when someone consciously doesn’t step on a bug.”

She stroked her hand up and down his arm, over his forearm, fingers briefly tangling with his before she stroked upward again. He sat under her touch like a statue, suffering, unable to move, but savoring her touch like fire devouring its fuel.

“Crescent told me that. Pixies being so small, a carpenter ant was the size of a guinea pig to us. She said size isn’t significance. Just because I’m so much bigger doesn’t mean I should think it’s okay when I step on a bug and squash it. She said ‘What if the Powers That Be felt that way?’”

“What did you say?” He pushed the response through emotions so thick the words came out heavy, ragged. She touched his face. He didn’t look at her, but felt her fingertips slide over his cheek, down to his jaw, following the tears that were making silent, bitter tracks.

“I was not in a good place. I missed my mother, felt abandoned, even though I knew my mother hadn’t had much choice. I said how do you know the Powers That Be don’t feel that way? Because it seems things get regularly squashed every day, as if they don’t matter.”

Ramona put her head on his shoulder again. Pressed her face against it. A gesture that told him she was feeling things just as large and overwhelming as he was. “She said for some things, there’s no point believing the possible darker truth. Doing that just keeps you from doing good in the world. Making others happy.”

He wanted to turn to her, hold her, but that would make things more difficult. He wanted to be inside her once more, and that would make it impossible to survive.

“I’ll miss these conversations,” she said.

Now at last, he looked at her face. So lovely and earnest. He wished he could block the overlay, but it was there. When they’d first emerged from the demon realm, he’d gone to Raina’s. They’d taken her there, prepared the body to lay out for three days, in the old tradition. Raina and Ruby’s spellwork kept her in stasis, like Snow White. Only instead of a glass coffin, this was a mist of energy that didn’t prevent him from grasping her hand, though the lifeless cool stillness of it was terrible to him.

They’d cleaned her up, but grooves had spiraled over her limbs, her throat, everywhere flesh was visible. Badges of honor, evidence of how she’d opened herself to the souls. Her blood had drained onto the floor of the Fates’ cottage, her flesh torn and sacrificed to bring the world back to order. She’d ultimately died of blood loss and internal injuries caused by the depth of those wounds.

Those grooves had dug into her wrists, but above and below the words. They were still there. Which meant how she’d felt for him had preserved them to the very last breath.

He’d put his forehead to hers, held her body close, but he was too much of a Reaper. He knew she wasn’t here. This body, lovely as it had been, and no matter the joy it had given him, had drawn him because of the soul inhabiting it.

When he’d lifted his head, Ruby’s tears were reabsorbing the salt of those that had already dried on her face. Raina was a tearless witch, but all her pain was in her eyes, in the choking agony he felt from her. He was glad they had Mikhael and Derek, plus all the incubi and succubi who pressed close to both women, ready to comfort them, help them through the grief of losing their bonded trinity.

He couldn’t lay her back on the table. He just couldn’t. Ruby understood, coming forward and letting him slip Ramona into her arms. Raina came to her other side, steadied her body as he stepped back.

“Buford. Her animals…Curtis.”

“All her animals are coming to live here,” Raina assured him in a raw voice. “Li and Gina are going to organize a barn building. The boy that just started helping her, Derek met him. We’ll take care of him.”

“Buford is having a hard time,” Ruby said. “As all familiars do. But we’ll help him.”

Silas managed a nod. “I’ll escort her soul to The Gate on the third day. I expect she will want to linger, touch each of you in some way, give you a remembrance of her spirit.”

Then he’d fled. No other word for it.

But here, on the third day, she’d come to one of his favorite places. She’d been sure he’d be strong enough, that he wouldn’t abdicate the right to be the one to escort her.

There were no guarantees with reincarnation. A soul subconsciously knew what it needed to be and do. That might not include him in a subsequent life, though their connection was strong enough he had no doubt they would see one another again. He just didn’t know if it would be the next life or centuries from now. He wasn’t sure he could bear that thought.

“Of course, how do we really know if we save a life?” she asked thoughtfully, still on the same thread. “Plenty of people believe the day you die is written down somewhere and nothing changes that. Seems like I spent an eternity reweaving those threads. Each one had a certain length. They also didn’t break, become any shorter. Except…”

Her breath hitched. “The ones who were pulled out of their bodies and taken into that Pit. Their thread burned black and then dissolved, as if they’d never existed. How many…” She was holding a terrible pain over it, one with a throbbing echo in himself.

“Don’t.” He brought her into his lap. Oh, Lord and Lady. To hold her was Heaven and Hell together. He tried not to crush her with the fierceness of his grip. He’d told her he’d protect her, care for her. Despite feeling he’d failed in that, he wouldn’t back away from this. “The numbers are far less than they would have been if you and your coven sisters hadn’t done what you did. We were able to recover more as well.”

“I couldn’t go see Ruby and Raina. I just couldn’t.”

“There is a reason there is a Veil between the living and the…”

“Dead,” she finished, and his arms constricted around her. “So that we don’t hang around too long and they don’t hold on so tight they don’t live their lives. It’s the danger of the Mirror of Erised. The Harry Potter books—”

“I’ve read Harry Potter.”

She smiled. “You’re really a soft-hearted nerd. Even if you are scary and badass with your oversized knife and that kill-someone-with-a-look thing.”

“Don’t tell anyone I’m a soft-hearted nerd. I’m in charge of the Wake now.”

“You’ll be excellent at it.” She swallowed, a little tremor going through her. “Ruby and Raina… Do they seem all right to you? No lingering effects from the Isle?”

“They are well. They will grieve you deeply, but they’ll have each other. And their mates.”

A little sob took her, sharing their pain. “Can we…can we be together one more time, Silas? You and me? Would it be too hard for you?”

He hadn’t expected it until she said it, and then he knew it made complete sense. Because as difficult as it would be, he wanted it, too. He lifted his head, and when she turned her face to him, he put a hand with its own tremor against the softness of her cheek. “It is a pain I will willingly bear,” he told her roughly

It didn’t matter they’d met and known one another in his life for a blink of time in the reckoning of the universe. They’d been shown one previous life where their paths had crossed. A horrible one, but he believed there’d been more. It was the only thing that explained the depth of this loss.

Rising, he took her hand, guided her away from the Tomb. He was afraid to use a portal, afraid it would pull them closer to the inevitable destination they had to face, so he went to a part of the park where another group of trees gave them privacy. No one could see them, even as they stood in plain view, so it was for them, the lack of distraction. The grove screened the outside world from them.

She turned to face him. “Take control,” she said softly. “Show me I belong to you.”

“If that’s what you want.” He pushed past the ache in his throat to claim that role with both hands. It was there, as it always was with her. “Ask me. Don’t tell me.”

Her soul trembled in his hands. “Please,” she said softly.

He removed her shirt, pushed the skirt down to her ankles and she got rid of the sneakers. “Odd, to have clothes in this form,” she said.

“The soul is just another expression of who you are,” he said. “Until now, you needed and wanted clothes.”

Because of that, if she’d simply desired to be naked, they would have faded away, but often a soul wanted to hold onto the familiar act of removing them. Since that transition helped keep her on this plain, he wasn’t arguing with it. He didn’t remove his yet, reinforcing the reminder she wanted.

He put his hand to the side of her throat, a squeezing pressure to hold her in place as he took her mouth. The pleasure of it was an agony, and he countered that with a fierceness, showing her how much she meant to him.

The kiss was a branding, demanding everything from her with tongue and teeth. She met that with full, sweet surrender, leaning into him, trying to get even closer. Her hands were on his upper arms, nails biting into his biceps, then shifting to hold onto his back as he cinched an arm around her waist and took her to the ground, putting himself between her legs.

He stripped himself of his clothes, the robe over them, but he sensed she was cold. That happened, when the mortal life was seeping away from the soul. So he draped the robe over them, let it fall on either side of her as he brought his bare body fully against hers, every inch of its heat against her coolness.

Her hands on him had the strength of desperation, and he would take that, fuel that energy with his own. He shoved into her, brutal, but he already knew she was damp, ready for him. She had been, the moment he’d demanded that she ask. She needed to be able to surrender to his control. Something she’d never had her entire life, until the two of them came together.

The surge of emotions he felt translated right to her mind, because when she was pure soul energy, they could do that. I can no more explain why your surrender is so important to me, why I feel the fierceness of the conqueror, the need to protect you, than…

Than I can explain why I want and desire to be conquered by you, why I feel safe with you, everything I am held within your grasp.Her thoughts finished the rest. She stared up at him.

“I don’t give a damn where you go,” he told her. “You will never stop being mine.” To prove it, he grasped her wrist, showed her. Even in her soul form, the ink was there, the ribbons coming to life to spiral over her arms, glowing with the power he gave them. They’d burn their way into her soul’s body. She’d carry them into whatever life she next inhabited. When they found one another again, he would recognize those marks on her soul.

And hope the Fates would be kind enough to let her recognize him.

* * *

They portaled to The Gate in silence. The route was sometimes the same, sometimes different. In her case, he wasn’t surprised it was different. A soaring route through clouds, like a bird riding the wind currents. A spin through a rainbow, so they felt the energy, were splattered by the rain droplets that had created it.

A brief touchdown in a field of purple wildflowers, startling a trio of deer, and then they were passing a bridge of light. She gazed off the edge of it, seeing forms in the far distance, against a broad glittering band like a river. Her hand was in his, hadn’t let go. Then she tensed as they passed through the final barrier.

He understood her trepidation, since everything became dark. But then The Gate appeared in the distance, drawing them forward. He held her hand as they walked toward it, following a path invisible yet solid beneath their feet. They were only energy here, but the need to make sense of it created substance. He’d seen the surroundings become a horse pasture, a snow-topped mountain. Even a bingo hall, The Gate a curtained doorway at the back.

For a witch like Ramona, it was no surprise The Gate appeared close to its true form, framed by an arch of ancient stone, vines growing over the rough surface. The tall doors of solid oak had a carving of a tree on them, with spreading branches and a thick, detailed canopy of leaves.

He brought her to a stop a few feet from it. As he stared down at their joined hands he knew, just like when he’d held her body at Raina’s, he couldn’t let her go. Realizing it as a truth he’d have to turn his back on didn’t change it.

Immortals had a complicated relationship with time. Some things came around again and again, such that they viewed them the way a person did the beeping of their alarm clock on Tuesday, after going through the same cycle on Monday. But other things were like being stuck on that precipice of the sun rising and never seeming to move forward, straining for the light to come.

“Fuck it,” he said suddenly. “Why should Fate decide you’re my soulmate? What if I feel it, in my heart, in my soul? We’ve assumed its Fated. How do we know it’s not us changing the color of the thread, making that decision at the fork of the road?”

The glint of tears in her eyes had the brilliance of that sun spilling over the horizon. “Thank Goddess,” she said. “I was hoping you’d figure that out.”

At his startled look, her lips tugged in a painful smile. “Isn’t it possible both things are true?” she asked gently. “The Reapers couldn’t see my death because I’m a Chaos witch, but you couldn’t because I am your soulmate?”

He’d never felt like an idiot standing in front of The Gate, but then, Ramona had brought him a lot of firsts. He held both her hands, thumbs rubbing against her wrists. “Why didn’t you say anything?” he said at last.

“Because you’re the centuries-old one. If you didn’t come to that conclusion, my say-so wasn’t going to change your mind. I hoped, though.” Her eyes filled with tears again, and she clutched his shoulders. “I feel it pulling me. I don’t want to go. Oh, God, Silas, I don’t want to leave you. I can’t bear the wait to find you again. I feel like I waited forever, and when I saw you, when you held me, I knew I would never be alone again. I wanted to believe that so much. That’s the cruelest thing about this, and all of it is cruel.”

He pressed his face in her hair. He would be strong. He would be the Master she needed him to be. “I’ve lived a long time, and never realized that empty place inside me had someone waiting to fill it. I just accepted it being empty. You will never leave it, Ramona. You’re there. You’re part of me. We will bear it. We will find one another again.”

“And maybe you’ll be less clueless this time,” she snuffled against his shoulder.

“Maybe,” he agreed, the laughter too jagged for him to manage it. He just held her closer. But he could feel the tug, too. It wasn’t going to lessen…or get any easier.

He moved them two steps closer, so he was still holding her, but she could reach out, touch the panel, all that was needed for entrance. She would be pulled out of his arms, but that was the way he wanted it. He wanted whatever lay on the other side of that door to know he’d held onto her as determinedly as he could, until the very last moment.

“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t do it.”

He summoned all the willpower he had to do the unimaginable. What a Reaper was meant to do, that had to be done, for the world to be what it was supposed to be, no matter his own feelings. He closed his hand around her wrist, gentle but firm.

For only she that has my soul… He felt the texture of the words under his grasp.

He stretched their arms out together, side by side, and held her palm just above the surface of The Gate. The tree canopy disappeared, the entry becoming a wall of silver-blue water, readying itself for her passage. Ripples would glide out from her fingers when she touched it, the energy tingling through them both. But he wouldn’t be able to follow her.

Her gaze was on his face, her hand gripping his neck. She had a leg wrapped around his hip. She felt the same way he did. They would be ripped apart, because neither one would accept a passive parting. Whatever witnesses there were to a life, she wanted them to understand what he meant to her, what saving the world had cost her, though neither of them would have done anything differently.

He kissed her with all that feeling, all his desire. He was glad he’d had her soul, had that ability to mark his claim on her in spirit as well as flesh. Wherever she went, she would hold onto that, know he considered her his. And he was hers. All hers.

As he kissed her, he brought her palm to that transient surface, let the liquid energy ripple over their joined flesh. He braced himself for it, deepened the kiss, if that was possible, held her tighter, though he was ready to let the grip slip before it could harm her soul.

“Silas,” she spoke against his lips, a whisper. “What’s happening?”

He lifted his head, and what he felt, what he saw, had his brow creasing.

Nothing. Nothing was happening.

After a long moment, Ramona offered him a tremulous smile through her tears.

“Did you forget to bring the key?”

* * *

“The debate has raged since the beginning of time. How much of its path is chosen by the soul, and how much by the random Chaos of the pattern? I expect no one will ever know. A question with a ready answer, a story without unexpected twists, is as boring to the author as it is to the reader.”

Silas turned quickly, putting Ramona behind him, but in the same instant, he recognized the voice. Dropping to a knee, he bowed his head. His movement drew their tangled hands away from The Gate, but he didn’t release Ramona. He couldn’t, not even to pay proper respects to the Fate approaching them.

Her hair, a mix of gold and brown, lay thick and wild over her shoulders, draping over a substantial bosom. She wore a tiara shaped like the tree of life, the trunk studded by blue stones. Her green robe flowed into colors of blue sea and golden-red flame together at the hem and open draped sleeves, where gold rings adorned her strong hands. Gray eyes the color of storms washed waves of crackling power over Silas and Ramona.

She went by the name of Asherah. She wasn’t the actual Asherah, but a manifestation honoring the Goddess energy the name represented. Her two Fate sisters were the same, calling themselves Astarte, goddess of passion, and Anath, the warrior goddess. An alliteration trinity.

Like Ramona, Ruby and Raina.

Asherah inclined her head to Ramona. “You have our thanks, Chaos witch. It was not intended that you would serve as a Fate so early, and yet you met the challenge bravely and with no regard for your own survival.” Her gaze flicked to The Gate. “Obviously. There are many threads on the Loom that will carry your blood. Those souls you saved should have interesting lives to watch.”

A shadow crossed her expression. “A life is a thread of incredible fragility and resilience. When it passes through our hands, we feel the texture of it.” She met Ramona’s gaze. “As a weaver, you understand that.”

“Yes, my lady.” Ramona had dropped to her knees beside Silas. A witch would always recognize and honor a manifestation of the Lord or Lady.

“I can even tell how long or brief a life will be, when nothing unexpected interferes.” Asherah’s broad face was somber. “As it has.”

“Are the consumed souls forever lost?” Silas asked quietly, need and responsibility surfacing as a spoken wish.

Her expression turned even more thoughtful. “It is an unknown. But I expect time will share that, if we keep our minds to it. Reapers, Guardians, Fates…plus the wishes from the hearts who connected to those souls, in this life or the next. My presence here is not to address that.”

She lifted her hands, showed them a strand of energy. Like wool becoming thread, it spun itself out over her fingers, narrowing. As Asherah spread out her hands, palms facing a foot apart, that thread began to go back and forth, back and forth, weaving in and out over her knuckles.

Silas noticed Ramona’s gaze had stilled on the motion. Slowly, she rose to her feet, her hand caressing his before she let go, moving toward the Fate. As Silas stood, she took another step. When Asherah sent him a meaningful glance, he forced himself to remain where he was.

“She will come to no harm from me, Reaper,” the Fate said, her voice holding the strength and power of the Earth, but the tenderness of a mother as well.

Because as Ramona got closer, their relative sizes changed. So did Ramona’s age. By the time she reached Asherah, she was a small child, perhaps the age she’d been when her mother had to abandon her to the river. Asherah was ten feet tall. She dropped to one knee, leaning forward and extending her hands with the thread woven over them.

“Do a cat’s cradle,” Ramona’s childish voice insisted.

Asherah smiled. The grey world around them brightened, and they were in a meadow. Silas could still feel The Gate behind him. Pulsing. Waiting.

Asherah twisted the threads over her large fingers until it formed the bow-like shape. Ramona held out her hands.

Asherah’s gaze went to Silas. “You know this game?”

When he shook his head, she explained. “The task is to transfer the weaving to another’s hands, without breaking the pattern. Children hold all the secrets to the universe, you know. Aware of it without question or analysis, a blessing they leave behind far too soon, though it always lies within them. A Chaos witch keeps it closer than most.”

Everything within him stilled. The possible import was too fragile. He didn’t dare speak it in his mind.

As a child, Ramona had the same thinness she’d carried into adulthood. A waif who would blow away in a good wind, except she enjoyed that wind on her own terms, choosing to fly or hold fast to the earth with the deep roots of her will.

Carefully, her small fingers tunneled under the threads on Asherah’s. As she managed the transfer to her own hands, her fingers changed, as did the rest of her body. When the task was done, an adult Ramona stood facing Asherah, both human-sized again.

Asherah’s ancient eyes held pain and joy, the mix that made life what it was. “You gave the world back to itself. In return, the Loom is giving your life back to you, the way it was intended to be lived.”

Reaching out, she cupped Ramona’s face, stroked. “You and your sisters will come to us again. When our time is over, you will become the Fates, transitioning to immortal lifespans.”

At Ramona’s look of shock, Asherah raised a bold stroke of a brow. “It makes sense, does it not? Why else would all three of you be mated to immortals?”

She turned to Silas, the glint in her gaze hinting at the woman she’d been before she’d become a Fate. “She was correct, about how clueless even immortals can be. If your heart said you and she belonged to one another from the beginning, nothing should have convinced you otherwise. We know much, but only a soul knows its own heart.”

He executed a silent bow, that heart too full to form words. Asherah kissed Ramona’s forehead, then she turned and walked away. The meadow vanished, and she walked a path of blue-silver water much like the transitioning substance of The Gate. She faded into it, a ripple of water herself.

Ramona turned to him. The threads had vanished, and he had her hands again, almost too overwhelmed to remember not to hold them too tightly. But she blinked up at him. “I have a feeling I’m about to return to my body. It’s going to hurt like hell. Can you kiss me before that happens?”

She let out a pleased and surprised noise as he was already a step ahead of her, holding her close, taking over her mouth, her mind, and everything else his passion could reach, until she was pressing hard against him, wanting not to be parted. Never.

But as she started to be drawn back to her body, and those paroxysms of pain started, he made sure his expression, his touch, gave her his promise. When she woke, he would be there.